"Timber"/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
John Taylor's good intentions to become active at once lasted until he reached Detroit. There he dawdled a week with his friend Dick Mason and other pals, and it was not until one afternoon when he telephoned McLellan, his father's attorney, that he was stirred to action again.
"Mr. McLellan, this is John Taylor—Yes—Oh, several days—On my way to White's camp to look after logs that are there—Father gave them to me, and I thought—"
"Gave them to you!" came a rather startled voice. "What for?"
"A dowry!"
"You mean, you're going to try to do something with them?"
"Of course," vaguely alarmed by the tone. "I thought perhaps you had some suggestions."
A pause.
"By George. I haven't a suggestion to my back, John! You know the situation of course."
"Why—yes," hesitantly.
"All right. Help you out if I can; good-bye."
The situation? McLellan's voice had been rather dumbfounded. What situation? And his father's warning to withhold his thanks until he saw the logs—Rowe's smile when Luke first proposed the gift.
He did not like it; there was something here which alarmed him.
There was to have been a party that night, with wine smuggled from Canada, but John did not wait. He prepared to leave in a mad rush, missed the last train by minutes, and on Dick Mason's advice bought a ticket for Pancake, clear across the country from the logs. He could drive in, however, and save a day.
And so on April 5, 1920, a sleepy porter put John off at Pancake, Michigan, in the gray mist of morning.
Taylor had seen such towns as this on trips to Windigo Lodge, Dick Mason's fishing retreat on the Au Sable, hopeless little towns in the back-wash of progress. It had a main street of sand, now black and rutted by spring rains, wooden sidewalks, false-fronted stores built of wood. It boasted a court house pathetically struggling to set itself up with a measure of distinction with iron stamped to indicate red brick for sheeting, and zinc cornices of extravagant design. Beyond was the Commercial House with its sign nearly weathered away. The bank was of pressed brick and very tiny. The front windows of the office of the Blueberry Banner were broken and patched with yellowing newsprint. There was a livery stable with a high-stepping wooden horse hung in front, and beneath the enthusiastic equine a board painted with a word indicative of the influence which had deposed him from his once important estate: Garage.
Other thoroughfares branched from First Street and as Taylor walked toward the hotel he could see the dwellings that fronted on them. Here and there was one which pretended to be something, with a tower on one corner and gingerbread work dripping from the porches, but others were boxes only and needed paint, while numbers had never known garnishment of any sort. Beyond these the quality and number both frayed out until off toward the jack pine which grew thinly over the country were the weather-beaten tar-paper houses of the Michigan pine barrens.
One other passenger had arrived with John, he noticed, when halfway across the street. This was a big man with a broad-brimmed hat, an unbuttoned coat, showing a heavy watch chain and charm. His eyes were blue and sunny, his skin rough and red, mouth large. He emanated good nature and when he said by way of greeting, "We should grab the worm this morning, neighbor," John grinned and remarked that they were early enough.
No one was astir on the street, though every chimney belched breakfast smoke. Within the office of the Commercial House a gaunt man, smoking a pale cigar, was putting wood in the base burner as John and his companion entered.
"Hello, Jim," he said to the big man, coughing from his cigar smoke.
"Morning, Henry. Every little thing settin' pretty?"
"Sure is."
Henry rattled the stove dampers, while Jim dropped his bag and walked behind the desk. John noticed that this fixture was a portion of an old bar and that the floor before it was pitted with innumerable fine holes, the marks left by boots of rivermen, gone now, like the timber and the saloons. Jim took a packet of letters from a shelf behind the desk and rummaged through them, sorting those that were for him. Then he retired to a chair by the stove and began opening envelopes. The proprietor—the man with the cigar—went behind the desk, slapping his hands together to cleanse them.
"Do you wish accommodations?" he asked in a low voice, evidently desiring to leave Jim undisturbed with his mail.
"Breakfast, anyhow; probably that will be all." John signed the register. The other looked at his signature. "I'd like to get out to White's camp today. Maybe you can tell me who'll take me."
The man shook his head.
"Ain't been up in th' hardwood all winter, "he confessed still in that half tone. "When he gets through with his mail,"—a nod toward Jim—"Mr. Harris can tell you. He knows."
"What? What's that?" Harris looked up from his letter.
"This man wants to get to White's camp, Jim."
Harris removed his gold-rimmed eye-glasses and looked more closely at John. Behind the genial quality in that gaze was appraisal, a cunning, that Taylor had not sensed earlier.
