"Timber"/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
The storm ended before dawn and when John Taylor awakened it was to see a springtime sun striking through the clean green of pine, setting the drops on twig and needle blazing with the splendor of jewels.
He sat up and looked out. The Blueberry hurled itself at the high bank opposite him, red and roiled, grumbling as it was turned in its course. Upstream he saw a stretch of swamp with the slender spires of balsam standing behind dead cedar. The sound of an axe, and a man's voice, and the smell of wood smoke drifted in through his window. It was all so fresh and vigorous; he sprang from bed and drank deeply of the fine air—and then remembered.
Last night's experience hung at his heart like a cold weight. He felt older, more mature. He had seen death before, yes, but it had never come close to him as had the death of that strange girl, in hopelessness and misery. And then there were other factors. This matter of money. How Jim Harris made it seemed well enough yesterday afternoon, but a half a dozen hours later the practise had become peculiarly hideous. Also, Helen Foraker's attitude, his attempt to make a very broad bid for supremacy in the natural clash of their personalities, her rebuke and her ready dismissal of any evident ill-feeling to ask him to ride through the night with her.
It would have been less uncomfortable had she been afraid of him. It would have made him feel important, after a manner; as it was, he felt of very little consequence.
A car approached and he heard voices, Helen's and a man's. They entered the room below as he began dressing.
"There's nothing any one can do, Milt," the girl was saying. "Some of the neighbors are there, but Thad wanted to be left alone, more than anything else. He is going to bury her there beside the house. She wanted it that way, he said." Pause.
"Sim Burns stopped at the mill last night," the man said. "He made threats."
"After he had made them to me."
"He was here?"
"Here in this room. He—Mr. Taylor saved me a scare by putting him out. He got quite—rough."
The man before her was big, with gray eyes, light hair, huge hands and the supple limbs of a man who has grown up in action.
"Talked taxation, did he?"
"Yes—that was enough."
She sank to her chair and propping her chin in her hands stared gloomily through the window. The man stepped forward quickly.
"You know what that means," he said. "You know he has it on you. There is no use trying to fight the law even if it is unjust. Can't you see that? Can't you quit before it is too late?"
She shook her head. "Don't Milt, please! I can't quit empty handed!"
"You've a fortune here now. You're gambling on a chance to lose everything and win very little more. It's—"
"It's only the beginning of the pinch. It was bound to come. We've got to go through with it!"
He leaned over, fists on the desk. "Is that all you can think of, Helen? Of the forest? Isn't there something else? Can't you think of me—just a little?"
Her face grew troubled.
"I wish you wouldn't, Milt. Love is a big, big thing; the forest is a big, big thing. I haven't time for more than one big job."
He looked at her with his jaw set strangely and after a moment breathed: "Sometimes I hate this damned forest!"
She started sharply. He moved away.
"Milt Goddard!" The man whirled then.
"I mean it," he cried. "It stands between you and me! It's all you seem to think about. It'll be years yet before you can win out, if you ever win, and those are the years I want with you. The years you need to be loved and have somebody to stand between you and trouble."
"If you hate the forest, how could you be happy with me? The forest is my life." She had risen and looked reproachfully at him. "I do need you. I do depend on you. You do stand between me and trouble. Without you as my foreman, how could I manage?"
"It might be different; I might not hate it, if it didn't stand between you and me."
"Then you don't hate it for any other reason? You are—just jealous of it, Milt?"
"Perhaps I am!" he flared. "Perhaps I'm just crazy jealous of it as I am of every other man who looks twice at you—Who's this Taylor?"
The girl lifted a hand in hopeless gesture and shook her head. "Milt, you make it so hard for yourself and me. You know who he is, and you know why he is here."
"You didn't have to take him into your house."
"There was only one bunk left and there had to be a place to let Lucius sober up."
"He could have slept in mine," surlily.
"I didn't know when he came that you would be away. And—Why, Milt, he wouldn't fit in the men's shanty! He was so out of place in his leather coat and his soft hands. He's big and strong, but after all he's only a little boy, and not the sort to be thrown with a rough crew like we have now. He's a rich man's son who has never grown up and you feel out of patience and sorry for him at the same time. Aren't you ashamed to let your jealousy make you silly?"
Evidently Milt Goddard was. He grumbled and complained, but in a few moments he went his way after talking about work to be done, though it was clear that his mind was yet on his frustrated love-making. Above, John Taylor had heard through the grating in the floor. At first he had been amused, but when Helen Foraker spoke of him as an inconsequential youth who needed protection a furious flush swept into his cheeks. It was still there when he descended to find the girl at her desk.
"Good morning," she said with a nod. "I took a liberty with your affairs and sent Lucius back to Pancake. I've been planning to drive into the hardwood for the last week; I can make it today and from there I have to go into town, so you may ride with me."
