Thrice Armed

"Oh, let up! – that's the third," he said. "How can I sell trees on my samples when the boys have eaten them?"

The man looked at him stolidly. "It's high-grade fruit," he said. "How'd you start those plum-trees bearing? – they're quite a long while showing a flower or two. Cut them hard when the frost lets up in spring?"

"Quite hard!" said Barbison, for one must make a venture now and then; and none of his companions showed any astonishment, though fruit is freely raised in that country, and the trees that grow the kind with stones in it resent the use of the pruning knife, as everybody who has much to do with them knows.

"Juss so!" said the rancher. "Boys, you cut them – hard. Now, those apples. S'pose you had good parent stocks, could you bud on to them – and how'd you do it? Guess that would suit some sorts better than whip-grafting."

One might have fancied that Barbison was for a moment a trifle disconcerted, but he smiled airily. "Just how you'd bud on anything else. I'd wax the thread."

"You hear him, boys?" said the rancher. "What you want to do is to wax your thread."

They were very quiet, but perhaps not unusually so, for the clearers of those forests are, except on occasion, generally silent men. Barbison looked at them reflectively.

"Raising the fruit's only half the trouble, anyway," he said. "The big question everywhere is how to put it on the market; and if I can be of any use in that direction, you have only to command me. Seems to me the Government's tired of making roads."

"What's the matter with the steamboat?" asked somebody. "Never had no trouble since we hauled our stuff down to the Shasta."

Barbison's smile was sympathetic now. "I guess you're not going to haul your stuff down to her very much longer. She's played out, and run by little, struggling men who can't get credit for the patching up that ought to be done on her, and who'll have nothing to meet claims with if she breaks down and spoils your freight some day. That's a sure thing. From what I heard in Vancouver, the bottom's just ready to drop out of the concern. You want to think of that. Creditors have a lien on freight, too, when a boat's held up for debt."

"Then if I sent down my potatoes or fat steers in her, somebody could seize them for the money the company owed?" asked another rancher.

"That's the law," said Barbison, and there was nothing in his companions' manner to suggest that they did not in the least believe him. "Now, there's some talk about another firm putting a smart new boat on. Plenty money behind that crowd, and when she comes round it might suit you considerably better to make a deal with them."

"Who's running the thing?"

"Man called Merril. Enterprising man. When he takes hold he makes things hum. If it were necessary to start a trade, he'd 'most carry your stuff for nothing."

"Juss so!" said the big rancher. "Kind of philanthropist. I've heard of him."

The man's face was vacantly expressionless, but Barbison, who glanced at him sharply, fancied that he had said enough on the subject. He had visited most of the settlements that could be reached from the coast, and had never neglected an opportunity for dropping a word about the Shasta and the new boat.

"Where's that stump-grubber fellow from?" he asked.

"Don't quite know," said one of the others. "Strikes me as an Ontario Scotchman. But the machine's an American notion; never saw one quite like it before."

The man in question stood up just then. He was big and gaunt and pale, but he wore ordinary city clothes, and when he and the others had inserted the screw-jack contrivance on a strip of thick planking under the sawn-off tree, he turned to the assembly.

"There are quite a few stump-pullers, and I've struck benighted men who used the chain-tackle tripod," he said. "I'm not saying it's inefficient, for when you put sufficient pressure upon the winch and it will not pull the stump up, it will pull the tripod down upon your head. This one pulls up all the time, and something has got to come if you work hard enough." Then he raised his hand to his two companions. "You look fit and strong. Show them you can heave."

They drew the sliding bar up to the head of the thing, and pulled it toward them several times, while their faces grew suffused and the veins rose gorged on their foreheads, for men in that country are proud of their vigor. There was a slow cracking and tearing of roots, but the great stump still stood immovable. Then the Shasta's engineer inquired what they fed upon, and their comrades flung them sardonic encouragement, while as they gasped and strained their muscles the screw slid slowly, turn by turn, through its socket. At last there was a sharp rending and a little murmur of applause as the big stump tilted and fell over on its side. Then the big rancher stood up on the veranda.

