VII
They tramped to the station and boarded the single passenger car of theaccommodation. There they selected a forward seat and waited patientlyfor the freight-handling to finish and for the leisurely puffing littleengine to move on. An hour later they descended at Marion. The journeyhad been made in an almost absolute silence. Tally stared straightahead, and sucked at his little pipe. To him, apparently, the journeywas merely something to be endured; and he relapsed into that patientabsent-mindedness developed among those who have to wait on forces thatwill not be hurried. Bob's remarks he answered in monosyllables. Whenthe train pulled into the station, Tally immediately arose, as thoughreleased by a spring.
Bob's impressions of Marion were of great mills and sawdust-burnersalong a wide river; of broad, sawdust-covered streets; of a single blockof good, brick stores on a main thoroughfare which almost immediatelypetered out into the vilest and most ramshackle frame "joints"; of wideside streets flanked by small, painted houses in yards, some very neatindeed. Tally walked rapidly by the respectable business blocks, butpushed into the first of the unkempt frame saloons beyond. Bob followedclose at his heels. He found himself in a cheap bar-room, its paint andvarnish scarred and marred, its floor sawdust-covered, its centreoccupied by a huge stove, its walls decorated by several pictures of thenude.
Four men were playing cards at an old round table, hacked and bruisedand blackened by time. One of them was the barkeeper, a burly individualwith black hair plastered in a "lick" across his forehead. He pushedback his chair and ducked behind the bar, whence he greeted thenewcomers. Tally proffered a question. The barkeeper relaxed from hisprofessional attitude, and leaned both elbows on the bar. The twoconversed for a moment; then Tally nodded briefly and went out. Bobfollowed.
This performance was repeated down the length of the street. Thestage-settings varied little; same oblong, painted rooms; same varnishedbars down one side; same mirrors and bottles behind them; samesawdust-strewn floors; same pictures on the walls; same obscure, backrooms; same sleepy card games by the same burly but sodden type of men.This was the off season. Profits were now as slight as later they wouldbe heavy. Tim talked with the barkeepers low-voiced, nodded and wentout. Only when he had systematically worked both sides of the street didhe say anything to his companion.
"He's in town," said Tally; "but they don't know where."
"Whither away?" asked Bob.
"Across the river."
They walked together down a side street to a long wooden bridge. Thisrested on wooden piers shaped upstream like the prow of a ram in orderto withstand the battering of the logs. It was a very long bridge.Beneath it the swift current of the river slipped smoothly. The breadthof the stream was divided into many channels and pockets by means ofbrown poles. Some of these were partially filled with logs. A clearchannel had been preserved up the middle. Men armed with long pike-poleswere moving here and there over the booms and the logs themselves,pushing, pulling, shoving a big log into this pocket, another into that,gradually segregating the different brands belonging to the differentowners of the mills below. From the quite considerable height of thebridge all this lay spread out mapwise up and down the perspective ofthe stream. The smooth, oily current of the river, leaden-hued and coldin the light of the early spring, hurried by on its way to the lake,swiftly, yet without the turmoil and fuss of lesser power. Downstream,as far as Bob could see, were the huge mills' with their flanking lumberyards, the masts of their lading ships, their black sawdust-burners, andabove all the pure-white, triumphant banners of steam that shot straightup against the gray of the sky.
Tally followed the direction of his gaze.
"Modern work," he commented. "Band saws. No circulars there. Two hundredthousand a day"; with which cryptic utterance he resumed his walk.
The opposite side of the river proved to be a smaller edition of theother. Into the first saloon Tally pushed.
It resembled the others, except that no card game was in progress. Thebarkeeper, his feet elevated, read a pink paper behind the bar. A figureslept at the round table, its head in its arms. Tally walked over toshake this man by the shoulder.
