The White Desert

C >> Courtney Ryley Cooper >> The White Desert

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"You're not ill?"

"Only a headache--and with me, bed is always the best place for that.
I suppose you'll go to Denver in the morning for new saws?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll wait until you return before I make up my mind. Good-by."
She bent forward to be kissed, and Barry obeyed the command of her lips
with less of alacrity than ever before. Nor could he tell the reason.
Five minutes more and he was back at the mill, giving what aid he could
with his uninjured arm.

Night, and he traveled with Ba'tiste to his cabin, only to fret
nervously about the place and at last to strike out once more, on foot,
for the lumber camp. He was worried, nervous; in a vague way he
realized that he had been curt, almost brusque, with a woman for whom
he felt every possible gratitude and consideration. Nor had he
inquired about her when work had ended for the day. Had the excuse of
a headache been made only to cover feelings that had been deeply
injured? Or had it meant a blind to veil real, serious illness? For
three years, Barry Houston had known Agnes Jierdon in day-to-day
association. But never had he remembered her in exactly the light that
he had seen her to-day. There had been a strangeness about her, a
sharpness that he could not understand.

He stopped just at the entrance to the mill clearing and looked toward
the cottage. It was darkened. Barry felt that without at least the
beckoning of a light to denote the wakefulness of the cook, he could
not in propriety go there, even for an inquiry regarding the condition
of the woman whom he felt that some day he would marry. Aimlessly he
wandered about, staring in the moonlight at the piled-up remains of his
mill, then at last he seated himself on a stack of lumber, to rest a
moment before the return journey to Ba'tiste's cabin. But suddenly he
tensed. A low whistle had come from the edge of the woods, a hundred
yards away, and Barry listened attentively for its repetition, but it
did not come. Fifteen minutes he waited, then rose, the better to
watch two figures that had appeared for just a moment silhouetted in
the moonlight at the bald top of a small hill. A man and a woman were
walking close together,--the woman, it seemed, with her head against
the man's shoulder; the man evidently with his arm about her.

There was no time for identities. A second more and they had faded
into the shadows. Barry rose and started toward the darkened cottage,
only to turn again into the road.

"Foolishness!" he chided himself as he plodded along. "She doesn't
know any one but Thayer--and what if she does? It's none of my
business. She's the one who has the claim on me; I have none on her!"

And with this decision he walked on. A mile--two. Then a figure came
out of the woods just ahead of him, cut across the road and detoured
into the scraggly hills on the other side, without noticing the
approaching Houston in the shadows. But Barry had been more fortunate.
The moonlight had shown full on the man's lean face and gangling form;
it was undoubtedly Fred Thayer. He was still in the neighborhood, then.

Had he been the man in the woods,--the one who had stood silhouetted on
the hill top? Barry could only guess. Again he chided himself for his
inquisitiveness and walked on. Almost to Ba'tiste's cabin he went; at
last to turn from the road at the sound of hoofbeats, then to stare as
Medaine Robinette, on horseback, passed him at a trot, headed toward
her home, the shadowy Lost Wing, on his calico pony, straggling along
in the rear. The next morning he went to Denver, still wondering, as
he sought to make himself comfortable on the old red plush seats,
wondering whether the girl he had seen in the forest with the man he
now felt sure was Fred Thayer had been Agnes Jierdon or Medaine
Robinette, whom, in spite of her coldness to him, in spite of her
evident distaste and revulsion that was so apparent in their meetings,
had awakened within him a thing he had believed, in the drabness of his
gray, harassed life, could never exist,--the thrill and the yearnings
of love.

It was a question which haunted him during the days in which he cut
into his bank account with the purchase of the bare necessities of a
sawmill. It was a question which followed him back to Tabernacle,
thence across country to camp. But it was one that was not to be
answered. Things had happened again.

Ba'tiste was not at the mill, where new foundations had appeared in
Houston's absence. A workman pointed vaguely upward, and Barry hurried
on toward the lake, clambering up the hill nearest the clearing, that
he might take the higher and shorter road.

He found no Ba'tiste but there was something else which held Houston's
interest for a moment and which stopped him, staring wonderingly into
the distance. A new skidway had made its appearance on the side of the
jutting mountain nearest the dam. Logs were tumbling downward in slow,
but steady succession, to disappear, then to show themselves, bobbing
jerkily outward toward the center of the lake. That skidway had not
been there before. Certainly, work at the mill had not progressed to
such an extent that Ba'tiste could afford to start cutting timber
already. Houston turned back toward the lower camp road, wondering
vaguely what it all could mean, striving to figure why Ba'tiste should
have turned to logging operations instead of continuing to stress every
workman's ability on the rebuilding of the burned structure. A mile he
went--two--then halted.

