"Timber"/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
In such a manner, happiness was born of turmoil.
Helen Foraker had taken young Taylor into her hands and unconsciously moulded him into the man she would have; he had grown, he had changed, and though he had yet to prove his mettle, he bore rich promise. And when he came in her darkest hour and pledged his strength in her cause she found that she needed the things a man so moulded, could give. Not his help, first, but his love, his trust, the sanctuary of his arms.
But Taylor held that secret which he dared not tell the girl and even that night while the glory of her yielded lips was still fever in his blood he felt the mounting of apprehension, much like the misgiving which had been born that night in Florida when his father made his gift of logs, when Philip Rowe had smirked. He went to sleep, memory of her hands about his neck mingling with his father's face leering at his efforts to protect the forest from a destroying force.
"I felt so secure last night," she told him in the early day. "I felt that Jim Harris—no one, can hurt me now. I told you once that there were impulses in my heart that never had a chance to grow. This one, John, is the strongest of them; it has been held back more than any other; repression gave it strength. Its breaking free was so sudden, so overwhelming—I didn't dare stay—last night."
She put her face against his shoulder.
There had been no restraint, no shyness in her greeting He had her in his arms when she spoke and she could feel him tremble at her words, but before he could reply they heard Black Joe grumble at Pauguk as he came around the corner of the house.
Joe came up the steps and gave his curt little bob.
"Say, Helen, will you tell her that th' boys at th' mill found a bee tree and if she wants any honey I cattalate she'd better send the kids down with a bucket."
"Yes, Joe; I will tell her."
The woodsman went and she moved close to Taylor again.
"It's funny, but it's heart breaking," she said. "That is what misunderstanding will do. For twenty years they haven't spoken, and they loved twenty years ago. A misunderstanding came, and probably they've both forgotten what it was now. Stubbornness has kept them apart and made them both sour. My father said that Aunty May used to be the gayest girl on the Blueberry and that Black Joe always sang at his work. Their quarrel came and they have not spoken since. Each is only holding out for the other to break the silence and growing more bitter and older, Aunty May trying to make another woman's children ease her heartache, Joe hiding the hurt under his crustiness and living only for the nursery.
"We can't ever risk a misunderstanding, can we?"
She looked at him closely.
"Why, John, what is it?" startled.
"What is what?"
"You look so—so strange!"
He was conscious that he was flushing; flushing because the thing he kept from Helen for her own peace of mind was a splendid nucleus for misunderstanding. But she was on her way to Pancake, even then, to learn more of the menaces which hung over the forest. He could not tell her now. Tonight, he told himself, tonight he would give her the whole miserable story. So he laughed her startled question away and watched her drive down the road.
It was night when she returned, mouth set and eyes serious.
"It looks dark," she said hoarsely in answer to his question. "Darker than ever. All last night and all today Humphrey Bryant has tried to get in touch with the different supervisors, but Jim Harris has them all down at the big dam where they can't be reached. Harris has heard that Humphrey was trying to block his game and fixed so we couldn't get to any of the board until it meets—and then Harris will be there, and he holds them in the hollow of his hand.
"If he could be locked up, driven away from that meeting long enough for Humphrey to get at them! He has something up his sleeve, some little thing, such a faint hope that he won't even confide in me! All he asks is ten minutes alone with the board, and he might as well ask for help from Harris!"
It was later in the evening that Taylor walked aimlessly toward the nursery. He had not seen Black Joe there and was almost on the humped figure which prodded in a seed bed before he noticed the old fellow. Joe looked up, gave a contemptuous sniff and began gathering his few implements, for it was nearly dark. He went off toward the men's shanty without again looking at Taylor.
John walked on and stood looking absently down the rows of transplants a few moments and then retraced his steps until a movement in the ground attracted him. He watched and saw the stirring of a mole as it made slow progress. It went beneath the path and entered a seed bed, where stood pine trees no higher than a man's finger is long. Taylor watched the tiny trees heaving before the disturbance, saw their hair-like roots break through the loam. He removed his pipe and looked toward the shanty for Joe.