"It's smart work, but Dave and Charley are two of the smartest men round this settlement, and we want to test the thing in every way," he said. "There's another stump yonder, and I guess Mr. Fleming will put up a bottle of whisky for any three men who will knock five minutes off the record. We'll put Mr. Barbison and Jasper in to show what men who don't grub stumps can do."

There was a little laughter, for if Jasper, who slowly took off his jacket, was not accustomed to stump-grubbing, he was at least a man of splendid physique, and Barbison felt uneasy when he laid a great hand on his shoulder.

"Come right along," he said; "we've got to get that whisky."

Barbison's protests were not listened to, and, seeing no help for it, he also flung off his jacket, when the big rancher firmly led him down the stairway. Then they gave him a shovel, and his two companions saw that he used it while they plied the grub-hoe. There are, however, probably very few men reared in the city who could work with the tireless axemen of the Pacific Slope, and in ten minutes Barbison was visibly distressed. The perspiration dripped from his flushed face, and he gasped for breath, while his comrades inquired with ironical solicitude whether he were getting sleepy. When he had excavated enough to satisfy them, they made him crawl into the hole and claw out soil from among the roots with shortened shovel, most of the contents of which fell all over him. They kept him at it mercilessly for over half an hour, and when he crept out his hands were raw and he was aching in every limb. Even then there was no respite, for the rest insisted on his participating in their labors at the lever, and contrived to allow him to do considerably more than his share. At last, however, the great stump rose and tilted, and he was escorted back to the hotel amidst acclamation.

"Well," said the big rancher, "if you can work like that, why in the name of thunder do you want to be a fruit-tree peddler? It's quite hard to believe you are one. You don't look like it, anyway."

Barbison certainly did not, for he had burst a seam of one of his garments during his efforts, while the red soil that had smeared them freely was on his dripping face and in his ruffled hair. He flung a swift glance at the man as he realized that his observation was apposite. There was, however, nothing suspicious in the rancher's attitude, and the others laughed in the soft fashion peculiar to the bushman.

"Anyway, he deserves the whisky," said one of them.

It was duly brought, and, though those ranchers are for the most part abstemious men, other bottles made their appearance in turn, and Barbison braced himself for an effort to maintain his credit as one of The Boys. He had not found this very difficult in the city saloons, but the bushman who lives with Spartan simplicity and toils amidst the life-giving fragrance of the pines twelve hours every day usually possesses a nerve and constitution that will withstand almost anything. Besides, there was only one Barbison and a good many of them. It was therefore not altogether astonishing that by and by the drummer's observations grew a trifle incoherent, until at last his companions grinned at one another when with a visible effort he raised himself shakily to his feet.

"Something wrong with that whisky, boys; I can't quite talk the way I want. Guess I'll go to sleep," he said. "Anyway, you stand by Merril. He'll carry your freight for nothing, and run the Shasta men to – "

After that he said nothing further, but lowered himself carefully into his chair, and collapsed with his arms flung out before him across the table. Then the rest proceeded to hold a court-martial over him.

"Seems to me he knows a blame sight more about Mr. Merril and the Shasta than he does about fruit-trees," said the big rancher. "Boys, you cut those plums – hard – and always put wax on the string. Oh, yes, you're innocent bushmen being played for suckers by a smart city man! Guess one would wonder when they took the long clothes off him. If that last advice he gave you wasn't quite enough, I see a book in his pocket with a silver-headed pencil strapped to it."

One of them promptly took it out, and flicking over the pages, read, "'Six fathoms right up to the old sawmill wharf. Worth while to tow the schooner in and leave her to load. Nothing to be had at Trevor. Siwash deck passengers at Tyler's. Sprotson men have odds and ends, but seem stuck on the Shasta.'"

He closed the book with a sharp snap, and grinned at the rest. "Well," he said reflectively, "that's 'bout enough for me. I'm stuck on the Shasta, too. Seems to me the men who run her mean to do the straight thing by us."

The rest concurred with this, and several of them instanced cases where carriers had in due time put the screw upon producers who had been supinely content to pocket a big rebate until there was no longer any competition. The rancher with the notebook smiled at them.