A thunderous voice was booming belligerently from the distance:

"You lie--un'stan'? Ba'teese say you lie--if you no like eet,
jus'--what-you-say--climb up me! Un'stan'? Climb up me!"

Houston broke into a run, racing along the flume with constantly
increasing speed as he heard outburst after outburst from the giant
trapper, interjected by the lesser sounds of argumentative voices in
reply. Faintly he heard a woman's voice, then Ba'tiste's in sudden
command:

"Go on--you no belong here. Ba'tiste, he handle this. Go 'long!"

Faster than ever went Barry Houston, at last to make the turn of the
road as it followed the flume, and to stop, breathless, just in time to
escape colliding with the broad back of the gigantic Canadian, squared
as he was, half across the road. Facing him were five men with shovels
and hammers, workmen of the Blackburn camp, interrupted evidently in
the building of some sort of contraption which led away into the woods.
Houston looked more closely, then gasped. It was another flume; they
were making a connection with his own; already water had been diverted
from the main flume and was flowing down the newly boarded conduit
which led to the Blackburn mill. A lunge and he had taken his place
beside Renaud.

"What's this mean?" he demanded angrily, to hear his words echoed by
the booming voice of his big companion:

"Ah, _oui_! Yes--what this mean? Huh?"

The foreman looked up caustically.

"I've told you about ten times," he answered, addressing himself to
Ba'tiste. "We're building a connection on our flume."

"Our flume?" Houston gasped the words. "Where do you get that 'our'
idea? I own this flume and this lake and this flume site--"

"If your name's Houston, I guess you do," came the answer. "But if you
can read and write, you ought to know that while you may own it, you
don't use it. That's our privilege from now on, in cold black and
white. As far as the law is concerned, this is our flume, and our
water, and our lake, and our woods back there. And we're going to use
all of 'em, as much as we please--and it's your business to stay out of
our way!"

CHAPTER XI

The statement took Houston off his feet for a moment; but recovery came
just as quickly, a recoil with the red splotches of anger blazing
before his eyes, the surge of hot blood sweeping through his veins, the
heat of conflict in his brain. His good hand clenched. A leap and he
had struck the foreman on the point of the chin, sending him reeling
backward, while the other men rushed to his assistance.

"That's my answer to you!" shouted Houston. "This is my flume and--"

"Run tell Thayer!" shouted the foreman, and then with recovering
strength, he turned for a cant hook. But Ba'tiste seized it first, and
with a great wrench, threw it far out of the way. Then, like some
great, human trip hammer, he swung into action, spinning Houston out of
the way as he went forward, his big fists churning, his voice bellowing
his call of battle:

"Climb up me! Climb up me!"

The foreman stooped for a club,--and rose just in time to be lifted
even higher, at the point of Ba'tiste's right fist then to drop in a
lump. Then they were all about him, seeking for an opening, fists
pounding, heavy shoes kicking at shins, while in the rear, Houston,
scrambling around with his one arm, almost happy with the enthusiasm of
battle, swung hard and often at every opportunity, then swerved and
covered until he could bring his fist into action again.

The fight grew more intense with a last spurt, then died out, as
Ba'tiste, seizing the smallest of the men, lifted him bodily and
swinging him much after the fashion of a sack of meal, literally used
him as a battering ram against the rest of the attacking forces. For a
last time, Houston hit a skirmisher and was hit in return. Then
Ba'tiste threw his human weapon from him, straight into the mass of men
whom he had driven back for a second, tumbling them all in a
scrambling, writhing heap at the edge of the flume.

"Climb up me!" he bellowed, as they struggled to their feet. "Ah,
_oui_?" And the big arms moved threateningly. "Climb up me!"

But the invitation was not accepted. Bloody, eyes discolored, mouth
and nose steadily swelling, the foreman moved away with his battered
crew, finally to disappear in the forest. Ba'tiste reached for the
cant hook, and balancing it lightly in one hand, sought a resting place
on the edge of the flume. Houston sat beside him.

"What on earth can it all mean?" he asked, after a moment of thought.