"That wasn't necessary," he said coolly. "I had intended to spend the day there."
"I'm sorry—I didn't want the children to see Lucius. He is their uncle, the only living relative. Aunty May who is responsible for them, doesn't like to have him around. I waited to explain. Aunty May called you for breakfast but you didn't hear, and the children were up, so I took the responsibility."
He looked at the clock. It was seven. Helen saw the query in his face.
"We eat at dawn," she explained. "I was up a trifle earlier today because I wanted to drive to Parker's."
The fact of having overslept, coming on top of the rest, made him feel, in truth, like a little boy! She had taken him into her house because the crew in the men's shanty were rough; she had been patient when he overslept and disturbed the routine of the household. He ate alone, served sourly by Aunty May, making the meal very short, and when he left the table Helen at once rose and reached for her jacket, indicating that she had been waiting for him. As they left the house, Pauguk, belly down in her kennel, growled raggedly and shivered and half rose as though she would launch herself at the man who had kicked her yesterday.
"You'll have to watch her," Helen said. "She doesn't understand, and she doesn't forget."
They climbed to the single seat of the battered car and went north through her forest, through the ranks of pine trees, uniform in size, growing closely together, crossing those cleared strips at regular intervals. They overtook Black Joe and the car stopped while Helen talked briefly with him. He carried over one shoulder a long implement with a steel blade: a spud of some sort; and under one arm was a bundle of what looked at first to Taylor like pine twigs, but from the other end protruded roots covered with wet clay. Infant trees ready to be planted, he told himself, and catching a word in the girl's talk he knew those lanes which made a checker-board of the forest were fire lines. The idea that this folly of Helen Foraker's was no casual happening took shape rapidly in his mind. Also, the idea that this girl was a person of consequence grew with each detail he learned of her—
They left the forest, crossed plains, climbed a ridge and came into a hardwood slashing, with limbs and branches a tangle on the ground, cordwood stacked here and there and an occasional lonely and crippled sapling standing above the ruin. The road branched, the ruts faded out, they dodged stumps and finally came to a stop.
"This is yours, isn't it?" she asked.
"Search me! I've never been here before; I was depending on finding White."
"Then you didn't even know he was gone?"
"Not until I got to Pancake."
She started to speak, but checked herself and looked at him searchingly.
"Where's the railroad?" he asked.
"Railroad? Why, the right-of-way is over yonder a half mile; the steel's been taken up."
"Taken up?"
"Didn't you know that?" she asked.
He shook his head. Her incredulous question seemed to take all the strength from him and he felt a sudden natural, unreasoned need to talk.
"I didn't know anything about this, it seems," he burst out. "You know and Lucius knows; Jim Harris knew, and my father's attorney in Detroit; my father himself knew and his secretary knew. I came up here to do the first piece of work I've ever tackled, so bullheaded and cock-sure of myself that my pride wouldn't let me ask questions of anybody!"
He hitched about so he could look squarely into the girl's face.
"I've seen you less than twenty-four hours, but I've made several kinds of an ass of myself in that time!" he went on, voice trembling. "I've been sure enough of myself before yesterday. I've thought I was able to judge people and I've never felt small before any one in my life—especially women. I didn't like you from the first. I thought I'd humble you last night after I put that lout out of your house; instead of that you made me feel like a—a worm!
"I heard you tell the man you call Goddard that I was only a little boy, the son of a rich man, who'd never grown up. That got under my skin—two hours ago; but now I guess maybe you're right." He swallowed slowly.
"Is that going far enough?" he demanded. "You're the first person I've ever run up against who could make me say these things about myself. I have never believed them myself before. I thought this job was only a preliminary step and not to be taken very seriously. But it seems that it is a serious matter with me. I'm on trial with my father; if I make good here I make good with him and that means backing for whatever I may try to do in the future. I don't know what's wrong with these logs, but everybody else does know. It's my business and I'm not in the secret. Now I'm asking you, a stranger, to let me in."
He stopped as suddenly as he had begun. For a moment the girl eyed him, her whole interest awakened.
"Get out, and I'll show you," she said almost curtly.
He followed her over tops, around piles of brush, to the brink of a sharp, deep ravine. The river could be heard murmuring not far off, a partridge whirred up from their feet, and a squirrel scolded from a sapling None of this did Taylor sense, nor was he conscious of the girl's eyes on him. He saw only logs! Logs by the hundreds; logs by the thousands, trainloads of logs! Logs on end, logs criss-crossed, logs in a wonderful, hopeless tangle at the bottom of that ravine. To right and left the depression extended; to right and left went the logs. Logs three feet in diameter; logs as small as six inches through. Logs, logs—logs—in a meaningless jumble.
"Why—Why are they here?"
She let one hand drop limply.
"All you knew was that logs had been left in the woods?"
