"Timber"/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
That was the sixth of April.
On the morning of the seventh Milt Goddard and Helen Foraker were covering the country by car and telephone for teams and men. The slide which dragged logs by endless chain from river to mill was overhauled, the blacksmith in Pancake was at work early making a quantity of chain dogs, and a wagonload of supplies went into White's abandoned camps, the nearest shelter to the ravine in which the logs had been abandoned.
That night, Black Joe dragged out his turkey and brought to light his aged Grand Rapids driving boots, unused but carefully preserved these many years. He greased them again and sharpened the corks, handling the foot gear with an odd excitement. The next morning he was on the stream early with dynamite, wire and his buzzer, and the heavy detonations of the explosive punctuated the day as he tore from their anchorage those snags which had impeded nothing but driftwood for a decade or more.
Three weeks later, for there were delays, the first raft, old Joe ankle-deep but top-side on the sluggish maple, dogged to cedar, swung to a stop against the boom at the mill and began crawling one by one, up to the waiting band-saw.
On a morning in mid-May, Luke Taylor sat in the library of his Detroit home, dictating to Philip Rowe. He spoke a phrase or a sentence at a time and looked with his hard old eyes out through the broad windows, down the sweep of formal garden toward the river. His gaze did not go as far as the water, though; it was arrested half way, not on the Grecian terrace of marble, but on the trees that stood above it, bending their tops lightly in the breeze. They were white pines, planted there years ago despite the protests of the landscape architect who planned that garden; that group of trees was the only item that interested the man who had paid him his fee. It had been Luke's only demand: that White Pine—capitalized—be placed where he could see it from every south window in the mansion.
From the expression on the old man's face or from the tone of his voice, the occasion might have been of little importance. A look at his secretary, however, would have indicated that this moment was of great consequence—to some one; his hand, holding the pencil, trembled slightly in the waits, and the veins on his forehead, close up under the sleek hair, stood out in knots.
Luke went on:
"To my son, John Taylor—the sum of fifty dollars—weekly—so long as he may—"
A flush swept up over Rowe's forehead and a sharp gleam of triumph showed in his lowered eyes.
"And for the administrator—" Luke paused, working his mouth vigorously, and cast a glance at the head of the younger man, bowed over his book; his glance was crafty, and yet in it was something of good humor, something of favor, perhaps something of admiration—possibly, too, something that almost reached affection. He did not know that Rowe's heart stopped, that a chill flashed down his limbs. This was the moment, the one he had plotted and planned—the moment when a new administrator would be named in a new will—
But before Luke could go on the door opened, a maid slipped in and dropped letters on the desk.
The intrusion distracted the old man, whose eyes rested on the mail. Rowe followed the girl's retreat from the room as though he could have harmed her for that break—and Luke was saying:
"What's in the mail, Rowe? Anything from—"
The other put his note book down and ran through the letters.
"Prom McLellan—Internal Revenue collector, Red Cross—Here's one from Pancake."
"From John?" The old man leaned forward sharply. "He's written at last, eh? Read it!"
"You don't want to finish the matter of the will, then?"
"That can wait! Read what the cub says," with an impatient gesture. "First letter in all these weeks. What th' devil's he up to?"
Rowe's fingers were unsteady as they tore open the envelope and rattled the creases from the paper. He read aloud.
"Dear Father: It has been nearly a month since I left you to take up this job and I have not written for two reasons. First, I have been very busy learning necessary things; secondly, I've had nothing definite to tell you."
Rowe paused, and his face lost color.
"Go on," said Luke.
"Today, the first two cars of maple started rolling. They go to Bender of Detroit at $76 for No. 2 Common and better on track. The quality grades up to average—Hastily, John."
"P.S. I'm well, happy and busy. Love to mother."
Rowe's eyes went back over the paragraphs and his brows contracted a bit. Old Luke was very still a moment; then he said grimly:
"Read that again."
Rowe did, his voice not just steady.
"There's a trick somewhere. Call Bender!"
On the telephone Rowe got the head of the lumber firm.
"Mr. Bender, this is Rowe, Mr. Luke Taylor's secretary—"
"Bookkeeper! Bookkeeper!" mumbled Luke irritably.
