"You mean--?"

"They shot five of 'em to death. The last two they hanged." A grim set of the jaws, as Bat made the announcement, was his only expression of feeling.

"Makes you wonder," he went on, after a pause. "Makes you think of the days when locomotives didn't run. Makes you think of the days when life was just a pretty mean gamble with most of the odds dead against you. It don't sound like these Sunday School days when the world sits around, framed in a fancy-coloured halo, that couldn't stand for any wash-tub, talkin' brotherhood an' human sympathy. It's tough when you think of the bunch that sent those boys to fire our limits. They knew the full crime of it, and knew the thing it would mean if we got hands on 'em. Well, there it is. We got 'em. An' now ther' ain't a mother's son of 'em left alive to tell the yarn of it all. It's been just cold, b.l.o.o.d.y murder.

An' the murder ain't on us. No, I guess the darn savage eatin' hashed missioner ain't as bad a proposition as the civilised guys who paid the price to get those toughs killed up in our forests. I can't feel no sort of regret. It won't hand me a half-hour nightmare. But it makes me wonder. It surely does."

He spat accurately into the cuspidore.

"Does the report hand you anything else?" Bull asked, without turning.

The other noticed the complete lack of real interest. He shrugged.

"The camps are all in full cut. They're not a cord behind."

Bat looked for a word, the lighting of an eye. There was none. And he stirred in his chair, and exasperation drove him.

"Don't it make you feel good?" he demanded sharply. "It's the last guess answered, unless there's a guess when that boy, Birchall, comes along.

Anyway, you don't figger ther's much guess to that, with the mill runnin' full, an' every boom crashed full of logs. No. Here, Bull!" he cried, with sudden vehemence. "Turn around, man. Turn right around an'

get a grip on it all. The game's won to the last detail. Can't you feel good? Can't you feel like a feller gettin' out into the light after years of the darkest h.e.l.l? Don't it make you want to holler? Ain't there a thing I can say to boost you? The boys down at the mill are hoggin' work. The groundwood's on the quays like mountains. The mills are roaring like blast furnaces. Can you beat it? Spring. The flies an'

skitters, an' shipping. Why, in a week I guess Father Adam'll be hittin the trail for the forests, an'--"

"Nancy McDonald will be sailing for Quebec."

Bat was no longer gazing on the other's broad back and the mane of hair which did its best to conceal his ma.s.sive neck. Bull had turned. His strong face was flushed. His fine eyes were hot. There could be no mistaking the pa.s.sionate emotion which the other had stirred.

The two men gazed into each other's eyes. Then with a curiously expressive gesture of his great hands Bull turned to the chair standing near, and flung himself into it.

The lumberman's eyes twinkled. He had done the thing he desired. "An'

you don't want her to?" he said deliberately.

Just for a moment it looked as though a headlong outburst was about to reply to him. Then, quite suddenly, the hot light in Bull's eyes died out and he smiled. He shook his head.

"No," he said in simple denial. "If she goes it means the end of Sachigo for me."

"You reckon you'll quit?"

In a moment the lumberman remembered a scene which had been enacted years ago on the high ground on the north sh.o.r.e of the Cove. He would never forget it. It had been the final decision of another to quit Sachigo. And the reason had been not dissimilar.

There was no reply. Bull sat staring blankly in front of him. His eyes were on the wintry sky which was still broad with the light of day beyond the window.

Presently his gaze lost its abstraction and came again to the strong, lined face of the older man. "Yes, Bat," he said calmly, almost coldly, "I'd have to quit. I just couldn't stand for it. Nancy's got right into my life. She's the only thing I can see--now."

"Fer all she's a kind of prisoner right here, caught red-hand doin' the d.a.m.nedest she knows to break us in favour of the outfit that pays her?"

Bat smiled as he flung his challenge. But his tone, his words, were no indication of his mood, or of the rapid thought pa.s.sing behind his shrewd eyes. A great sense of pleasure was asurge within him. He wanted to tell of it. He wanted to reach out and grip the other's hand, and tell him all that his words meant to him. But he refrained. Another man's secret was involved, and that was sufficient. His lips were sealed.

