Calmly, with matter-of-fact directness, as though they had not achieved the impossible; as though they, a handful, had not cheated nature and powerful enemies, they shouldered their peaveys and struck into the broad wagon road.In the middle distance loomed the tall stacks of the mill with the little board town about it.Across the eye spun the thread of the railroad.Far away gleamed the broad expanses of Lake Superior.
The cook had, early that morning, moored the wanigan to the bank.
One of the teamsters from town had loaded the men's "turkeys" on his heavy wagon.The wanigan's crew had thereupon trudged into town.
The men paired off naturally and fell into a dragging, dogged walk.
Thorpe found himself unexpectedly with Big Junko.For a time they plodded on without conversation.Then the big man ventured a remark.
"I'm glad she's over," said he."I got a good stake comin'.""Yes," replied Thorpe indifferently.
"I got most six hundred dollars comin'," persisted Junko.
"Might as well be six hundred cents," commented Thorpe, "it'd make you just as drunk."Big Junko laughed self-consciously but without the slightest resentment.
"That's all right," said he, "but you betcher life I don't blow this stake.""I've heard that talk before," shrugged Thorpe.
"Yes, but this is different.I'm goin' to git married on this.
How's THAT?"
Thorpe, his attention struck at last, stared at his companion.He noted the man's little twinkling animal eyes, his high cheek bones, his flat nose, his thick and slobbery lips, his straggling, fierce mustache and eyebrows, his grotesque long-tailed cutaway coat.So to him, too, this primitive man reaching dully from primordial chaos, the great moment had yielded its vision.
"Who is she?" he asked abruptly.
"She used to wash at Camp Four."
Thorpe dimly remembered the woman now--an overweighted creature with a certain attraction of elfishly blowing hair, with a certain pleasing full-cheeked, full-bosomed health.
The two walked on in re-established silence.Finally the giant, unable to contain himself longer, broke out again.
"I do like that woman," said he with a quaintly deliberate seriousness.
"That's the finest woman in this district."Thorpe felt the quick moisture rush to his eyes.There was something inexpressibly touching in those simple words as Big Junko uttered them.
"And when you are married," he asked, "what are you going to do? Are you going to stay on the river?""No, I'm goin' to clear a farm.The woman she says that's the thing to do.I like the river, too.But you bet when Carrie says a thing, that's plenty good enough for Big Junko.""Suppose," suggested Thorpe, irresistibly impelled towards the attempt, "suppose I should offer you two hundred dollars a month to stay on the river.Would you stay?""Carrie don't like it," replied Junko.
"Two hundred dollars is big wages," persisted Thorpe."It's twice what I give Radway.""I'd like to ask Carrie."
"No, take it or leave it now."
"Well, Carrie says she don't like it," answered the riverman with a sigh.
Thorpe looked at his companion fixedly.Somehow the bestial countenance had taken on an attraction of its own.He remembered Big Junko as a wild beast when his passions were aroused, as a man whose honesty had been doubted.
"You've changed, Junko," said he.
"I know," said the big man."I been a scalawag all right.I quit it.I don't know much, but Carrie she's smart, and I'm goin' to do what she says.When you get stuck on a good woman like Carrie, Mr.
Thorpe, you don't give much of a damn for anything else.Sure!
That's right! It's the biggest thing top o' earth!"Here it was again, the opposing creed.And from such a source.
Thorpe's iron will contracted again.
"A woman is no excuse for a man's neglecting his work," he snapped.
"Shorely not," agreed Junko serenely."I aim to finish out my time all right, Mr.Thorpe.Don't you worry none about that.I done my best for you.And," went on the riverman in the expansion of this unwonted confidence with his employer, "I'd like to rise to remark that you're the best boss I ever had, and we boys wants to stay with her till there's skating in hell!""All right," murmured Thorpe indifferently.
His momentary interest had left him.Again the reactionary weariness dragged at his feet.Suddenly the remaining half mile to town seemed very long indeed.
Chapter LIII
Wallace Carpenter and Hamilton, the journalist, seated against the sun-warmed bench of Mrs.Hathaway's boarding-house, commented on the band as it stumbled in to the wash-room.
"Those men don't know how big they are," remarked the journalist.
That's the way with most big men.And that man Thorpe belongs to another age.I'd like to get him to telling his experiences; he'd be a gold mine to me.""And would require about as much trouble to 'work,'" laughed Wallace."He won't talk.""That's generally the trouble, confound 'em," sighed Hamilton.
"The fellows who CAN talk haven't anything to say; and those who have something to tell are dumb as oysters.I've got him in though."He spread one of a roll of papers on his knees."I got a set of duplicates for you.Thought you might like to keep them.The office tells me," he concluded modestly, "that they are attracting lots of attention, but are looked upon as being a rather clever sort of fiction."Wallace picked up the sheet.His eye was at once met by the heading, "'So long, boys,'" in letters a half inch in height, and immediately underneath in smaller type, "said Jimmy Powers, and threw his hat in the face of death.""It's all there," explained the journalist, "--the jam and the break, and all this magnificent struggle afterwards.It makes a great yarn.