"Up in Lincoln township," he said, "away at th' other end of the county. The livery can take you up." He replaced his glasses and shook the fold from the letter he read. Then: "White's gone."
"Gone?" startled.
"Yup. Camp's abandoned. Want to see him?"
John heard his own voice say: "No, I'm only interested in what he's been doing."
His heart sank. If White was gone, where were his logs, and how was he to get them out? Or had there ever been logs? He wanted to blurt out questions, but he could not; this was his business, his first business; and he had been so sure that it would all be simple. To ask questions would admit doubt; he would not do that to himself, let alone to strangers.
Harris went on with his mail. Henry puttered quietly. A door opened in a few minutes and a blowsy blonde appeared.
"Breakfast's ready," said Henry, and Taylor and Harris went into the dining room.
They were the only guests and sat at the same table, and Harris, after glancing at the head-lines of a Detroit paper, put it aside. He winked at the girl when she put butter at bis plate, and she smiled with lumbering coyness.
"You got back for 'lection, I see, " she observed.
"Yup."
Seems like we can't do nothin' important without you, any more, Mr. Harris."
"Hope you'll never do anything rash without me!" he drawled in his big voice; and the girl giggled with a mixture of confusion and delight.
Breakfast came on. John had selected the best from the girl's chant, but Harris had half a grapefruit and, later, a palatable-looking steak; neither of these had been offered Taylor.
The two talked in desultory manner. Rain pattered the window and passed, and the day brightened.
The proprietor came into the room.
"The auto livery is open, Mr. Taylor," he said. "Shall I tell 'em you want to make a drive?"
"Thanks, yes."
In a moment he looked up to find Harris' eyes on him with a knowing smile.
"So, you're young Taylor," he said and grinned.
"Taylor is my name and I am young." John smiled; this man made one feel comfortable.
"You're Luke Taylor's boy?"
"I am."
" Well, well—Who'd thought it!"
"And how did you know it?"
"Why you're a Taylor an' you're headed for White's camps to look after those logs, I suppose. Everybody here knows the trick that was turned on your daddy. Say, Taylor, that was a shame!" shaking his head. "I expect your daddy'll put the screws on White."
John said nothing; nothing of which he was conscious. He mumbled a few words and went back to his breakfast, not for nourishment, but for refuge from his own confusion. A trick, the man had said! Harris talked on, a genial ambler in conversation, drifting from logs and lumber to an odd assortment of topics, and when they left the dining room, they smoked together in the office.
It was noon before Taylor got under way. Harris took him to the garage where a narrow-faced boy wielded a wrench over the motor of a decrepit Ford. On the street men greeted Harris as good inferiors address a genial master.
"Yes," the boy said, he would make the trip when he had his motor working.
"If anybody can make her turn over, Lucius is the boy, " said Jim.
"You Godam know it," tittered Lucius.
Harris went his way. "Got to vote," he explained. "If you get over here again be sure and look me up, Taylor."
"Who's Harris?"
It was the first question John put to his driver as they rattled out of Pancake and took the ruts of the sand road that led straight north.
"Jim? Oh, he's lawyer for Chief Pontiac Power. You know about th' dam? No? Hell, they've got th' biggest dam in th' world right here in this county."
"No!"
"Well, th' biggest in Michigan—or this part of it anyhow," the youth qualified. "Chief Pontiac Power an' Light put it in ten years ago. They shoot juice clear down to them big towns like Saginaw and Flint. Jim, he runs things. Fine feller, Jim, an' he sure makes the dough."
Lucius had further praises for Harris, but John paid little attention. It was evident that unless he wanted continual loquaciousness in his ear it would be well to be chary with questions.
Beyond Pancake was nothing; literally nothing, no farms, no houses, no fences. The road was simply two deep ruts in the thin June grass sod and red brown moss, and wound on interminably across the monotonous Michigan pine barrens, or, as the natives call them, the plains. Here and there stood patches of jack pine, at times many acres in extent. Again it was oak, with some sizeable trees and much brush; in other places native poplar and balm of Gilead; birch and soft maple rose on ridges; in the distance was the blue-green of swamps. All about stood stumps, big stumps, close together, rotted by time and blackened by fire, ugly and desolate, but marking the places where within the generation mighty pine had reared their ragged plumes in dignified congregation. The same black that was on the stumps was on living trees, too; whole halves had been eaten from the butts of oak by creeping flames; smaller oaks, fire-killed, stood black and dead, while a clump of fresh brush rose from the living roots. Poplar and birch grew up through a tangle of punky, brittle trunks that had been trees not so long ago, that had given up life before fire and had finally fallen among their growing progeny.