In a moment the sleeper raised his head. Bob saw a little, middle-agedman, not over five feet six in height, slenderly built, yet with broad,hanging shoulders. His head was an almost exact inverted pyramid, thebase formed by a mop of red-brown hair, and the apex represented by avery pointed chin. Two level, oblong patches of hair made eyebrows. Hisface was white and nervous. A strong, hooked nose separated a pair ofred-brown eyes, small and twinkling, like a chipmunk's. Just now theywere bloodshot and vague.
"Hullo, Dicky Darrell," said Tally.
The man struggled to his feet, knocking over the chair, and laid bothhands effusively on Tally's shoulders.
"Jim!" he cried thickly. "Good ole Jim! Glad to see you! Hav' drink!"
Tally nodded, and, to Bob's surprise, took his place at the bar.
"Hav' 'nother!" cried Darrell. "God! I'm glad to see you! Nobody intown."
"All right," agreed Tally pacifically; "but let's go across the riverto Dugan's and get it."
To this Darrell readily agreed. They left the saloon. Bob, following,noticed the peculiar truculence imparted to Darrell's appearance by thefact that in walking he always held his hands open and palms to thefront. Suddenly Darrell became for the first time aware of his presence.The riverman whirled on him, and Bob became conscious of something asdistinct as a physical shock as he met the impact of an electricalnervous energy. It passed, and he found himself half smiling down onthis little, white-faced man with the matted hair and the bloodshot,chipmunk eyes.
"Who'n hell's this!" demanded Darrell savagely.
"Friend of mine," said Tally. "Come on."
Darrell stared a moment longer. "All right," he said at last.
All the way across the bridge Tally argued with his companion.
"We've got to have a foreman on the Cedar Branch, Dick," he began, "andyou're the fellow."
To this Darrell offered a profane, emphatic and contemptuous negative.With consummate diplomacy Tally led his mind from sullen obstinacy tomere reluctance. At the corner of Main Street the three stopped.
"But I don't want to go yet, Jim," pleaded Darrell, almost tearfully. "Iain't had all my 'time' yet."
"Well," said Tally, "you've been polishing up the flames of hell forfour days pretty steady. What more do you want?"
"I ain't smashed no rig yet," objected Darrell.
Tally looked puzzled.
"Well, go ahead and smash your rig and get done with it," he said.
"A' right," said Darrell cheerfully.
He started off briskly, the others following. Down a side street hisrather uncertain gait led them, to the wide-open door of a frame liverystable. The usual loungers in the usual tipped-back chairs greeted him.
"Want m' rig," he demanded.
A large and leisurely man in shirt sleeves lounged out from the officeand looked him over dispassionately.
"You've been drunk four days," said he, "have you the price?"
"Bet y'," said Dick, cheerfully. He seated himself on the ground andpulled off his boot from which he extracted a pulpy mass of greenbacks."Can't fool me!" he said cunningly. "Always save 'nuff for my rig!"
He shoved the bills into the liveryman's hands. The latter straightenedthem out, counted them, thrust a portion into his pocket, and handed therest back to Darrell.
"There you are," said he. He shouted an order into the darkness of thestable.
An interval ensued. The stableman and Tally waited imperturbably,without the faintest expression of interest in anything evident on theirimmobile countenances. Dicky Darrell rocked back and forth on his heels,a pleased smile on his face.
After a few moments the stable boy led out a horse hitched to the mostramshackle and patched-up old side-bar buggy Bob had ever beheld.Darrell, after several vain attempts, managed to clamber aboard. Hegathered up the reins, and, with exaggerated care, drove into the
middleof the street.
Then suddenly he rose to his feet, uttered an ear-piercing exultantyell, hurled the reins at the horse's head and began to beat the animalwith his whip. The horse, startled, bounded forward. The buggy jerked.Darrell sat down violently, but was at once on his feet, plying thewhip. The crazed man and the crazed horse disappeared up the street, thebuggy careening from side to side, Darrell yelling at the top of hislungs. The stableman watched him out of sight.