"By Jove!" he muttered. "That'll hurt 'em."
He walked quickly out of the nursery.
Joe was on the deacon bench, filling his pipe. Two of the men were with him and Taylor knew that the woodsman was settling himself for a yarn. He hesitated as Joe looked at him with indifference, but he went on down the room and stopped by the group.
"I was in the nursery, Joe," he said, "and I saw something you might want to know." The older man crammed the Peerless into his pipe-bowl and glared up at the intruder. "There's a mole in one of the seed beds and—"
No chance to finish! With a snort of alarm Joe was on his feet, hurrying toward the door.
"Come on," he snapped, when John did not follow. "Show me where!"
Taylor followed at a trot as Joe hastened across the open space and in the dusk searched for the telltale welt in the soft earth.
"There! See?"
Joe had seen the welt and the disturbed trees and he commenced to curse, steadily, frightfully, as he floundered about in the darkness.
"Cut back to th' shanty an' git somethin'!" he snapped. "Somethin' to make a widder mole—'n axe or anythin'—cut an' run for it!"
Taylor cut and ran, passing the two who had been with Joe inside and who had followed leisurely. A broad-axe was within the door, the first implement John saw; he seized it and ran back.
Then followed a tense interval with Joe, axe upraised, stooping over the seed bed, watching in the growing darkness for the movement which would betray the intruder's presence. He muttered and gave no heed to the others. John kept close by him, also on the watch for the movement in the soil and once Joe pushed him aside as they both groped over the same area.
"Git away," he complained, "or you'll git hurted along with this here blind devil!"
John stood back, then, but he did not go away. The other two sauntered away, uninterested in the affair which had aroused Joe to such excitement. The old fellow kept up his vigilance, axe ready to strike, muttering to himself, until it was no longer possible to see.
Then he straightened and looked about, saw Taylor and grunted.
"Damn him to hot hell!" he whispered. "He'll ruin this here bed if he gits a chance!"
It was the closest to a friendly comment he had ever made to the other and John moved closer.
"Sh!" Joe warned. "Keep still! He's here some'eres an' we got to watch. You git a lantern; I'll stand guard."
John returned to the shanty and came back with the lighted lantern. Again they searched, but without result, and then Joe directed John to follow the mole's trail to the boundary of the nursery and tramp it down carefully, while he kept up his vigilant watch, eyes bright, head moving constantly as, stooped above the bed, he still searched for movement.
Fifteen minutes passed, a half hour; no more indication of the mole.
"He's here yet," Joe whispered. "We gotta wait. Here gimme, that lantern."
Joe placed it on the ground so. they could see. Then he lowered his axe and stood by, relaxing for the first time. Taylor had been partly amused by this performance, but as he saw the seriousness with which Joe confronted this comparatively trivial damage to his seedlings his interest was thoroughly aroused.
"I reckon mebby we could set down," Joe whispered and dragged a cracker box toward the lantern. "We'll watch an' we'll sure slay him, th' first move he makes!"
In his plan he was including Taylor, on whom he had always looked with scorn!
John settled himself with a fresh pipe, and Joe sat beside him, silent, eyes on the damaged bed, axe in his hands. Twice he started up sharply; once he rose and stood crouched over the place, axe upraised, ready to strike, holding his breath; then sank to the box with a muttered curse.
He looked at Taylor closely, for a long moment; then down at the axe, and something like chagrin flickered in his eyes.
"Anybody who didn't have good sense 'uld think a feller was crazy to carry on like this," he said, straightening a leg, and again looking at the mighty weapon with which he had planned to kill the small rodent, "but these here seed was special selected an' we can't let no damned mole spoil our work."
John sensed that Joe feared he might be making himself absurd and wanted to avoid that impression at any cost.
"That's right," he said lowly, "We'll get him."
Joe spit and nodded.
"Damn bet! We'll set here all night, but we'll git him."
Spit. Silence. Voices from the shanty.
"Course with ordinary seedlin's a man wouldn't set out all night," he went on after a bit, "but these here's different—special select; somethin' me an' Foraker started long time ago an' me an' Helen's been keepin' up."