From ridges, Taylor could see miles of this. They dropped down into sweeping valleys of the same thing. Now and then would be a patch of country with nothing but grass among the stumps, and that, in this early month, was dead and gray. There were no stones in the road, little gravel in sight, and here and there, where the sod was broken, yellow sand showed, streaked with black where the charcoal of countless ground fires had settled into the light soil. In places were lonely Norway pines, watchers over this devastation, and occasionally the blackened corpses of mighty trees still reared themselves high, without limb or branch, straight, slim and tall, like great exclamation points set there to emphasize the ruin that was where a forest had been.
"You from Detroit?" Lucius asked. John assented. "That's where I am goin' b' God. Nothin' here for a young feller; I'm practicin' up at th' garage so I can get a good job in Detroit. It gets darned awful lonesome, but I ain't got much longer to stay here."
"I don't suppose Pancake is very lively."
"Naw! Nobody but old folks an' little kids there. Why, I'm th' only young feller in town. All th' rest beat it; every mother's son-of-a-gun. You see," growing profound, "there ain't nothin' here to hold us. Up yonder's some hardwood lands, an' that's th' only soil worth a damn in th' county, an' who wants to farm when you can work in a factory? I like the woods myself, but there ain't any camps any more, 'cause they've out all th' stuff off.
"You bet your life I'm goin' to Detroit. I'd'a' went last summer but a darn fool warden pinched me an' I had to hang around. Jim Harris got me off, but it took a long time."
"Why did he arrest you?"
"Oh, I dropped a cigarette out here in summer an' started a fire that run over a little no-account brush—thousand acres he said—an' he held me under the fire law. Damn fresh guy, he was, who don't know no more about these here plains than I do about diamonds. Started in arrestin' everybody that set a fire, an' got everybody sore on him."
"No use stopping fires, is that it?"
"Hell, no! He claimed if you kep' 'em out, trees would grow, but we all know damn well fire'll get in sooner or later, an' that th' soil's so poor it won't grow nothin' nohow. There's some that says it'll grow timber again, but they're just plain ignorant." He laughed.
"Why, there was a guy named Foraker who used to talk a lot about raisin' timber like a crop. Everybody knows he was wrong. He bought a big piece up ahead here, ten—twelve thousand acres, an' spent all he could get his hands on tryin' to grow pine, but it won't work. Everybody knows that. We called him Foolish Foraker an' called his land Foraker's Folly. He sunk a lot of money puttin' fires out an' growin' pine trees to plant."
"And they wouldn't grow?"
"They won't grow fast enough! It'd take a thousand years to grow trees like them stumps. Oh, they've got some scraggly little pine up here. Foraker's dead, but his daughter, she lives there. She's had some swamp land that kept her goin', but she's in debt an' would have been starved out by now, if it wasn't for the perfessors that come in here."
"Professors?"
"Yup." Lucius nodded and laughed. "They come up from th' college at Ann Arbor. Damn fools, all of 'em! Got a good eye for women, though!" He laughed and turned an obscene leer on his passenger. "Oh, she's got along; got to hand it to her—She's stuck on herself an' won't mix with common folks. Good reason, too. She don't want anybody to know what kind she is. Ha! Feller up here named Sim Burns—he's runnin' for supervisor in 'lection today—got stuck on her an' she wouldn't have him; so he tries to strong-arm her an' she run him off th' place with a wolf she's got. That kinda discouraged th' rest of th' boys, but we all know how she—"
He went on with his dirty gossip. They swung to the right, into a wide valley and came upon the first indication of life and progress in a half-dozen miles. Wire fences paralleled the road, winter wheat made a vivid splash in the drabness, windmills rose from the flat lands, the country was dotted with buildings and in the foreground rose a huge red barn, on its hipped roof, in great white letters, the legend:
"Headquarters; Harris Development Company."
"Here are farms," said Taylor, thinking of what the boy had said about the land. Lucius nodded and smiled knowingly. "Is this the same Harris?"
"Yup, an' this's his graft."
"Graft?"
"Sure. He got this land for nothin' an' is sellin' it for somethin'."