Bull stirred restlessly.

"Oh, psha!" he cried at last, with a force that displayed the tremendous feeling he could no longer deny. "I know what you think, Bat. I'm crazy.

Well, maybe I am. Most men get crazy one time in their lives when a woman gets around. It's no use. I just can't help it. I know all you're thinking. Nancy McDonald belongs to our enemies. As you say she's done her d.a.m.nedest to break us. Maybe you reckon I ought to feel for her like the devil does about holy water. Well, I don't. I'm plumb crazy for her, and when spring clears up the waters of the Cove, and the _Myra_ comes alongside, she's going right aboard, and will pa.s.s out of Labrador and out of my life. I'm never going to get another sight of her. I'm never going to get another sound of her dandy voice, or a sight of her pretty eyes, and--h.e.l.l! What's the use. Oh, I know it all. You've no need to tell me. We've made good. We've fought and won out. My contract's complete, and everything's looking just as good for us as it knows how--now. This mill. It's ours. Yours, and mine, and that other's, who I don't know about. All I've to do is to sit around with the plums lying in my lap. Well, I don't want those plums without Nancy. That's all. I don't want a thing--without Nancy. All the dollars in America can burn in h.e.l.l for all I care, and as for groundwood pulp it's a damp mess of fool stuff that don't signify to me if it finds its way to the bottom of the North Atlantic. An added month of open season? What does it mean to me? Work. Only work, and flies, and skitters. An added month of 'em.

Father Adam's a whole man again now, thanks to that dandy child. He'll pull right out to the forests again, and--she'll pull out too. I--"

"That's all right," Bat broke in drily. "I get all that. But why not marry the gal? Marry her an' quit all this darn argument. I guess this mill's goin' to hand you all you need to keep a wife on. That seems to me the natural answer to the stuff that's worryin' you."

His eyes twinkled as he regarded the other's troubled face.

"Is it?"

Bull was on his feet. Hot, desperate irritation lay behind the retort which Bat's gentle sarcasm had drawn forth. His eyes were alight, and he pa.s.sed an unsteady hand across his forehead in a superlatively impatient gesture.

"Marry her?" he exploded. "Say, are you every sort of darn fool on G.o.d's earth, man? How can I hope to marry her? What sort of use can a girl like that have for the man who's beat her right out of everything she ever hoped to achieve? I've had to treat her like any old criminal, and hold her prisoner. I've brought her right down here leaving her in a man's household without another woman in sight. Say, these cursed mills have made it so I've had to commit every sort of rotten act a man can commit against a high-spirited girl. And you ask me why I don't marry her? You've been too long in the forests, Bat. Guess you've lost your perspective. Nancy McDonald's no sort of chattel to be dealt with any way we fancy. Get sense, man, an' talk it."

Bat's regard was unwavering before the other's angry eyes.

"Sense is a h.e.l.l of a good thing to have an' talk," he said quietly. "I most generally notice the feller yearnin' for someone else to get it an'

talk that way, mostly has least use for the thing he's preachin'. Maybe Nancy feels the way you reckon. But that don't seem to me to worry a deal. Still, maybe things have changed around since the days when I hadn't sense to keep out of gunshot of a pair of dandy eyes. And anyway I don't seem to remember the boys bein' worried with the sort of argument you're handing out. If my memory's as good as I reckon, the boys most gener'ly married the gal first, an' got busy wonderin' about things after. All of which seems like so much hoss sense, seem' the natur' of things is that most gals needs their minds made up for 'em.