"—and I'm inquiring about lumber from Blueberry County—You did—Yes, Mr. John Taylor—you. Thank you, sir—"
He turned to Luke. "They bought all right."
"At that price?"
"Yes, sir."
The old man wriggled as nearly erect as his back would permit and smote the floor a stout blow with his cane.
"Sellin' the lumber, Rowe! Sellin' lumber! When McLellan had the best men he knows about on the job and they reported it was a dead loss! He's took logs that nobody'd touch and 's makin' 'em into lumber an' sellin' it green under my nose!"
His words gave way to a spasm of wheezy laughter and he waved his cane.
"I don't understand it," snapped Rowe.
"Understand! Understand it? Why, damn it, it's as plain as a mole on a pretty girl's chin! The young buck's got something in him, Rowe. I thought he didn't. I tried to show him up—and by the Lord Harry, he's showin' me up! Showin' us up, Rowe."
He laughed again until he strangled for breath.
Rowe picked up his note book and sat down. "Do you want to go on?" he asked.
"With the will? The will, eh?—" Luke mumbled to himself and his blue eyes studied his secretary's face; then went out to that clump of pine. "No—no, Rowe. We won't go on with that, today. Telephone McLellan I've changed my mind about changin' my will—for a few days—a few days—He won't need to come out here this afternoon—Fifty dollars a week an' th' young buck fooled me! He laughed last, Rowe, he's laughed—
"Here, take a letter!"
The smile in his eyes was brighter.
"John Taylor, esquire, Pancake, Mich. Yours of recent date received and contents noted. Your mother is well. Yours truly.
"P.S. Bender is making his cracks that he beat you on your first shipment. Watch the market and don't be a bigger damn fool than you can help."
He grinned. Rowe looked up sullenly at this statement which had no foundation in fact.
"A line in time often gathers a lot of moss, Rowe," remarked Luke. "Now send his mother here—hurry!"
Curled on a chaise longue in her chintz-draped bedroom, Marcia Murray, too, read a letter from Pancake that forenoon, read with a mounting flush in her cheek and a light in her blue eyes that was not of good nature.
For a month, now, these letters had registered a cumulative change in John Taylor. He had gone away a cynical, blase, conceited young man of the world; he was losing that cynicism and indifference; he was becoming as enthusiastic, as impulsive as a university sophomore, and as wrought up over his success as a normal twelve-year-old is over the capture of his first fish and game. And to Marcia Murray his rewards were about as significant.
In this letter he told of the sale of his first lumber and figured for her the approximate profit; he forecasted the grand total that his venture would yield, setting it off with underscoring and exclamation points, but as the girl read, her thin lips drew up in the suggestion of a curl. Where a month ago his letters had consisted of a dignified and assured love-making, they now chattered on about people who did not interest her at all; Humphrey Bryant, of whom John wrote as a firm friend; about a person named Black Joe—evidently not colored—who refused John his confidence; and about Helen Foraker, with a repression and an irregularity in the style which Marcia did not detect.
She finished this letter:
"I'm awfully sorry, but it won't be possible for me to spend much time at the house party at Dick Mason's lodge. You go, by all means, and I may be able to spend Sundays there. It's hard, Marcia, to give up that sort of thing, but I'm beginning to feel that my father wasn't so far wrong in thinking I didn't amount to much. The more I think of it the less I am inclined to ever ask a favor of him. This that I am making is all my own."
Her eyes lingered on that paragraph and her slender brows quirked; she glanced idly back over the letter, stopping again on the page where he forecasted his possible profits. She folded the paper and placed it in the envelope and as she tossed it to the dressing table there was something savage in the gesture and she sniffed disdainfully.
In the hall a telephone jingled and she went to answer it.
"Hello—Oh, yes, Phil—No, not tonight, thank you—Oh, I've a headache—By the way, Phil, has Mr. Taylor heard from John? He has? No—Yes—after all, you might take me out a while this evening—about nine? Good-bye."
Looking at the reflection of her cool blue eyes as her cool small hands worked in her golden hair, Marcia spoke again:
"Of course, if he should please his—But, damn it all! He doesn't want the old crab's money!"