The Settler

"My God!" Joe cried.

He saw the black brute rear, snorting – saw the blacksnake bite the mare's flank – saw the pair plunge over the grade; then water bathed his eyes. He heard, however – heard the rush and roar, a thunder of hoofs as the long, steel calkings cut through the ice and struck fire from the face of the hill. He felt the wind as the sled passed, and waited for the crash – which did not come.

A voice, cold, deliberate, restored his vision. "I didn't think it was in horse-flesh." Carter was gazing after team and sled, now a black patch on the snow of the lake. "Beat us this time, Joe," he continued; "but we'll fix him to-morrow."

That evening, however, the red teamster enjoyed the fruits of his exploit. It seasoned the beans at supper, sweetened the stable choring. Opinion agreed that it was now "up" to the boss, but split on his probable action, one-half the stable agreeing with Hines that Michigan surely earned his discharge, the other half holding that settlement by battle would be the certain ending. Neither event, however, had come to pass by bedtime, and the mystery was intensified by the chucklings of the road gang, which came in from work long after the teamsters retired. Next morning, too, the loaders – evidently in the secret – added to the suspense by asking the teamsters if they intended to toboggan down the glide that trip.

"Bet you don't!" they yelled after Michigan Red.

Though not exactly nervous, the mystery yet affected the red teamster. As his load slid through the forest uneasiness manifested itself in thoughtful whistlings, broken song snatches, unnecessary talk to his horses. Not that he was a whit afraid. The half-dozen or so men whom he expected would try to enforce the new order could not have prevented him from at least sending his team at the grade. The fierce soul of him thrilled at the thought of opposition, and, coming out of the forest, he set a pace that would have ridden down opposition.

But he reined in at the hill. Instead of the force of his imaginings, only Joe Legault stood at the foot of the glide. The hay had been respread on its face, but – the road gang had built a rough bridge over a deep gully, and now the glide led, straight as an arrow, out to the lake. The racking curve was utterly abolished.

Grinning, Joe said: "The boss allows that it's your privilege to kill your own horses. So go it if you wanter. Hain't going to hurt his sleds none."

Michigan walked his horses.

Carter had won out. Moreover, he had done it without the loss of prestige that would have ensued by the usual brutal methods in vogue in lumber-camps. Law, of a man or people, cannot endure, of course, without force behind it. Yet behind his imperturbability, quiet taciturnity, the men felt the power to enforce his commands. So his authority was no more called in question. Not that envious spite ceased to dog him. Hines, Shinn, and their coterie stood always ready to stir up discontent, foment trouble.

It was their sympathy that caused the cook to maintain one can of poor baking-powder to be valid excuse for leaving. But Carter disposed of minor troubles with the same easy good-humor that he had given to big ones.

"I reckon you've been scandalously mistreated," he told the cook. "I'm right sorry to lose you. Must you go?"

Mollified, the cook stayed.

Then Baldy, chief of the "tote" – trail teamsters, rose to the point that "thirty hun'red was load enough for drifted trails."

"Thirty it is, Baldy," Carter cheerfully answered, and Baldy yanked forty and forty-five hundred all winter over the worst of trails.

He had proved himself in the mastership of men just at the time that opportunity was holding out her hand, and proof and fruit of his winning came the very day that saw the last load delivered at the dumps. "It is a go!" The wire which announced, with this bit of slang, the successful financing of his railroad projects was brought in by Baldy from Lone Tree, and with it buttoned against his heart Carter made his way to the stables where the teamsters were, as they thought, bedding up for the last time.

"We have feed for three months left," he said, "and I can promise work through the summer. At what?" He turned, smiling, on Brady. "Never mind; all those that want it kin have it till freeze-up. In the mean time I'll feed an' care for your teams till the log-drive is down."

Grumblers from the cradle, kickers born, teamsters and choppers had looked forward to this last day in camp, swearing all that ten dollars a day would not hire them for an hour longer. No, sirree – not an hour! Now they looked their doubt.

"What's the pay?" Brady asked.

"Half a dollar a day more'n you're getting."

"That beats farming in these parts. You kin sign me, boss."

And me – me – me! The answers floated in from all over the stable. Only a few of the older men elected to return to their farms, and after all had spoken Carter turned to Michigan Red, who occupied his old perch on the stallion's stall.

"Well, Red?"

"Didn't s'pose you'd need me."

Carter went on writing. He could afford to be generous. He had beaten the man at every point; to retain him where another would have discharged him was, indeed, the crowning of his victory, and Michigan knew it. Had he doubted, he had but to read it in the countenances of his fellows. A good gambler, however, he hid resentment, and where a poor loser would have taken his discharge he accepted re-employment.

His red beard split in a sneering grin. "Oh, guess I'll trouble you for a little longer."

The day was eventful for another reason. Coming up from a short visit to the settlements, Bender handed Carter a letter that evening, the superscription of which sent the dark blood flooding over his neck, for it was the first he had seen of Helen's writing these months. Was this the answer of his longing? Had she sent – at last? His fingers trembled as he tore the wrapping, then he paused, staring. It was his last check, returned without an explanatory scrap.

"She's hired to teach her old school again." Bender answered his blank look.

XV

TRAVAIL

If the white months seemed to lag with Carter up at the camp, they dragged wearily with Helen down in the settlements. Christmas had been particularly dreary, for it did not require a woman's marvellous memory for anniversaries for her to live over again every incident and experience of last Yuletide. In their living-room Carter had built a chimney and fireplace of mud, Cree style, and on Christmas Eve she had cuddled in against his broad breast and talked of a sweet possibility. They had the usual pretty quarrel over sex and names – has the tongue one good enough for the first-born? Then he had hung her stocking, and none other would suit him, forsooth, but the one she was wearing. He had laughed away her blushing protestations, and had kissed the white foot and toes that squirmed in his big hand. Sitting alone this Christmas, she had blushed at the memory; then a gush of tears had cooled her hot cheeks, tears of mingled sorrow and thankfulness that their pretty dream had not taken form in flesh.

