Man-Size, William MacLeod Raine [best novels for students .txt] 📗

him patiently. The dusty wrinkled boots of the merchant rested on the desk. His chair was tilted back in such a way that the weight of his body was distributed between the back of his neck, the lower end of the spine, and his heels. He looked a picture of sleepy, indolent ease, but Tom knew he was not missing the least detail.

A shadow darkened the doorway of the office. Behind it straddled a huge, ungainly figure.

"'Lo, West! How're tricks?" C.N. Morse asked in his lazy way. He did not rise from the chair or offer to shake hands, but that might be because it was not his custom to exert himself.

West stopped in his stride, choking with wrath. He had caught sight of Tom and was glaring at him. "You're here, eh? Sneaked home to try to square yourself with the old man, did ya?" The trail foreman turned to the uncle. "I wanta tell you he double-crossed you for fair, C.N. He's got a heluva nerve to come back here after playin' in with the police the way he done up there."

"I've heard something about that," the fur-trader admitted cautiously.
"You told me Tom an' you didn't exactly gee."

"He'll never drive another bull-team for me again." West tacked to his pronouncement a curdling oath.

"We'll call that settled, then. You're through bull-whackin', Tom." There was a little twitch of whimsical mirth at the corners of the old man's mouth.

"Now you're shoutin, C.N. Threw me down from start to finish, he did. First off, when the breed girl busted the casks, he took her home 'stead of bringin' her to me. Then at old McRae's camp when I was defendin' myself, he jumped me too. My notion is from the way he acted that he let on to the red-coat where the cache was. Finally when I rode out to rescue him, he sided in with the other fellow. Hadn't been for him I'd never 'a' had this slug in my leg." The big smuggler spoke with extraordinary vehemence, spicing his speech liberally with sulphurous language.

The grizzled Yankee accepted the foreman's attitude with a wave of the hand that dismissed any counterargument. But there was an ironic gleam in his eye.

"'Nough said, West. If you're that sot on it, the boy quits the company pay-roll as an employee right now. I won't have him annoyin' you another hour. He becomes a member of the firm to-day."

The big bully's jaw sagged. He stared at his lean employer as though a small bomb had exploded at his feet and numbed his brains. But he was no more surprised than Tom, whose wooden face was expressionless.

"Goddlemighty! Ain't I jus' been tellin' you how he wrecked the whole show—how he sold out to that bunch of spies the Canadian Gov'ment has done sent up there?" exploded West.

"Oh, I don't guess he did that," Morse, Senior, said lightly. "We got to remember that times are changin', West. Law's comin' into the country an' we old-timers oughta meet it halfway with the glad hand. You can't buck the Union Jack any more than you could Uncle Sam. I figure I've sent my last shipment of liquor across the line."

"Scared, are you?" sneered the trail boss.

"Maybe I am. Reckon I'm too old to play the smuggler's game. And I've got a hankerin' for respectability—want the firm to stand well with the new settlers. Legitimate business from now on. That's our motto, boys."

"What church you been j'inin', C.N.?"

"Well, maybe it'll come to that too. Think I'd make a good deacon?" the merchant asked amiably, untwining his legs and rising to stretch.

West slammed a big fist on the table so that the inkwell and the pens jumped. "All I got to say is that this new Sunday-school outfit you aim to run won't have no use for a he-man. I'm quittin' you right now."

The foreman made the threat as a bluff. He was the most surprised man in Montana when his employer called it quietly, speaking still in the slow, nasal voice of perfect good-nature.

"Maybe you're right, West. That's for you to say, of course. You know your own business best. Figure out your time an' I'll have Benson write you a check. Hope you find a good job."

The sense of baffled anger in West foamed up. His head dropped down and forward threateningly.

"You do, eh? Lemme tell you this, C.N. I don't ask no odds of you or any other guy. Jes' because you're the head of a big outfit you can't run on me. I won't stand for it a minute."

"Of course not. I'd know better'n to try that with you. No hard feelings even if you quit us." It was a characteristic of the New Englander that while he was a forceful figure in this man's country, he rarely quarreled with any one.

"That so? Well, you listen here. I been layin' off that new pardner of yours because he's yore kin. Not anymore. Different now. He's liable to have a heluva time an' don't you forget it for a minute."

The fur-trader chewed his cud imperturbably. When he spoke it Was still without a trace of acrimony.

"Guess you'll think better of that maybe, West. Guess you're a little hot under the collar, ain't you? Don't hardly pay to hold grudges, does it? There was Rhinegoldt now. Kept nursin' his wrongs an' finally landed in the pen. Bad medicine, looks like to me."

West was no imbecile. He understood the threat underneath the suave words of the storekeeper. Rhinegoldt had gone to the penitentiary because C.N. Morse had willed it so. The inference was that another lawbreaker might go for the same reason. The trail boss knew that this was no idle threat. Morse could put him behind the bars any time he chose. The evidence was in his hands.

The bully glared at him. "You try that, C.N. Jus' try it once.
There'll be a sudden death in the Morse family if you do. Mebbe two.
Me, I'd gun you both for a copper cent. Don't fool yourself a minute."

"Kinda foolish talk, West. Don't buy you anything. Guess you better go home an' cool off, hadn't you? I'll have your time made up to-day, unless you want your check right now."

