Joan of Arc of the North Woods | Page 3

seems! I wanted to keep my plans under cover--but I've got to protect myself with the truth, even if the truth gives you a tip. I went away to take a special course in hydraulic engineering, so as to know more about protecting the common rights in the flowage of this river." He swung his hand to indicate the thundering falls of Hagas. "You have used your tongue to hurt my standing with some of the independents--they distrust my reliability and good faith--you have pulled in a few of them. The others will stand by me. Frankly, Mr. Craig, I don't like your style! It'll be a good thing for both of us if we have no more talk after this." He walked rapidly down the tote road, not turning his head when Craig called furiously after him.
"Pretty uppish, ain't he?" ventured the driver, touching the horses with the whip.
Craig, bouncing alone on the middle seat of the buckboard, grunted.
"Excuse me, Mr. Craig, but that's some news--what he said about getting aholt of the old Walpole tract."
The Comas boss did not comment.
The driver said nothing more for some time; he was a slouchy woodsman of numb wits; he chewed tobacco constantly with the slow jaw motion of a ruminating steer, and he looked straight ahead between the ears of the nigh horse, going through mental processes of a certain sort. "Now 't I think of it, I wish I'd grabbed in with a question to young Latisan. But he doesn't give anybody much of a chance to grab in when he's talking. Still, I'd have liked to ask him something." He maundered on in that strain for several minutes.
"Ask him what?" snapped Craig, tired of the monologue.
"Whuther he's talked with my old aunt Dorcas about the heir who went off into the West somewheres. Grandson of the old sir who was the first Walpole of the Toban--real heir, if he's still alive! My aunt Dorcas had letters about him, or from him, or something like that, only a few years ago."
"Look here!" stormed Craig. "Why haven't you said something about such letters or such an heir?"
"Nobody has ever asked me. And he's prob'ly dead, anyway. Them lawyers know everything. And he's a roving character, as I remember what my aunt said. No use o' telling anybody about him--it would cost too much to find him."
"Cost too much!" snarled the Comas director. "Oh, you----" But he choked back what he wanted to say about the man's intellect. Craig pulled out notebook and pencil and began to fire questions.
Latisan was headed for home, the old family mansion in the village of Toban Deadwater where Ward and his widowed father kept bachelor's hall, with a veteran woods cook to tend and do for them. The male cook was Ward's idea. The young man had lived much in the woods, and the ways of women about the house annoyed him; a bit of clutter was more comfortable.
It was a long tramp to the Deadwater, but he knew the blazed-trail short cuts and took advantage of the light of the full moon for the last stage of the journey. He was eager to report progress and prospects to his father.
Ward was not anticipating much in the way of practical counsel from Garry Latisan.
Old John had been a Tartar, a blustering baron of the timberlands.
Garry, his son, had taken to books and study. He was slow and mild, deprecatory and forgiving. Ward Latisan had those saving qualities in a measure, but he was conscious in himself of the avatar of old John's righteous belligerency when occasion prompted.
Ward, as he was trudging home, was trying to keep anger from clouding his judgment. When he felt old John stirring in him, young Latisan sought the mild counsel of Garry, and then went ahead on a line of action of his own; he was steering a safe course, he felt, by keeping about halfway between John's violence in performance and Garry's toleration.
Ward was the executive of the Latisan business and liked the job; his youth and vigor found zest in the adventures of the open. Old John's timber man's spirit had been handed along to the grandson. Ward finished his education at a seminary--and called it enough. His father urged him to go to college, but he went into the woods and was glad to be there, at the head of affairs.
The operations on the old tracts, thinned by many cuttings, had been keeping him closely on the job, because there were problems to be solved if profits were to be handled.
His stroke in getting hold of the Walpole tract promised profits without problems; there were just so many trees to cut down--and the river was handy!
In spite of his weariness, Ward sat till midnight on the porch with