John watched him; Joe was talking without being urged, without much reserve, after those weeks of aloof scorn.
"Y'see," gesturing with his paper of tobacco, "I took these here seeds from trees that was naterally whoopin' er up, growin' like weeds. Me an' Foraker 'nd Helen, now, thinks mebby we c'n work trees like the gov'm't works wheat an' corn; git th' seed from the best stock; improve your—"
He stooped and leaned forward, rising slowly to a crouch, spitting on a palm as he grasped his axe; then sank back again with a quiet oath of disappointment.
"That sounds reasonable," said John and nodded.
Joe looked at him sharply, as though suspecting that Taylor was skeptical, but he saw the genuine regard for his idea in the younger man's face and looked away and sighed with satisfaction.
"I thought mebby you had a little sense," he said.
Taylor smiled and buttoned his coat.
"You can't do much in a short time, though, can you?" he asked.
"Twenty years, mebby; mebby more. Foraker used to say a lifetime." Shrug. Spit. "Me 'nd Helen 'nd him are th' only ones—besides the professors—who've got sense enough to git intrusted."
"Maybe you'll let me in on that, Joe. I'm interested. There are so darned many big things going on around here that a greenhorn can't show interest in them all at once—where'd you find the seed bearers you wanted?"
Joe told him at length, told of their experiences, the data they had assembled, warming to his subject, all but forgetting the mole. He no longer looked away from Taylor, but peered closely into his face and answered questions and talked—and talked—and talked.
For years he had worked in that nursery, tending his seedlings as he would so many children, talking to few but Helen and her father about his work, finding none but them and professional foresters who were interested in what he was doing. He found a pride in these accomplishments and was hungry for appreciation; he could talk to the men of the crew about logging, could tell his Bunion tales and find an interested audience. But for the matters closest to his heart there was no outlet—until now, when this city boy sat beside him on a cracker box, watching for a mole, listening, unafraid to betray ignorance by questions—
Lights went out in the shanty; sounds of men ceased. The moon came up and still the two sat, collars up, for the night was cool, whispering, watching the seed bed for the stirring that would end their vigil—
And then Joe talked of the forest, what it had been, what it was and might be; of Foraker himself and of Helen—
Men can say worlds about women with the use of a few simple words.
"She's a good girl," Joe said of Helen Foraker, without much emphasis, with only a slight nod of his head, but in that sentence was an indication of devotion and loyalty that could not be mistaken. "She's—
"Look there!"
His whisper was the barest breath. They rose together, creeping toward the lantern. There was no wind, their movements were of the lightest, but in the center of the bed was a stirring, a heaving among the little trees—
The axe rose slowly; it poised, and then it swept down and buried itself in the ground—
"Got him!" cried Joe. "Got him!" as he turned back the earth with the blade.
He grinned then and spit in delight and repeated again and again that he had "got him."
Carefully he made temporary repairs to the damage in the bed and then picked up the lantern.
"Now we'll hit th' bunks, Johnny," he chuckled. "A good night's work, lad!"
They walked slowly toward the men's shanty, shoulder to shoulder, like old friends. Before the door they stopped and Taylor said:
"There's one thing I want to put up to you, Joe. You're the only man I can go to with it and it's about—Helen."
"Helen?"
"Yes."
"You'd do a lot for her, wouldn't you, Black Joe?"
"Who? Me? Dyin' would be easy—for her!"
He went on haltingly to extoll the girl's virtues and Taylor smoked thoughtfully, some of the perplexity that had been in his gathered brows even during that successful venture into a new friendship departing, a strange sort of twinkle in his eyes, and when Joe stopped Taylor looked about to see that they were unobserved and lowered his voice and talked; and Joe nodded and grunted and once he cursed heavily, forbiddingly.
Joe began to question—to plan in whispers.
"Sure, I know! I allus watch 'em as I don't like. I know his habits—he's chased after me—chased—an' I wouldn't talk to him—not before—"
He laughed silently.