Thrice Armed

"Glad you've got back, boy," he said. "You'll have to take hold soon – that is, if there's anything left to get a grip on. The old man's played out."

This, it seemed to Jimmy, was painfully evident, and though he contrived to hide it, a sense of dismay crept over him as he sat down. Tom Wheelock looked played out, and though his son was ready to take up his burden, he felt it would be heavy. He realized that through the compassion he felt, and then a sudden fit of anger against the man who had crushed his father came over him. The color darkened a trifle in his face, but he put a restraint upon himself.

"You'll be about again in a day or two," he said cheerily. "Now, tell me all about it. But first of all, what is the matter with you?"

The old man looked at him with a curious little smile. "The doctor Bob brought off didn't quite seem to know, but I could have told him. Guess I'm done, boy. It's quite likely I'll crawl out on deck for a little while, but how's that going to count? Nobody's going to have any more use for your father, Jimmy, and when the month is up Merril will take the schooner from him."

Jimmy clenched a big brown fist, but his voice was very quiet. "Well," he said, "I want to understand what has happened since I went away."

Wheelock reached out for the pipe that lay near him, and fumbled with it, spilling the tobacco with shaky fingers, until Jimmy quietly took it from him, and struck a match as he handed it back to him. The old man raised himself a trifle as he lighted it, and then laid a trembling hand on his son's arm.

"I guess I've worked as hard as most other men, but somehow I don't seem to have gone to windward as the rest did," he said. "Perhaps I was too easy with the money, and a little slack in other ways. Still, your blood's red, Jimmy, and there's a streak of hard sand in you. You got it from your mother; it was she who made me. Hard work don't count, boy. You want to get your elbows into the other people who're standing in your way. Well, I'm glad there's that streak of grit in you. You'll get those fingers on the throat of the man who brought your father down, and gripe the life out of him, some day."

He broke off abruptly, and fumbled with his pipe, which had gone out again. "Let that go; it's fool talk, Jimmy. What do I want putting my trouble on to you? Guess you'll have plenty of your own, boy."

"I think I asked you to tell me what Merril had done," said Jimmy.

"Kept us here under repairs while the lumber was piling up on the sawmill wharf. I 'most guess he'd fixed the thing with the boss carpenter. I was to bring all that the people at the Inlet cut for Victoria or Vancouver down fast as it was ready, or they were to let up on the contract; but Jordan would have made things easy if Merril hadn't bought their stock and put the screw on hard."

"It wouldn't be worth his while to buy the stock for that."

"The thing's quite plain. He's playing a bigger game. Wants control of all that's going on along that coast, and its carrying. Guess I can't stop his getting the Tyee, and she's the second boat he has taken from me. Well, I may get a freight of ore in a week or two, and, it's quite likely, a load from a cannery – go up light – freight one way. How's that going to count, though, when there's the carpenter's bill to meet, and a big instalment on the bond with interest due?"

"How much?" Jimmy asked, harshly.

He sat silent a while, with a hard, set face, when his father told him.

"Then he must have the vessel. Still, he'll have to sell her by auction," he said by and by.

"That won't count. When I've nobody to run the price up against him, it's quite easy for a man like Merril to fix the thing. He'll get one of his friends to buy her in at 'bout half her value, and the bond don't quite call for that. It isn't everybody wants a vessel, and the few men who do fix these things between them."

Jimmy set his lips, and once more there was silence for a while. Then he looked up with a little abrupt movement. "There's a question in front of us to be faced – and I'm going to find the answer; but we won't talk any more about it now. I'm going over with Jordan this afternoon to see Eleanor. You can get along until to-night without me?"

Wheelock made a sign of concurrence. "I guess it's a thing you ought to do. Got a letter from her yesterday, and she was asking about you. Eleanor's like you. Take after your mother, both of you, and, if anything, the harder grit's in her. You have to remember, Jimmy, you can't afford to show a soft spot when you're fighting a man like Merril."

He stopped a moment, with a sigh. "Guess he is too hard for your father. Won't you light me this pipe again? My hand's shaky."

CHAPTER X

ELEANOR WHEELOCK

Jordan was driving a spirited team along the water-front when Jimmy came up from the wharf, and he smiled when the latter swung himself up into the light, four-wheeled vehicle. Jimmy was dressed tastefully in his English shore-going clothes, and now looked very much unlike a yacht-hand. He was well endued physically, and, though the bronze in his face and a certain steadiness of gaze betrayed his calling, there was an indefinite but unmistakable stamp upon him which he had acquired on board the big mail-boats, and perhaps also in a greater measure from his comrades on the battleship. Jimmy had certainly not cultivated it, and was, in fact, not aware that he possessed it, but his companion had already recognized it.

"Take a cigar, and light it before I let the team out. They look as if they could go," he said.

Jimmy did so, and then found it somewhat difficult to keep his seat as his comrade sent the horses through the city as fast as they could lay hoof to the ground, and out of it past the clustering wooden hovels in its less reputable quarter, and up the slope that led into the shadowy bush. Roads are not remarkable for their smoothness anywhere in that country, but it was evident that Jordan liked fast traveling and could handle a team. He laughed when Jimmy said so.

"I come of farmer stock, and that's probably why I always had a notion of the sea," he said. "If you look at it in one way, the thing's quite natural."

"I suppose it is," said Jimmy. "Why didn't you go to sea?"

"It seemed to me one has mighty few chances of picking up money there, though I found out quite early that the poor man has no great show anywhere. It was a mortgage he couldn't pay off that broke up my father."