"They go back--get more men. Mebbe they think they whip us, _oui_?
Yes? Ba'teese use this, nex' time." He balanced the cant hook,
examining it carefully as though for flaws which might cause it to
break in contact with a human target. Barry went on:

"I was talking about the flume. You heard what that fellow said--that
they had the woods, the lake and the flume to use as they pleased?
How--"

"Mebbe they think they jus' take it."

"Which they can't. I'm going back to the camp and get more men."

"No." Ba'tiste grinned. "We got enough--you an' Ba'teese. I catch
'em with this. You take that club. If they get 'round me, you,
what-you-say, pickle 'em off."

But the expected attack did not come. An hour they waited, and a hour
after that. Still no crowd of burly men came surging toward them from
the Blackburn camp, still no attempt was made to wrest from their
possession the waterway which they had taken over as their rightful
property.

Houston studied the flume.

"We'll have to get some men up here and rip out this connection," came
at last. "They've broken off our end entirely."

"Ah, _oui_! But we will stay here. By'm'by, Medaine come. We will
send her for men."

"Medaine? That was she I heard talking?"

"_Oui_. She had come to ask me if she should bring me food. She was
riding. Ba'teese sen' her away. But she say she come back to see if
Ba'teese is all right."

Houston shook his head.

"That's good. But I'm afraid that you won't find her doing anything to
help me out."

"She will help Ba'teese," came simply from the big man, as the
iron-bound cant hook was examined for the fiftieth time. "Why they no
come, huh?"

"Search me. Do you suppose they've given it up? It's a bluff on their
part, you know, Ba'tiste. They haven't any legal right to this land or
flume or anything else; they just figured that my mill was burned and
that I wouldn't be in a position to fight them. So they decided to
take over the flume and try to force us into letting them have it."

"Here comes somebody!" Ba'tiste's grip tightened about the cant hook
and he rose, squaring himself. Houston seized the club and stood
waiting a few feet in the rear, in readiness for any one who might
evade the bulwark of blows which Ba'tiste evidently intended to set up.
Far in the woods showed the shadowy forms of three men, approaching
steadily and apparently without any desire for battle. Ba'tiste turned
sharply. "Your eye, keep heem open. Eet may be a blind."

But Houston searched the woods in vain. There were no supporters
following the three men, no deploying groups seeking to flank them. A
moment more, and Ba'tiste, with a sudden exclamation, allowed his cant
hook to drop to the ground.

"Wade!"

"Who?" Houston came closer.

"Eet is Thayer and Wade, the sheriff from Montview, and his deputy.
Peuff! Have he fool heem too?"

Closer they came, and the sheriff waved a hand in friendly greeting.
Ba'tiste returned the gesture. Thayer, scowling, black-faced, dropped
slightly to the rear, allowing the two officials to take the lead--and
evidently do the talking. The sheriff grinned as he noticed the cant
hook on the ground. Then he looked up at Ba'tiste Renaud.

"What's been going on here?"

"This man," Ba'tiste nodded grudgingly toward the angular form of Fred
Thayer, "heem a what-you-say a big bomb. This my frien', M'sieu
Houston. He own this flume. This Thayer's men, they try to jump it."

"From the looks of them," chuckled the sheriff, "you jumped them.
They've got a young hospital over at camp. But seriously, Ba'tiste, I
think you're on the wrong track. Thayer and Blackburn have a perfect
right to this flume and to the use of the lake and what stumpage they
want from the Houston woods."

"A right?" Barry went forward. "What right? I haven't given them--"

"You're the owner of the land, aren't you?"

"Yes, in a way. It was left to me conditionally."

"You can let it out and sell the stumpage if you want to?"

"Of course."

"Then, what are you kicking about?"

"I--simply on account of the fact that these men have no right to be on
the land, or to use it in any way. I haven't given them permission."

"That's funny," the sheriff scratched his head; "they've just proved in
court that you have."

"In court? I--?"

"Yeh. I've got an injunction in my pocket to prevent you from
interfering with them. Judge Bardley gave it in Montview about an hour
ago, and we came over by automobile."

"But why?"

"Why?" the sheriff stared at him. "When you give a man a lease, you
have to live up to it in this country."

"But I've given no one--"

"Oh, show it to him, sheriff." Thayer came angrily forward. "No use
to let him stand there and lie."

"That's what I want to see!" Houston squared himself grimly. "If
you've got a lease, or anything else, I want to look at it."

"You know your own writing, don't you?" The sheriff was fishing in his
pockets.

"Of course."

"You'd admit it if you saw it?"