"Then we've no use round here for a man like Mr. Barbison," he said. "The one question is – what we're going to do with him before we start him back to the blame philanthropist who sent him?"

They made ingenious suggestions, which varied from painting him with red-lead to teaching him to swim; but it was the one offered by Fleming of the Shasta that most pleased them.

"What he wants is exercise, and if you will bring him off to the steamer I'll see he gets it," he said. "I've quite a few tons of coal to trim, and there's a pile of old grease he could clean out of her bilges."

"The blame insect will offer to pay his passage when he comes round," said one of the company.

"That is easily fixed," said another, who had been rummaging Barbison's pockets. "See this wallet, Jake? Well, you're going in to the railroad, and you'll express it to Mr. Merril, care of the fruit agency, with a line to say the gentleman was sick and left it behind him. That strike you all as workable? Then all we have to do is to decorate him."

They did it as well as they were able, and four of them afterward carried him to a Siwash canoe. They had some difficulty in doing it, and fell down once or twice on the way; but just before the Shasta went to sea Barbison was put aboard her, with his face rouged with red-lead and a garland of cedar sprays about his head. It was almost dark then. Wheelock was on his bridge, the deck-hands were busy stowing the anchor, and as the two ranchers who brought the drummer laid him beneath a boat where he tranquilly resumed his sleep, some little time had passed before anybody concerned himself about him. Then a grinning seaman brought Jimmy down from his bridge, and held up a lantern while he gazed in blank astonishment at his prostrate passenger.

"Tell Mr. Fleming I want him. He was ashore," he said.

The engineer came, and smiled when Jimmy turned to him.

"If you can tell me what the meaning of this is, I should be obliged," he said.

"Well," said Fleming reflectively, "there are maybe two or three. For one thing, I'm thinking it's a hint that the boys ashore are standing by you. There's a note they sent off in your room."

Jimmy told the seaman to bring it, and, while the latter turned the light upon the strip of paper, read: "Hasn't a dollar on him, and belongs to a man called Merril, who's on your trail. We recommend a course of shoveling coal. All you have to do is to play a straight game with the boys, and they'll stand behind you all the time."

Then he turned to Fleming. "I fancy you could give me an explanation, and I'd like to have it."

Fleming told him as much as it appeared desirable that he should know, and Jimmy smiled grimly.

"Wake him up," he said. "There's a bucket yonder."

The seaman made a vigorous use of it, and Barbison raised himself on one elbow, drenched and spluttering.

"Throw any more water, and I'll kill somebody! I'm dangerous when I'm mad," he said.

"Get up!" said Jimmy sharply. "What are you doing here?"

Barbison, who endeavored unsuccessfully to get up, did not seem to know, and apparently abandoned the attempt to think it out. His scattered senses, however, came back to him after the application of more cold water.

"How much you want – take me to Victoria?" he gasped.

"One hundred dollars," said Jimmy dryly.

The passenger expostulated in a half-coherent fashion, and then, apparently realizing that it was useless, fumbled for his wallet. He clenched his fist when he could not find it.

"Stole it – and my tin case," he said. "Ate up all my samples – must have ate the case, too, the – hungry hogs."

"Then you'll have to work your passage;" and Jimmy turned to Fleming. "You'll take care he earns it. Don't quite kill the man."

Barbison, who seemed to understand this, at last got on his feet and unloosed a flood of invective which had no effect on any of his listeners. Several deck-hands were, however, needed before he was conveyed into the stokehold and left in front of a bunker with a shovel in his hand. He assured Fleming that nothing would induce him to work, and the engineer only grinned, because it was a long way to Victoria, and the Shasta had several calls to make. Barbison seemed to fancy that his firmness had proved sufficient, and, coiling himself up amidst the coal, once more went to sleep. He awakened hungry, and Fleming smiled again when he demanded food.

"If you'll lift those floor-plates you'll see the spaces between her frames choked with coal-grit and grease," he said. "It's possible you'll get some breakfast when you've scraped them clean. Then it will depend on how much coal you trim out of that bunker whether you get any dinner."