The broken teeth of the desperado clicked as his jaw clamped. He looked from the smiling, steady-eyed trader to the brown-faced youth who watched the scene with such cool, alert attention. He fought with a wild, furious impulse in himself to go through with his threat, to clean up and head out into the wilds. But some saving sense of prudence held his hand. C.N. Morse was too big game for him.

"To hell with the check," he snarled, and swinging on his heel jingled out of the office.

The nephew spoke first. "You got rid of him on purpose."

"Looked that way to you, did it?" the uncle asked in his usual indirect way.

"Why?"

"Guess you'd say it was because he won't fit into the new policy of the firm. Guess you'd say he'd always be gettin' us into trouble with his overbearin' and crooked ways."

"That's true. He would."

"Maybe it would be a good idee to watch him mighty close. They say he's a bad hombre. Might be unlucky for any one he got the drop on."

Tom knew he was being warned. "I'll look out for him," he promised.

The older man changed the subject smilingly. "Here's where C.N. Morse & Company turns over a leaf, son. No more business gambles. Legitimate trade only. That the idee you're figurin' on makin' me live up to?"

"Suits me if it does you," Tom answered cheerfully, "But where do
I come in? What's my job in the firm? You'll notice I haven't said
'Thanks' yet."

"You?" C.N. gave him a sly, dry smile. "Oh, all you have to do is to handle our business north of the line—buy, sell, trade, build up friendly relations with the Indians and trappers, keep friendly with the police, and a few little things like that."

Tom grinned.

"Won't have a thing to do, will I?"

CHAPTER XII TOM DUCKS TROUBLE

To Tom Morse, sitting within the railed space that served for an office in the company store at Faraway, came a light-stepping youth in trim boots, scarlet jacket, and forage cap set at a jaunty angle.

"'Lo, Uncle Sam," he said, saluting gayly.

"'Lo, Johnnie Canuck. Where you been for a year and heaven knows how many months?"

"Up Peace River, after Pierre Poulette, fellow who killed Buckskin
Jerry."

Tom took in Beresford's lean body, a gauntness of the boyish face, hollows under the eyes that had not been there when first they had met. There had come to him whispers of the long trek into the frozen Lone Lands made by the officer and his Indian guide. He could guess the dark and dismal winter spent by the two alone, without books, without the comforts of life, far from any other human being. It must have been an experience to try the soul. But it had not shaken the Canadian's blithe joy in living.

"Get him?" the Montanan asked.

The answer he could guess. The North-West Mounted always brought back those they were sent for. Already the Force was building up the tradition that made them for a generation rulers of half a continent.

"Got him." Thus briefly the red-coat dismissed an experience that had taken toll of his vitality greater than five years of civilized existence. "Been back a week. Inspector Crouch sent me here to have a look-see."

"At what? He ain't suspectin' any one at Faraway of stretchin', bendin', or bustin' the laws."

Tom cocked a merry eye at his visitor. Rumor had it that Faraway was a cesspool of iniquity. It was far from the border. When sheriffs of Montana became too active, there was usually an influx of population at the post, of rough, hard-eyed men who crossed the line and pushed north to safety.

"Seems to be. You're not by any chance lookin' for trouble?"

"Duckin' it," answered Tom promptly.

The officer smiled genially. "It's knocking at your door." His knuckles rapped on the desk.

"If I ever bumped into a Santa Claus of joy—"

"Oh, thanks!" Beresford murmured.

"—you certainly ain't him. Onload your grief."

"The theme of my discourse is aborigines, their dispositions, animadversions, and propensities," explained the constable. "According to the latest scientific hypotheses, the metempsychosis—"

Tom threw up his hands. "Help! Help! I never studied geology none. Don't know this hypotenuse you're pow-wowin' about any more'n my paint hawss does. Come again in one syllables."

"Noticed any trouble among the Crees lately—that is, any more than usual?"

The junior partner of C.N. Morse & Company considered. "Why, yes, seems to me I have—heap much swagger and noise, plenty rag-chewin' and tomahawk swingin'."

"Why?"

"Whiskey, likely."

"Where do they get it?"

Tom looked at the soldier quizzically. "Your guess is good as mine," he drawled.

"I'm guessing West and Whaley."

Morse made no comment. Bully West had thrown in his fortune with Dug Whaley, a gambler who had drifted from one mining camp to another and been washed by the tide of circumstance into the Northwest. Ostensibly they supplied blankets, guns, food, and other necessities to the tribes, but there was a strong suspicion that they made their profit in whiskey smuggled across the plains.

"But to guess it and to prove it are different propositions. How am I going to hang it on them? I can't make a bally fool of myself by prodding around in their bales and boxes. If I didn't find anything—and it'd be a long shot against me—West and his gang would stick their tongues in their cheeks and N.W.M.P. stock would shoot down. No, I've got to make sure, jump 'em, and tie 'em up by finding the goods on the wagons."

"Fat chance," speculated Tom.

"That's where you come in."

"Oh, I come in there, do I? I begin to hear Old Man Trouble knockin' at my door like you promised. Break it kinda easy. Am I to go up an' ask Bully West where he keeps his fire-water cached? Or what?"

"Yes. Only don't mention to him that you're asking. Your firm and his trade back and forth, don't they?"

"Forth, but not back. When they've got to have some goods—if it's neck or nothing with them—they buy from us. We don't buy from them. You couldn't exactly call us neighborly."

Beresford explained. "West's just freighted in a cargo of goods.