You see, Bull, I kind o' fancy womenfolk ain't just ord'nary. They got a bug that makes 'em think queer wher' men are concerned. Now Nancy's all sorts of a gal, an' that bein' so I don't reckon she sees the h.e.l.l-fire crimes you've committed against her just the way you see 'em. I allow they're pretty darn tough. Shootin' up her outfit an' dumpin' her into a snowdrift up on Labrador's mighty hard sort of courtin'. Grabbin' her up an' settin' her hospital nurse to her enemies, in a house full of a bunch of tough men don't seem the surest way to make her smile on the feller that did it. Then most generally beatin' the game she set out to play looks like makin' fer trouble plenty. It sure seems that way. But you never can tell with a woman, Bull. You just can't."

Bat shook his grizzled head in solemn denial, but his eyes were laughing. Bull smothered his resentment. He, too, shook his head, and somehow caught the infection of the other's smile.

"But she's ambitious," he said. "And she isn't the sort of girl to take that easily. No."

Bat nodded and rose from his chair. Something of his purpose had been achieved and he was satisfied. He felt he had said all that was needed for the moment. So he prepared to take his departure.

"Maybe that's so, boy," he agreed readily. "But ambition's a thing that changes with most every wind. That don't worry me a thing. Say, you've sort of opened out about this thing to me, an' I ain't sure why. But I kind of feel good about it. You're younger than me by years I don't fancy reckonin'. I feel like I was an elder brother, an' I'm glad. Well, that bein' so, I'd like to say right here ther's just one ambition in a woman's life that counts. And she mostly gits it when she hits up against the feller that's got the guts to make her think his way. When that happens I guess you can roll up every other old schedule, an' pa.s.s it into the beater to make new paper. It's the only use for it. See? But I 'low I don't know women like I do groundwood, which was the stuff that fetched me here right now. You see, I was feelin' good about things, an'

I fancied handin' you the news of them 'fire-bugs' myself. Guess it hasn't handed you any sort of delirium so far, Bull, but it will later.

I allow ther' ain't room for two fevers at the same time in a man's body. When you've set Nancy McDonald figgerin' your way, your temperature's liable to go up on the other. So long, boy."

CHAPTER XXV

NANCY'S DECISION

With the lengthening days the world of Labrador was already donning its brief, annual smile. But the pa.s.sing of winter was no easy thing. There had been rain and "freeze-up," and rain again. And the whole countryside was a dripping, melting sea of wintry slush. The sun was rising higher in the steely heavens with each pa.s.sing day, but winter was still reluctant. It pa.s.sed on to its dissolution only under irresistible pressure.

Nancy, no less than Father Adam and those others, to whom the early thaw meant so much, watched the pa.s.sing of winter with the closest interest.

But her interest owed its origin to a far different inspiration. She knew it meant that her time at Sachigo was nearing its end, and the future with all its barrenness was staring at her.

She moved restlessly about the large kitchen while the Chinaman, Won-Li, was preparing toast over the cook stove. She stood awhile at the window and watched the winging of a seemingly endless flight of early geese pa.s.sing up from the South. Then she turned away and glanced about the scrupulously clean and neat apartment. It was so very different from the place she had first discovered weeks ago.

After awhile she took up her position against the kitchen table, and stood there with her gaze upon the bent figure of the cook in its long, blue blouse. But she was scarcely interested in the man's labours. She was not even waiting for him to complete them. She was just thinking, filled with apprehension and without confidence. Her mind was made up to a definite purpose whose seeming immensity left her staggered.

Nancy was no longer the distraught creature who had witnessed the terrible night of fire and battle down at the mill. Many weeks had pa.s.sed since then. Weeks full of mental, bodily, and spiritual effort.

From the first dark moments when she had begged the privilege of nursing the wounded missionary, broken in spirit, a beautiful creature well-nigh demented with the horror of the thing she believed herself to be, the woman soul of her had found a measure of peace.

It had been slow in coming. There had been moments when she had nearly broken under the burden of conscience. There had been moments when the weight of unutterable depression, and the sense of guilt, had come near to robbing her of her last shred of mental balance. But the woman's mission of nursing had saved her in the end. That, and the physical effort to which she had applied herself.