Barbison looked hard at the man, and saw he meant what he said. Then he pulled up a floor-plate and looked at the filthy mass of coagulated grease that had drained from the engine-room.

"And how'm I to get it out?" he asked.

"Quite easy," said Fleming dryly. "What's the matter with your hands?"

Then he went away and left Barbison to his task. It was a particularly repulsive one, but he accomplished it, and spent most of the next few days trimming coal, waiting on the fireman, and cleaning out an empty coal-bunker on his hands and knees. It is probable that the sight of Victoria filled him with ineffable relief, and it certainly was not Fleming's fault if this were not the case. As they steamed into the harbor Jimmy sent for him.

"I think you have earned your passage, and we're straight," he said. "You can go ashore when we get in."

Barbison glanced down at his dilapidated attire. "Can I go ashore this way? I'll ask you a favor. Let me stay until it's dark."

Jimmy laughed. "Well," he said, "as I scarcely think Mr. Merril will send you back again, you may."

CHAPTER XVIII

ELEANOR SPEAKS HER MIND

The afternoon was hot and drowsily still when Merril drove his daughter down the dusty road which runs from New Westminster through the Fraser meadows. The team was a fast one, and the man, who had an appointment to keep in Vancouver, did not spare them. There were also reasons why he found rapid motion and the attention the mettlesome horses required a welcome distraction, for just then he was troubled with a certain sense of irritation which was unusual with him.

Merril was not a hot-tempered man; in fact, he owed his commercial success largely to the dispassionate coolness which rarely permitted his feelings to influence his actions, and it was characteristic of him that while he had a finger in a good many schemes the man himself never figured prominently in connection with any of them. His influence was felt, but he was in one sense rather an abstract force than a dominant personality. It was said of him that he always worked underground, and he certainly never made political speeches or favored the newspapers with his views; while, when the results of his unostentatious efforts became apparent in disaster to somebody, as they usually did, it generally happened that other men incurred the odium. There are, of course, financiers whose enterprises benefit the whole community, since they create new corn-fields and open mines and mills, but Merril's genius was rather of the destructive order, and it was not to anybody's advantage that he knew how to choose his time and instruments well. In person, he was little, somewhat portly, and very neatly dressed, a man who had never been known to lose his temper or force himself upon the citizens' attention.

Still, he was human, after all, and as he sat behind his costly team that afternoon he was thinking somewhat uneasily of the unexpected resistance certain land-jobbers in New Westminster had shown to his demands, and the attack on him which had just appeared in a popular journal. It was the second time the thing had happened, and, though he was not directly mentioned and the statements could scarcely be considered libelous, it was evident that a continuance of them would have the effect of turning the attention of those who read them upon his doings, which was just then about the last thing that he desired.

It accordingly happened that he drove a little faster than he generally did, until as the team swung out of a strip of shadowy bush he saw a jumper-sled loaded high with split-rails on the road close in front of him. He shouted to the man who walked beside the plodding oxen, never doubting that way would be made for him, especially as the teamster looked around. The oxen, however, went straight on down the middle of the road, and it was a trifle too late when Merril laid both hands upon the reins. In another moment there was a crash, and Anthea was almost shaken from her seat. When Merril swung himself down he saw that one wheel had driven hard against the jumper load. Then as he called to Anthea to move the team a pace or two, the patent bushing squeaked and groaned, and the wheel, after making part of a revolution, skidded on the road. The man who drove the oxen turned and favored him with a little sardonic grin.

"I hope the young lady's not shook too much," he said.

Anthea, who fancied it was with a purpose he confined this expression of regret, if, indeed, it could be considered such, to herself, was as a matter of fact considerably shaken and very angry.

"Why didn't you get out of the way when you heard my father shout?" she asked.

It was Merril at whom the man looked. "Well," he said reflectively, "I guess that load is heavy, and the oxen have been hauling hard since sun-up, while there's no reason why a rancher shouldn't use the road as well as anybody from the city. You should have pulled up sooner. Anyway, you're not going far like that."