They passed a tar-paper house, with sagging window frames and gaping doors; behind it stretched small fields which had been cleared of stumps, but which were now grown up to the sparse June grass. Fences were broken and some of the posts had been burned as they stood. A man was plowing half a mile away; in another direction a pile of freshly pulled stumps smouldered.
"Jim's a money maker," Lucius volunteered. "You see, when Chief Pontiac got their damn sites they had to take a lot of this here plains from th' lumber company, so Jim takes it from th' comp'ny an' sells it out to suckers."
"I see."
"Yup. He's a sellin' fool, too! They come in an' starve out an' quit, an' it ain't long before he's sold th' place again."
"But over there"—pointing to the wheat, beside which grew young fruit trees and behind which spotted cattle grazed—"that looks good."
Again Lucius laughed in his superior manner and winked, as though he conferred a great favor by his familiarity.
"Sure, that's headquarters. That's what th' suckers see what can grow on light land. What they don't see is th' train loads of high-priced fertilizer Jim brings up, an' what they don't know is that he has a devil of a time to make a showin' in two or three fields even at that. If they ever get roads and schools in here, his sucker business 'll be better. An' you watch Jim! He'll get 'em!" He giggled.
The car rattled on. They passed a house close to the road where a man worked at a broken windmill.
"Sometimes, a fella fells sorry for th' suckers at that," admitted Lucius. He waved his hand and the man responded listlessly. "Take Thad Parker, there; he's had hard luck. He come from the city to get rich on a farm. Jim soaked him right, he did, but Thad thought he knowed it all. Now he's most starved out an' his wife's sick. Still, you can't blame Jim. Money's all that counts."
Yes, thought Taylor, money is all that counts. He stirred uncomfortably on the uncomfortable seat, however.
They left the settlement and wound on through the scrub oak and pine.
"What in hell!"
The motor stopped with a jolt and a sputter. Lucius crawled out and lifted the battered hood and scratched his head and sighed.
"Well, we got to do it over again, " he said.
Taylor got out too, annoyed by the delay. Lucius brought out tools; then quite cautiously, with a twinkle in his eye, be produced a bottle filled with a brown liquid.
"Have a little shot in th' arm?"
Taylor took the bottle and smelled it suspiciously.
"What is it?"
"Little of my private stock. Good stuff. Go to it."
John declined, but Lucius drank deeply and smacked his lips. There was little John could do to help. His driver alleged that he knew the difficulty and could remedy it at once and began to dismantle the motor while John strolled about, climbed a near ridge and stood looking across that stretch of desolation. It was very quiet and lonely. A red-tailed hawk hunted in high, wide circles, coming from afar and going out of sight with no evidence that his vigilance had been rewarded. There were no birds, no small animals; wind made the only movement.
In his leather coat, high-laced officer's boots, smoking a cigarette in an amber holder, John Taylor looked much out of place as he stood on that ridge. He felt out of place, too. The dirty little town, the dreary people, the coarseness beneath Harris' geniality, the unavoidable gabble of the amiable Lucius, the mystery gathering about his errand, all combined to depress and make him apprehensive—
"All grubbers!" he muttered. "Grubbers—with no chance—except Harris; and he has to live with them!"
He threw away his cigarette with a grimace and walked back to the car.
Lucius was not drunk; not yet. He claimed to have located the trouble and Taylor watched him work so closely that he did not see the old man coming out of a side road until he was at his elbow.
"Hello there, Charley Stump!" cried Lucius.
John looked up. A ragged ancient, with gray hair and watery eyes stood by him. He was resting on a bicycle, or at least a part of a bicycle. The handle bars were bent and twisted; the frame was rust flaked. In place of a saddle a wadded gunny sack was bound to the seat post. There were no tires on the splintered rims, but quarter-inch rope had been wound around and around them.
"Hello, Lucius," quavered the old man. "Broke down, eh? That's where a safety comes in handy," stroking the handle bars. "So long as you go a safety goes."
"That bike won't go a hell of a ways."
"True, true, Lucius; when I get my tires though, you watch me scorch!"
"You've been talkin' about tires ever since the winter of the blue snow."
"True, true, but wait till I sell some of my land or until I sue some of these here trespassers. Then I'll have tires for her."
Lucius said no more, being occupied with a refractory cotter pin.