"That's all."
"It's been the talk of the country," she said. "White contracted with your father to cut this forty. He went at it the last thing and was paid for the scale on the decks. He was not to get his pay until the woods were clean, but the snow went with a rush; he knew it wouldn't let him finish the haul so he dumped them here. The inspector who represented your father looked over the slash and found the woods clear. White got his money and was gone. They started taking up the railroad two weeks before this was discovered. It's thirteen miles to the main line."
A wave of hot rage swept through Taylor's body, making his face dark. He knew then what the chuckling of his father had meant; he interpreted Rowe's smirk; he reasoned out Jim Harris' comments. He knew why Lucius and this girl had been surprised at his errand.
"Tricked!" he laughed bitterly.
"Of course you were tricked. White—"
"Not by White! White tricked my father and he passed the trick to me. This was to be my start in life. He told me I didn't know saw logs from bumble-bees, but I know enough to realize that with this mess thirteen miles from a railroad, he might as well have given me so many—worn-out shoes!"
He laughed again and drew a cigarette from his case with unsteady fingers, lighted it and broke the match savagely.
"He can have his logs!" blowing smoke through his nostrils. "He can have his logs and let 'em rot for all of me! I'll find some other way to make my beginning!"
Helen's gaze travelled down the ravine to the river, flashing in the sunlight, to the swamp on the far side with dead cedar standing against the background of her pine; but her eyes did not reach the pine; they remained close to the river's bank where a strip of white sand showed and where the sunlight glistened on the wet bark of cedar poles drying from last night's rain. There were many poles on the skids—many poles—
"A quicker way?" she asked, almost casually.
"Quicker and easier."
"And what if these logs spoil?"
"Well, what of it?" he challenged. "What's that to me?"
"Nothing, perhaps—but maybe it should be." He eyed her closely, interest in what she was driving at overcoming for the moment his anger. "Were you in the army?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Excitement, and everybody was doing it."
"Nothing more?"
"Oh—it was up to me."
"Because we were all in trouble. Yes. We are all going to be in trouble again before long if people go on wasting logs and the opportunities to grow more logs." He shrugged his shoulders indifferently, but she did not appear to notice. "We have only a fifty-year cut of virgin timber left in this whole country. Trees are second in importance only to food. What are we going to do when it is gone?"
"Fifty years is a long time away."
"Europe was three thousand miles away."
"Say, what are you getting at?" he demanded.
"Two things: The first is, that saving these logs is a necessary thing; not perhaps, for you and me, but for the country we live in. It's only three hundred thousand feet or so, but it's going to save just that much standing timber if it's made use of. And the next is that I have from my father a natural fear of waste—waste of material and waste of men and women." He removed his cigarette and flicked off the ash absently. "You admitted back in the car that you had never done anything you can point to. You're about twenty five years old, aren't you? You have already commenced to go to waste—"
"I'm through, though! I'm—"
"You're dodging the first job because it is hard."
"No, because they tried to trick me."
"And if you give up they'll succeed." He arrested the cigarette on it's way back to his lips. "Don't you see that? The laugh will be on you, then. Maybe you'll do better in a small sense to give this up and try something else. Your father gave you these logs, I take it, because he thought you would fail. If you do fail you're wasting an opportunity to show him, among other things, that his joke was cruel, aren't you?"
"I'll show him yet, in some other way."
"But what about your pride?"
"Haven't any."
"Only a few moments ago you told me that you hadn't asked about this open secret because you were too proud. You didn't like to think yesterday that people wouldn't make a fuss over you." He frowned, letting his eyes run over the ravine. "Isn't there something to what I say? Haven't you a great deal of pride?"
A new emotion was stirring in young John Taylor. He was in a corner, without argument. He was trying to slide around the obstacle directly in his path, looking for an easy way out—and he was proud; but in this hour he had become humble and more honest with himself than he had ever been before.
"Maybe I have," he said, "but what can I do? Here are the logs; the railroad is gone, they'll spoil before snow."
"Whatever is done must be done at once." Her eyes travelled again down to the river and rested on the decks of cedar poles. "Do you want to try to turn this joke on your father, and do something hard and to be a pretty good American in peace times by saving this timber?"
"Will you show me the way?" he asked sharply. She smiled and shook her head.
"I don't know the way. I have an idea, but maybe it won't work. First, though, I want you to go to Pancake and put it up to the best logger you can find in town. If he has an idea, consider it; if he hasn't, maybe I can help."
He pulled the cigarette from its holder and dropped it upon the ground. His face was flushed, lips parted in a smile of growing eagerness. The girl put out her foot and ground the coal of the cigarette to extinction. Then she lifted her face to him for answer.
John Taylor laughed shortly.
"As far as I can see, that's not unreasonable," he said. "Let's go!"