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Read Ebook: The Boy With the U. S. Foresters by Rolt Wheeler Francis
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Ebook has 806 lines and 37655 words, and 17 pages
"But, Mr. Merritt," began the boy, "your watch? Oh, I couldn't--"
"Got another. You'll need it." He turned and walked out of the tent.
Wilbur overtook him on the way to the corral.
"Oh, Mr. Merritt--" he began, but his chief turned sharply round on him. The boy, for all his impulsiveness, could read a face, and he checked himself. "Thank you very much, indeed," he ended quietly. He got out the Supervisor's horse, and as the latter swung himself into the saddle, he said:
"What time to-morrow, Mr. Merritt?"
"Eleven, sharp," was the reply. "So long."
Wilbur looked after him as he rode away.
"That means starting by daybreak," he said aloud. "Well, I don't think I'm going to suffer from sleeping sickness on this job, anyway." And he went back into the tent to finish the letter which he had started two evenings before and never had a chance to complete.
Merritt set a fairly fast pace, and the trail was only intended for single file, so that there was no conversation for an hour or more. Then the head of the forest pulled up a little and conversed with McGinnis briefly for a while, resuming his rapid pace as soon as they were through. Once, and once only, did he speak to Wilbur, and that was just as they got on the road leading to the sawmill. There he said:
"Think all you like, but don't say it."
When they reached the mill they passed the time of day with several of the men, who seemed glad to see them, and a good deal of good-natured banter passed between McGinnis and the men to whom he was well known. The Supervisor sent word that he wanted to see the boss, and presently Peavey Jo came out to meet them.
"Salut, Merritt!" he said; "I t'ink it's long time since you were here, hey?"
The words as well as the look of the man told Wilbur his race and nation. Evidently of French origin, possibly with a trace of Indian in him, this burly son of generations of voyageurs looked his strength. Wilbur had gone up one winter to northern Wisconsin and Michigan where some of the big lumber camps were, and he knew the breed. He decided that Merritt's advice was extremely good; he would talk just as little as he had to.
The Supervisor wasted no time on preliminary greetings. That was not his way.
"How much lumber did you cut last winter off ground that didn't belong to you?" he queried shortly.
"Off land not mine?"
"You heard my question!"
"I cut him off my own land," said the millman with an injured expression.
"Some of it."
"You scale all the logs I cut. You mark him. I sell him. All right."
"You tell it well," commented the Supervisor tersely. "But it don't go, Jo. How much was there?"
"I tell you I cut him off my land."
Merritt pointedly took his notebook from his breastpocket.
"Liars make me tired," he announced impartially.
"You call me a liar--" began the big lumberman savagely, edging up to the horse.
"Not yet. But I probably will before I'm through," was the unperturbed reply.
"You say all the same that I am a liar, is it not?"
"Not yet, anyway. What does it matter? You cut four and a half million feet, a little over."
A smile passed over the faces of the men attached to the sawmill. It was evident that a number of them must know about the trespass, and probably thought that Peavey Jo had been clever in getting away with it. The mill-owner laughed.
"You t'ink I keep him in my pocket, hey?" he queried. "Four and a half million feet is big enough to see. You have a man here, he see logs, he mark logs, I cut them."
The Supervisor swung himself from his horse and handed the reins to Wilbur. McGinnis did the same.
"You don't need to get down, Loyle," he said; "it will not take long to find where the logs are."
The big lumberman stepped forward with an angry gleam in his eye.
"This my mill," he said. "You have not the right to walk it over."
"This is a National Forest," was the sharp reply, "and I'm in charge of it. I'll go just wherever I see fit. Who'll stop me?"
"Me, Josef La Blanc--I stop you."
Just then Wilbur, glancing over the circle of men, saw standing among them Ben, the half-witted boy who lived in the old hunter's cabin. Seeing that he was observed, the lad sidled over to Wilbur and said, in a low voice, questioningly:
"Plenty, plenty logs? No marked?"
"Yes," said Wilbur, wondering that he should have followed the discussion so closely.
"I know where!"
"You do?" queried Wilbur.
Ben nodded his head a great many times, until Wilbur thought it would fall off. In the meantime Merritt and Peavey Jo, standing a few feet apart, had been eying each other. Presently the Supervisor stepped forward:
"Show me those logs," he ordered.
"You better keep back, I t'ink," growled the millman.
Merritt stepped forward unconcernedly, but was met with an open-hand push that sent him reeling backward.
"I not want to fight you," he cried; "I get a plenty fight when I want him. You no good; can't fight."
"I'm not going to fight," said the Supervisor, "but I'm going to see where those logs are, or were. Stand aside!"
But the big Frenchman planted himself squarely in the way.
"If you hunt for the trouble," he said, "you get him sure," he said menacingly.
"I'm not hunting for trouble, Jo, and you know it But I'm hunting logs, and I'll find them."
He was just about to step forward, trusting to quickness to dodge the blow that he could see would be launched at him, when Ben, who had been whispering to Wilbur, lurched over to the Supervisor and pulled his arm.
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