John looked again at the crazy figure, his torn mackinaw, patched overalls and rubbers that were bound to his sockless feet by twine. About the face was a look that was nothing less than guilt. It was as though Taylor's casual inspection had charged the old man with some misdeed.
"You lookin' for land, mister?"
"No, no land."
"I got some good land, if you are. Fine land; I'll sell reasonable, too."
"Paul Bunion himself couldn't stir up a dust on your land, Charley," said Lucius.
"Is that so? That's all you know. You'll get too flip sometime an' somebody'll give it to you in th' neck." With that retort Charley started on, pushing his safety, moving slowly.
"Batty in the knob," said the boy. "Pushes that bike all over the plains, an' has for years. He's an old bullyboy an' went cookoo when th' pine give out. That's what a young feller has to associate with here; that's one reason I'm goin' to Detroit. Le's have a drink."
John tried to protest, but Lucius showed temper and the attempt to dissuade him was not pressed. He drank and went on with his work.
Afternoon and the bottle were both nearly gone when the last bolt went into place and the motor responded to a turn of the crank. Taylor took the wheel in spite of the boy's remonstrance and they went on.
"All righ' fer you," whined Lucius. "I know who you are; I'm glad White put one over—Lemme drive an' I won't be glad—'s tis, I am!"
So this backwoods moron, even, knew something about his affairs that John Taylor did not know and for a moment his apprehension mingled with the chagrin of one left outside an open secret.
The car functioned as well as one of its age and condition of servitude could possibly do. They climbed the ridge and slid down the far side. Lucius drank again and leaned heavily against the other and insisted that their destination was not far.
A train paralleled their course and soon they came in sight of buildings; a scattering of tar-paper houses, with a small water-power mill on a damned creek. A saw whined within and two Indians were loading pulp wood into a gondola on the siding. There were piles of thin lumber and banks of small logs.
"That's her mill," said the boy.
"Whose?"
"Helen Forsakersh—Her mill."
"Which way now? The road forks."
"Keep lef'—lef'—."
They turned, crossed the head of the mill pond and plunged into the gloom of thick timber. At first Taylor paid little attention, for there was the usual mixture of oak, poplar and small pines. The road was straight and even and had been plowed. The oak disappeared, the trees became larger; he craned his neck to look up and grunted in surprise. He was in a dense pine forest, silent and fresh and bearing no evidence of fire. He slowed the car and looked out curiously. They were small trees, averaging somewhere near a foot in diameter, he thought, but they were thick and uniform. The trunks were not smooth; many dead branches protruded there, as nature pursued her slow method of pruning. There was little brush on the ground.
"Is this Foraker's Folly?" he asked.
Lucius roused with a start. "Yup—Damn fool.—She's a lulu though!"
They crossed what appeared to be another road, also straight and plowed, but in it were no worn ruts. Soon they crossed another and another, placed at regular intervals. And then they ran out of the gloom, into sight of the Blueberry River which swooped at them, imprisoned between high banks, and a house, first story of logs and the second thatched with shingles, wide-windowed, generous of chimney, which stood on a knoll against the deep green of white pine. There were other buildings about, several of them, but the road led straight to the door of the big house.
"Here; we're in wrong," growled Taylor and set the brake, stopping at the corner of the building, not far from a dog kennel, from the depths of which two orange lights glowed at him. He shook the boy roughly and roused him.
"Where are we?"
The other yawned.
"I'll be son-gun—Brought you right to her housh!"
"Get out then, and let me out—I'll have to find the way for myself."
Lucius grumbled as John took him by the shoulder and shoved him to the ground.
"Leggo me!"
"If I do you can't stand up. You're drunk and a fool."
"Who saysh I'm drun'? Drun', am I?"
With a lunging jerk of his body he tore free and staggered backward, swearing, and then from the kennel where two glowing spots had been, came a gray streak, a ragged growl, a flash of bared teeth, white as frost.
Taylor leaped forward to grasp the boy, but again he twisted out of his reach. The dog left the ground in a long leap. John saw the red of its open mouth, caught the wicked glitter of the eye, and his foot shot out, hard and true, toe landing on the jaw, turning the creature up and over, flinging it hard upon the ground on its back.
"Get out of the way!" he said, and this time fastened his fingers in Lucius' sweater, jerking him toward the car, and stepped back himself as the dog came through the air, straight at his own throat, and reached the end of the chain, and went back and down with a choking roar of dismay.