One January morning she sat, chin in hands, and stared across the humming stove at the white drift outside. Nels, the Swedish hired man, had killed three pigs for winter meat the day before, and with a touch of humor that was foreign to his bleached complacency had set them on all-fours in the snow. Stiff, frozen – so hard, indeed, that the house-dog retired disconsolately after a fruitless tug at an iron ear – they poked marble shoulders out of a drift. The eye of one was closed in a cunning wink. His neighbor achieved a grin. The mouth of the third was open and thrown back, as though defying death with derisive laughter.

Steeped in thought, Helen did not see the grim grotesques. These months she had undergone three distinct changes of feeling. First she was becomingly repentant. Viewed under the softening perspectives of time and distance, Carter's crudities waned, while his strength and virtues waxed. The insignificant sloughed away from his personality, leaving only the strong, the virile. During this stage she formed small plans towards reconciliation, and bided patiently at home, ceasing her visits to Mrs. Leslie. Not that she felt them wrong, but, besides the shame natural to her position, she liked to feel that she was gratifying what she deemed her husband's prejudice; she experienced the satisfaction which accrues from a penance self-imposed.

When, however, he did not return, she relapsed into hurt silence – would not speak of him to Jenny, nor listen when Bender dropped in on one of his periodical visits with news from the camp. Lastly came cold resentment, anger at the grass-widowhood that was being thrust upon her, a feeling that was the more unbearable because she secretly admired his boldness in cutting the knot of their difficulties. She recognized the wisdom of the act. Had he not taken the initiative, the process of disenchantment would have continued till she herself might have taken the first step to end their misery. But the knowledge did not mitigate the sting. He had forced the separation! The thought rankled and grew more bitter day by day.

This morning she was in a particularly dangerous mood. Conscious of her original good intention, knowing that her fault had been the product of conditions as much as her own weakness, she was ripe for revolt against the entire scheme of things that had forced the lot of crabbed age upon her flushed youth, compelling her to sit by a lonely fire. And as she sat and brooded a clash of bells broke up her meditations; the door opened, letting in a bitter blast that froze the warm interior air into chilly fog, from the centre of which Mrs. Leslie emerged, heavily furred and voluble as ever.

"Anchorite!" she screamed. "Or is it anchoress? Three, four – no, six visits you owe me. Explain! Bad weather? Hum!" She tilted her pretty nose. "If I couldn't fib more artistically, Helen, I'd adhere to the painful truth. You were afraid – of hubby."

"I – I wasn't!"

Mrs. Leslie surveyed the girl's flushed anger with sarcastic pity. "Tut! tut! More fibs. Huddled over that stove, you make the loveliest study of despair. You have been crying, too."

"I – I haven't!" The lines of Huddled Despair flowed into Radiant Anger.

"Your eyes are red?"

"Well, if they are – if I did – it was through anger."

Mrs. Leslie accepted the modified admission. "That's right, my dear. He – no man is worth the compliment of regretful tears. They are all foolish, selfish, fickle as children. They cry for love like a child for the moon, throw it away when the toy wearies, howl if another tries to pick it up. They only value the unattainable. Bah!"

The ejaculation was comical in its feigned disgust, but just then Helen had ears only for the serious or sympathetic – preferably the latter. "Tell me, Elinor," she asked, "do you really think I have deserved this at his hands?"

"No." For once in her life Mrs. Leslie dealt in undiluted truth – because, perhaps, lying would not serve her purpose. "One could understand his pique – " With incredible hardihood, considering the part she herself had played, she commented: "Really, my dear, you ought not to have done it. But he has been altogether too severe – unforgiving. I don't see how you stand it. I should freeze these cold nights without some one to warm my feet on."

"To think" – speech was such a relief after months of bitter silence, and Helen never even noticed the other's funny climax – "to think that this should be dealt to me by a man of whose very existence I was unconscious a short two years ago! Is he a god to exercise such power – to command me to eat the bread-and-water of affliction during his pleasure? Why, I was twenty-two before I ever saw him! Doesn't it seem ridiculous – silly as though one pebble on a beach were to establish limits for another? They roll and rub where and with whom they list, and why shouldn't I?" Ignoring the fact that monogamy was her sex's greatest achievement, and that the first woman who bartered love for protection, cookery for maintenance, had not driven such a bad bargain, she finished: "Wouldn't it be funny if pebbles were condemned to rub and roll in definite pairs till winds and waves had buried one or other affinity deep in the sands. Why – "

"In other words," Mrs. Leslie interrupted, "why should vertical distances count for more than horizontal – death for more than distance – seven feet under the sod carry advantages and opportunities that do not go with seventy miles above? There isn't any reason. It is just so."

"Well, I won't stand it!" Rebellion inhered in Helen's stamp. "I won't! I won't! I won't!"

Mrs. Leslie shrugged her hopelessness. "Thousands of women have to. What can you do, my dear?"

"Do?" the girl answered, hotly. "I have already done it – applied for and secured my old school. Unfortunately, I must remain here till the spring term opens."

Now to accuse Mrs. Leslie of trailing a definite purpose were to reveal lamentable ignorance of her ruling traits. She was no fell adventuress of romance, stealthy of plot, remorseless in pursuit. Persistence was foreign to her light character. Unstable as water, she veered like a shuttlecock under the breath of emotion, yet, withal, grasped speedily at such straws as the winds of opportunity brought within reach. If she lacked force to plot Carter's capture, or to revenge herself for his slight through Helen, she was willing enough now that the wind served.