He stopped for a moment, with a little confidential gesture. "I guess that's why I wanted to do what I could for your father. In one or two ways he's very much like the man I buried back in Washington. He was straight – and it wasn't his fault if he didn't whale all the meanness out of me – but, when smartness means getting your grip on what belongs to somebody else, he was just a trifle slow. He worked hard, and gave every man a hundred cents' worth for his dollar – and that's quite likely why there was mighty little but a mortgage on the ranch when he died."

Jimmy was not astonished, in view of their short acquaintance, that his companion should tell him this. He was aware that reticence is not a prominent characteristic of the men of the Pacific Slope, and, besides this, there was a rapidly growing sympathy between himself and Jordan. Still, he sat silent, and his companion spoke again.

"I was about sixteen then, and I saw I had to make out differently," he said. "Well, somehow I've done it – looked on this life as a battle where the hurt man gets no mercy, and I've cleared quite a little money on my royalties – but now and then the memory of those old days on the ranch comes back to me. Then I feel that if ever it's necessary for me to get my knife into any kind of mortgage man, it will be red right to the hilt when it comes out again."

The snap in his companion's dark eyes and the hardening of his lips were comprehensible to Jimmy, for he had once or twice been sensible of much the same feeling. Jordan had, as is usual in the land to which he belonged, expressed himself frankly, and perhaps a trifle crudely; but Jimmy recognized that it was with very genuine tenderness and regret he remembered the man he had buried long ago in Washington. He asked an abrupt question, which did not, however, altogether change the subject.

"Will you be here any time?" he said.

"I don't quite know. There's no reason I shouldn't tell you what I can, and I feel like talking now. I'm quite pleased to run that mill up the Inlet for our people, that is, while they leave me to fix things as I like them; but as I told you, Merril has been getting his grip on the stock lately, and his views about the royalties on my patents don't quite coincide with mine. I've a couple of other notions that will save labor which our company has not bought up, and it's quite likely I'll turn them over to the Hastings people. In the meanwhile I'm not going to rush things, and it's probable I'll hang on until we've had the stockholders' meeting."

"Then it's Merril who is standing in your way?"

Jordan smiled dryly. "Now you understand the thing. Seems to me neither of us has any great reason to like that man."

Nothing more was said on that point, and by and by they left the scented shadow of the pines, and clattered across a wooden bridge which spanned the turbid, green Fraser, into a stretch of sunlit meadows and oatfields formed by the silt the great river had brought down. In due time they reached a wooden ranch flanked by shadowy bush, and Jordan, pulling the team up before it, glanced down the long white road that leads to New Westminster, a few miles away.

"I guess I'll go on to town, and come back for you," he said. "Still, you had better make sure you're at the right place first."

Jimmy got down, and a man who had apparently heard the beat of hoofs, commenced to throw down the split slip-rails which in Western Canada usually serve as gates.

"Yes," he said, when Jimmy spoke to him, "this is Forster's ranch. In fact, that is my name."

He was dressed in the bush-rancher's jean, but he had a pleasant face with a certain hint of refinement in it, and smiled when Jimmy told him who he was.

"Miss Wheelock's brother? Come right in and put your team up," he said. "It's not more than an hour or so until supper. Your friend will come with you?"

Supper is usually served at six o'clock in that country, and in no way differs from the other meals of the day; while nobody acquainted with its customs would have considered it an unusual thing for the rancher to extend the invitation to Jimmy's companion. Jordan once more glanced down the road to New Westminster, and, though none of them knew it, a good deal was to depend on the fact that he elected to stay.

"Well," he said, turning to Jimmy, "I don't want to worry you, but the fact is, one of the lumber people yonder has been writing me about my gang-saw frame, and, after thinking the thing out last night, I'd sooner hold him off a while. I'd have to call on the man if I drove into town, and, after all, it might be wiser to keep clear of him."

"Then you had better get down," said Forster. "While Miss Wheelock talks to her brother you can walk round the ranch with me. I don't see many strangers, and I'm by no means busy."

Jordan got down, and, after spending an hour with Forster, was somewhat astonished when he was presented to Miss Wheelock in the big general room of the ranch. It was roughly paneled with cedar, very simply furnished, and had, as usual, an uncovered floor, while the sunlight that streamed through the uncurtained window fell upon the girl. She stood still a moment looking at him when she had acknowledged his greeting, and for once, at least, the sawmiller felt almost embarrassed, for Eleanor Wheelock possessed, as her brother did not, a somewhat striking personality.

Jimmy might have passed for a quiet Englishman; but his sister was typically Western in everything but speech – tall, wiry, and a trifle straight of figure, but with something that was almost imperious in her attitude. She had light hair like Jimmy's, but there was a reddish gleam in it, and her eyes which had a glint in them were of a paler blue, while her skin was of a curious colorless purity. Jordan could not analyze her features, but he felt that she was beautiful, and there was a suggestion of vigor about her that further attracted him. One would scarcely have called her domineering, but she had not, as her brother recognized, the quiet graciousness and composure which half-concealed Anthea Merril's strength of character. Jordan, however, was not too discriminating. He liked vigor in any guise, and he noticed that one of the two little girls who had entered with her clung to her hand.

"I think I passed you twice in Vancouver one day a month or two ago," she said.

Jordan made her a little inclination, and his Western candor was free alike from awkwardness or any hint of presumption.

"Then I didn't see you. If I had done so, I should certainly have remembered it."

Eleanor laughed, and turned to the others. "It's ten minutes since Jake called you. Will you sit here, Jimmy, with Mr. Jordan next to you? Mrs. Forster is away just now."