"I'm not trying to hide anything. But I know that I've not given any
lease, and I've not sold any stumpage and--"

"Then, what's this?" The sheriff had pulled two legal documents from
his pocket, and unfolding them, had shown Houston the bottom of each.
Barry's eyes opened wide.

"That's--that's my signature," came at last.

"This one's the same, isn't it?" The second paper was shoved forward.

"Yes."

"Then I don't see what you're kicking about. Do you know any one named
Jenkins, who is a notary public?"

"He works in my office in Boston."

"That's his writing, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"And his seal."

"I suppose so." Bewildered, Houston was looking at the papers with
glazed eyes. "It looks like it."

"Then," and the sheriff's voice went brusque, "what right have you to
try to run these men off of property for which you've given them a
bona-fide lease, and to which you've just admitted your signature as
genuine?"

"I've--I've given no lease. I--"

"Then look 'em over. If that isn't a lease to the lake and flume and
flume site, and if the second one isn't a contract for stumpage at a
dollar and a half a thousand feet,--well, then, I can't read."

"But I'm telling you that I didn't give it to them." Houston had
reached for the papers with a trembling hand. "There's a fraud about
it somewhere!"

"I don't see where there can be any fraud when you admit your
signature, and there's a notary's seal attached."

"But there is! I can't tell you why--but--"

"Statements like that don't count in law. There are the papers and
they're duly signed and you've admitted your signature. If there's any
fraud about it, you've got the right to prove it. But in the
meanwhile, the court's injunction stands. You've leased this land to
these men, and you can't interfere with them. Understand?"

"All right." Houston moved hazily back, away from the flume site.
Ba'tiste stood staring glumly, wondering, at the papers which had been
returned to the sheriff. "But I know this, that it's a
fakery--somehow--and I'll prove it. I have absolutely no memory of
ever signing any such papers as that, or of even talking to any one
about selling stumpage at a figure that you should know is ridiculous.
Why, you can't even buy the worst kind of timber from the government at
that price! I don't remember--"

"Didn't I tell you?" Thayer had turned to the sheriff. "There he goes
pulling that loss of memory stunt again. That's one of his best little
bets," he added sneering, "to lose his memory."

"I've never lost it yet!"

"No--then you can forget things awfully easy. Such as coming out here
and pretending not to know who you were. Guess you forgot your
identity for a minute, didn't you? Just like you forgot signing this
lease and stumpage contract! Yeh, you're good at that--losing your
memory. You never remember anything that happens. You can't even
remember the night you murdered your own cousin, can you?"

"That's a--"

"See, sheriff? His memory's bad." All the malice and hate of pent-up
enmity was in Fred Thayer's voice now. One gnarled hand went forward
in accusation. "He can't even remember how he killed his own cousin.
But if he can't, I can. Ask him about the time when he slipped that
mallet in his pocket at a prize fight and then went on out with his
cousin. Ask him what became of Tom Langdon after they left that prize
fight. He won't be able to tell you, of course. He loses his memory;
all he will be able to remember is that his father spent a lot of money
and hired some good lawyers and got him out of it. He won't be able to
tell you a thing about how his own cousin was found with his skull
crushed in, and the bloody wooden mallet lying beside him--the mallet
that this fellow had stolen the night before at a prize fight! He
won't--"

White-hot with anger, Barry Houston lurched forward, to find himself
caught in the arms of the sheriff and thrown back. He whirled,--and
stopped, looking with glazed, deadened eyes into the blanched,
horrified features of a girl who evidently had heard the accusation, a
girl who stood poised in revulsion a moment before she turned, and,
almost running, hurried to mount her horse and ride away. And the
strength of anger left the muscles of Barry Houston. The red flame of
indignation turned to a sodden, dead thing. He could only realize that
Medaine Robinette now knew the story. That Medaine Robinette had heard
him accused without a single statement given in his own behalf; that
Medaine, the girl of his smoke-wreathed dreams, now fully and
thoroughly believed him--a murderer!

CHAPTER XII

Dully Houston turned back to the sheriff and to the goggle-eyed
Ba'tiste, trying to fathom it all. Weakly he motioned toward Thayer,
and his words, when they came, were hollow and expressionless:

"That's a lie, Sheriff. I'll admit that I have been accused of murder.
I was acquitted. You say that nothing counts but the court action--and
that's all I have to say in my behalf. The jury found me not guilty.
In regard--to this, I'll obey the court order until I can prove to the
judge's satisfaction that this whole thing is a fraud and a fake. In
the meanwhile--" he turned anxiously, almost piteously, "do you care to
go with me, Ba'tiste?"