Merril said nothing, though he could not very well have failed to notice the hint of satisfaction in the last remark. He very seldom put himself in the wrong by any ill-considered utterance, but Anthea was a trifle puzzled when he quietly walked to the horses' heads. She knew that the small ranchers are, for the most part, good-humored and kindly men, while, although she could not be certain that the one before them had contrived the mishap, it was evident that he had done very little to avert it. He made no further observation, and when he led his oxen into a neighboring meadow Merril told the girl to drive the horses slowly toward a ranch they could see ahead, and walked beside the wagon watching the wheel. It would turn once or twice and then stick fast and skid again; but they contrived to reach the ranch, and found a bronzed man in dusty jean leaning on the slip-rails.

"Have you a wagon-jack and a spanner?" asked Merril.

"I have," said the man, who made no sign of going for them.

"Then I should be obliged if you would lend me them," said Merril.

The man smiled dryly. "It can't be done. If that wheel won't turn, Miss Merril can come in and sit with my wife while you go somewhere and get it fixed. That's the most I can do for you."

"I suppose the man who wouldn't let us pass back yonder is a friend of yours?" and Merril looked hard at him.

"That's so. Runs this ranch with me. Guess you've seen me once before, though it was your clerk I made the deal with. That's why we're here on rented land making 'bout enough to buy groceries and tobacco. You know how much the ranch you bounced us out of was worth to you. Anyway, you can't have that jack and spanner."

Anthea flushed with anger, but she saw that her father was very quiet.

"Well," he said dryly, "they belong to you, but I'm not sure it wouldn't have been as wise to let me have them."

The rancher laughed. "You don't hold our mortgage now, and if I could get hold of that newspaper-man I could give him a pointer or two. Seems to me he's getting right down on to the trail of you. Are you coming in out of the sun, Miss Merril?"

"Certainly not," said Anthea; and the man took out his pipe and quietly filled it when Merril told her to walk the horses on again.

Though she was a trifle perplexed by what she had heard, it seemed to her that her father's attitude was the correct one, and she seldom asked unnecessary questions. She had lived away from home a good deal since the death of her mother when she was very young, but her father had always been indulgent, and she had cherished an unquestioning confidence in him. It was also pleasant to know that he was a man of mark and influence, and one looked up to by the community. Of late, however, several circumstances besides the newspaper attacks on him had seemed to cast a doubt upon the latter point, but she would not entertain it for a moment, or ask herself whether there was anything to warrant them. It was reassuring to remember her father's little smile when she had ventured to offer him her sympathy; but she could not help admitting that there must, at least, have been some cause for the rancher's rancor. The man, she felt, would not have displayed such vindictive bitterness without any reason at all. She, however, decided that he had no doubt made some imprudent bargain with her father, and was unwarrantedly blaming the latter for the unfortunate result of it.

They went on in silence, and Merril, who walked beside the wagon, shook the wheel loose now and then when the horses stopped, until they reached Forster's homestead. The rancher greeted Anthea pleasantly, but she felt that there was a subtle change in his manner when he turned to her father, who explained their difficulty.

"The trouble is that I have rather an important appointment in Vancouver this afternoon," said the latter.

"My wife is there now with our only driving wagon, or I would offer to take you over," said Forster. "I can, however, lend you a saddle-horse, and Miss Merril could stay with Miss Wheelock until we see what can be done with the wagon. If necessary, I will drive her across when my wife comes back."

Merril thanked him, and presently moved away toward the stable with the hired man while Forster led Anthea to the house, and left her in the big general room where, as it happened, Eleanor Wheelock sat sewing. The green lattices outside the open windows were partly drawn to, but the shadowy room was very hot, and the little air that entered brought the smell of the pines with it. It was not the aromatic scent they have at evening, but the almost overpowering smell filled with the clogging sweetness of honey the afternoon sun calls forth from them. The ranch was also very still, and for no evident reason Anthea felt the drowsy quietness weigh upon her. Her companion said nothing to break it, but sat near the window sewing quietly, and Anthea became sensible of a faint shrinking from the girl, though she would have liked to overcome it for reasons she was not altogether willing to confess to herself.