"Roaring Dick of the Woods!" said he thoughtfully at last. He thrusthis hand in his pocket and took out the wad of greenbacks, contemplatedthem for a moment, and thrust them back. He caught Tally's eye. "Funnywhat different ideas men have of a time," said he.
"Do this regular?" inquired Tally dryly.
"Every year."
Bob got his breath at last.
"Why!" he cried. "What'll happen to him! He'll be killed sure!"
"Not him!" stated the stableman emphatically. "Not Dicky Darrell! He'llsmash up good, and will crawl out of the wreck, and he'll limp back herein just about one half-hour."
"How about the horse and buggy?"
"Oh, we'll catch the horse in a day or two--it's a spoiled colt,anyway--and we'll patch up the buggy if she's patchable. If not, we'llleave it. Usual programme."
The stableman and Tally lit their pipes. Nobody seemed much interestednow that the amusement was over. Bob owned a boyish desire to follow thewake of the cyclone, but in the presence of this imperturbability, herepressed his inclination.
"Some day the damn fool will bust his head open," said the liveryman,after a ruminative pause.
"I shouldn't think you'd rent him a horse," said Bob.
"He pays," yawned the other.
At the end of the half-hour the liveryman dove into his office for acoat, which he put on. This indicated that he contemplated exercising inthe sun instead of sitting still in the shade.
"Well, let's look him up," said he. "This may be the time he busts hisfool head."
"Hope not," was Tally's comment; "can't afford to lose a foreman."
But near the outskirts of town they met Roaring Dick limping painfullydown the middle of the road. His hat was gone and he was liberallyplastered with the soft mud of early spring.
Not one word would he vouchsafe, but looked at them all malevolently.His intoxication seemed to have evaporated with his good spirits. Asanswer to the liveryman's question as to the whereabouts of the smashedrig, he waved a comprehensive hand toward the suburbs. At insistence, hesnapped back like an ugly dog.
"Out there somewhere," he snarled. "Go find it! What the hell do I carewhere it is? It's mine, isn't it? I paid you for it, didn't I? Well, gofind it! You can have it!"
He tramped vigorously back toward the main street, a grotesque figurewith his red-brown hair tumbled over his white, nervous countenance ofthe pointed chin, with his hooked nose, and his twinkling chipmunk eyes.
"He'll hit the first saloon, if you don't watch out," Bob managed towhisper to Tally.
But the latter shook his head. From long experience he knew the type.
His reasoning was correct. Roaring Dick tramped doggedly down the lengthof the street to the little frame depot. There he slumped into one ofthe hard seats in the waiting-room, where he promptly slept. Tally satdown beside him and withdrew into himself. The twilight fell. After anapparently interminable interval a train rumbled in. Tally shook hiscompanion. The latter awakened just long enough to stumble aboard thesmoking car, where, his knees propped up, his chin on his breast, herelapsed into deep slumber.
They arrived at the boarding house late in the evening. Mrs. Hallowellset out a cold supper, to which Bob was ready to do full justice. Tenminutes later he found himself in a tiny box of a bedroom, furnishedbarely. He pushed open the window and propped it up with a piece ofkindling. The earth had fallen into a very narrow silhouette, and thestar-filled heavens usurped all space, crowding the world down. Againstthe sky the outlines stood significant in what they suggested andconcealed--slumbering roof-tops, the satiated mill glowing vaguelysomewhere from her banked fires, the blackness and mass of silent lumberyards, the mysterious, hushing fingers of the ships' masts, and then lowand vague, like a narrow strip of velvet dividing these men's affairsfrom the star-strewn infinite, the wilderness. As Bob leaned from thewindow the bigness of these things rushed into his office-starved spiritas air into a vacuum. The cold of the lake breeze entered his lungs. Hedrew a deep breath of it. For the first time in his short businessexperience he looked forward eagerly to the morrow.
The Rules of the Game Page 7