Taylor turned to confront Lucius who had settled down on the running board, hot words on his lips and anger in his face. But he did not let the oath slip out, for a girl stood before him, a bare-headed girl in a red mackinaw, red in her cheeks, a flash in her eyes.
"That was uncalled for," she said evenly.
There was no anger in her voice; that was steady and cool and of splendid quality, but there was anger in her eyes. Another thing was there; an impersonal superiority. She gave Taylor the impression of an individual of consequence being annoyed by something trivial.
"I'm sorry I had to kick your dog," John said, "but the Providence that looks after fools and drunkards seemed to have turned its back. He got in your dog's way."
She followed his gesture to the drooping Lucius and saw the silly leer in his eye.
"I didn't understand. I only saw you step in to kick her. I'm sorry I was so abrupt."
But she was not sorry, Taylor felt. She did not care whether she had done him an injustice or not; she walked past him, speaking gently to the dog, calling her Pauguk. The animal, which had been running back and forth, muttering against her helplessness to be at the man who had struck her, sank belly to the earth when the girl approached, licking her chops swiftly, now and then darting a venomous glance at Taylor. The girl's hand was extended, the red tongue caressed it furtively and Pauguk slunk closer to her. John saw that this was no ordinary dog. Bigger, stronger, with something that dogs do not have, some curious thing which—
"Wolf!" he muttered.
"I'm sorry I come to your house and start a disturbance at once," he said icily, as the girl turned back. He scrutinized her closely and his gaze lingered on the thick hank of brown hair at her neck. Her eyes were brown, too, and wide and intelligent. "I got in here by mistake because my driver seems to have done pretty well at breaking the prohibition law."
She looked at Lucius again, but made no response; his explanation had not interested her.
"I was headed for White's camp," he went on, resenting this indifference. "He gave me the wrong turn."
When he spoke of his destination, her eyes came to his face and he fancied that a gleam of curiosity showed in them.
"You can't get there tonight," she said, holding out her hand to feel the first drops of rain. "The camp is abandoned, anyhow."
"I suppose I'd better go back to Pancake, then."
She eyed the car dubiously.
"Between the machine and its driver, I don't think that's wise."
"Where can I go? I never saw such a God-forsaken—"
"We can take care of you." Then turned and lifted her voice: "Joe? Black Joe?"
A squat and swarthy man appeared from behind the house. He looked at Taylor, at Lucius, and then at the girl with a surly grunt of query.
"Get him out of sight before the children see him," she said. "There's an empty bunk in the shanty?"
"One."
Black Joe spit on his hands.
"Let me help you," said Taylor.
The man, stooped over Lucius, looked at him closely and slowly, from head to foot; he said nothing, but in the glance was contempt and hostility. He grasped the boy by one arm and ankle, slung him over his shoulder and walked away.
"You'll have to come in here," the girl said, moving toward the steps. "The men's shanty is crowded, and anyhow you'll—probably be better off here."
She added that last after a look which covered him as thoroughly as had the contemptuous stare of Black Joe, and her manner was as though she took upon herself dutifully the protection of an unwelcome child. It was a challenge to his assurance with women and stung his pride.
"Thanks, but you needn't bother," he said sharply.
"No bother. It is the only place," as she ascended the steps and opened the door, turning to wait for him.
He was impelled to refuse curtly this strange hospitality and sought for some retort that would sting her as she had stung him. None came, but, as he stood looking up at the girl while her eyes followed Black Joe and his inert burden into the near-by building, he smiled rather grimly. He knew women. She chose to ignore him; he would let her go to the end of her rope and bring her up as shortly as the wolf dog had brought up against her chain. He followed her into the house.
A lean, tall woman was sweeping the carpeted floor, a cloth tied over her head.
"Aunty May," said the girl, "this man is going to stay with us tonight. Will you show him the room?"
The woman also eyed Taylor sourly. The girl had drawn off her jacket and was approaching an old-fashioned walnut desk beneath a window.
"My name, " he said coolly, "is Taylor. I think I know who you are."
She turned and he saw interest at last in her face. He felt no regret that to impress her he had been forced to bludgeon through her indifference with his father's identity.
"You're here, then, to look after your father's logs?"
"Yes," and the satisfaction he had derived by shaking her aloofness was engulfed in apprehension again.
"Well," said the older woman testily, "do you want to stand here and gas or put that satchel away?"
After the girl's manner this grumpiness was burlesque. Taylor grinned and followed her across the room to the open stairway.