Heavily, silently, the French-Canadian joined him, and together they
walked down the narrow road to the camp. Neither spoke for a long
time. Ba'tiste walked with his head deep between his shoulders, and
Houston knew that memories were heavy upon him, memories of his
Julienne and the day that he came home to find, instead of a waiting
wife, only a mound beneath the sighing pines and a stalwart cross above
it. As for Houston, his own life had gone gray with the sudden
recurrence of the past. He lived again the first days of it all, when
life had been one constant repetition of questions, then solitude,
questions and solitude, as the homicide squad brought him up from his
cell to inquire about some new angle that they had come upon, to
question him regarding his actions on the night of the death of Tom
Langdon, then to send him back to "think it over" in the hope that the
constant tangle of questions might cause him to change his story and
give them an opening wedge through which they could force him to a
confession. He lived again the black hours in the dingy courtroom,
with its shadows and soot spots brushing against the window, the twelve
blank-faced men in the jury box, and the witnesses, one after another,
who went to the box in an effort to swear his life away. He went again
through the agony of the new freedom--the freedom of a man imprisoned
by stronger things than mere bars and cells of steel--when first he had
gone into the world to strive to fight back to the position he had
occupied before the pall of accusation had descended upon him, and to
fight seemingly in vain. Friends had vanished, a father had gone to
his grave, believing almost to the last that it had been his money and
the astuteness of his lawyers that had obtained freedom for a guilty
son, certainly not a self-evidence of innocence that had caused the
twelve men to report back to the judge that they had been unable to
force their convictions "beyond the shadow of a doubt." A nightmare
had it been and a nightmare it was again, as drawn-featured,
stoop-shouldered, suddenly old and haggard, Barry Houston walked down
the logging road beside a man whose mind also had been recalled to
thoughts of murder. A sudden fear went over the younger man; he
wondered whether this great being who walked at his side had believed,
and at last in desperation, he faced him.

"Well, Ba'tiste," came in strained tones, "I might as well hear it now
as at any other time. They've about got me whipped, anyway, so you'll
only be leaving a sinking ship."

"What you mean?" The French-Canadian stopped.

"Just the plain facts. I'm about at the end of my rope; my mill's all
but gone, my flume is in the hands of some one else, my lake is leased,
and Thayer can make as many inroads on my timber as he cares to, as
long as he appeases the court by paying me the magnificent sum of a
dollar and a half a thousand for it. So, you see, there isn't much
left for me."

"What you do?"

"That depends entirely on you--and what effect that accusation made.
If you're with me, I fight. If not--well frankly--I don't know."

"'Member the mill, when he burn down?"

"Yes."

"You no believe Ba'teese did heem. _Oui_, yes? Well, now I no believe
either!"

"Honestly, Ba'tiste?" Houston had gripped the other man's arm. "You
don't believe it? You don't--"

"Ba'teese believe M'sieu Houston. You look like my Pierre. My Pierre,
he could do no wrong. Ba'teese satisfy."

It sent a new flow of blood through the veins of Barry Houston,--that
simple, quiet statement of the old trapper. He felt again a surge of
the fighting instinct, the desire to keep on and on, to struggle until
the end, and to accept nothing except the bitterest, most absolute
defeat. He quickened his pace, the French-Canadian falling in with
him. His voice bore a vibrant tone, almost of excitement:

"I'm going back to Boston to-night. I'm going to find out about this.
I can get a machine at Tabernacle to take me over the range; it may
save me time in catching a train at Denver. There's some fraud,
Ba'tiste. I know it.--and I'll prove it if I can get back to Boston.
We'll stop by the cottage down here and see Miss Jierdon; then I'm
gone!"

"She no there. She, what-you-say, smash up 'quaintance with Medaine.
She ask to go there and stay day or two."

"Then she'll straighten things out, Ba'tiste. I'm glad of it. She
knows the truth about this whole thing--every step of the way. Will
you tell her?"

"_Oui_. Ba'teese tell her--about the flume and M'sieu Thayer, what he
say. But Ba'teese--"

"What?"

The trapper was silent a moment. At last:

"You like her, eh?"

"Medaine?"

"No--the other."

"A great deal, Ba'teese. She has meant everything to me; she was my
one friend when I was in trouble. She even went on the stand and
testified for me. What were you going to say?"

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