CHAPTER XXXII
The new day dawned ominously, with wind in the west and acrid smoke making the early sun like a huge orange, which faded to a silver disc as it moved upward. Last evening Luke had ordered his secretary to bid Helen Foraker come to him and Rowe had returned from the telephone, chagrined and ill tempered.
"She won't come," he said hotly. "Wants to talk but insists on doing it at home."
"Wants me to come there, eh? Why?"
"Says she has to be there because of the fires all around." He flashed a covert look at the other. "I told her it was impossible for you to come."
"What in hell'd you say that for? Rowe, you're a damned fool. Wants me to come, does she? By God, I'll run that rabbit into her warren. Get a car! We'll be there in time to curl her hair for her!"
And so in the blue-gray dawn Rowe took the old man out of Pancake, toward the forest and the girl who had tossed restlessly through the night.
Since the day before yesterday she had been in turmoil. John Taylor, fighting for her, fighting with his fists, with high rage for her enemies in his face! It knocked her assurance. Could that fight have been a fraud? she asked herself, and for the moment hoped that it had been because such truth would save her from the humiliation of doubting that she had been justified in sending him from her house. If he fought for her now, she had been mistaken; she had jumped at a faulty conclusion; the evidence which had seemed so weighty against him was not above question; she had been wrong when she sent him from her. Or he might have been her enemy and have broken with his conspirators—or he might actually be helping her for some unknown reason—she could not picture him, now, as a deliberate plotter against her well-being—
When she was in the worst of this bewilderment, Humphrey Bryant had telephoned, talking of other matters rather absently; then he had told her that Taylor was under arrest, that his arraignment had been put over a day. "They're fighting among themselves," he said as though, perhaps, he doubted that explanation.
Yesterday she had watched Luke Taylor in her forest, had watched his restless old face find peace; had seen him stop and touch a pine trunk with all the affection that a man could put into a gesture; had heard him thank his God for her forest—His hardness had melted there and inspiration had come to her.
Black Joe had come in from the mill with a message for Aunty May; she had only half listened to that but before he turned to go he said:
"They're holdin' young Taylor in jail, I hear—I told him,"—with a twist of his head—"Jim Harris'd get him—I told him; he's got sand, he has, but not much sense. I'm going in tomorrow if it rains an' get him out."
He walked away and Helen tried to call out to him, tried to make herself beg for an explanation, but she could not, and she did not know whether fear of humiliation or fear that the light hope in her would be blasted kept her silent—
All night she tossed, hearing the clinking of Pauguk's chain as the wolf dog moved restlessly as smoke kept her instinctive fear of fire aroused.
She was up before dawn, finishing breakfast as light and wind grew stronger—
John Taylor sprang from sound sleep in his cell. The sheriff was unbolting the door to bring in a plate of food.
"When are you fellows going to give me a chance to pay a fine and get out of here?" John asked.
"In a rush?" The sheriff tried to be jocose.
"I'm about as crazy to get out as Jim Harris is to keep me in!" the other burst out. "If I'm not loose today there'll be something bitter for a crowd of you to swallow!"
The genuineness of his anger shocked the officer.
"You'll be took care of," he said. "The judge'll get around about nine, I expect."
The men were going on patrol. Black Joe, glass in hand, descended from Watch Pine, shaking his head. It was no use; he could not see forty rods through the smoke.
Pauguk stiffened, ears cocked and then a car came through the murk and stopped before the door of the big house and Philip Rowe got out to confront Helen. He removed his hat and bowed stiffly; his bruised lips and swollen eye made him grotesque and the smile he forced made him hideous.
"Miss Foraker, Mr. Luke Taylor is here."
She looked at the old man, getting to the ground. He leaned heavily on his stick today; he was stooped and his clothing hung loosely about his withered frame. His thin lips were parted and he breathed rapidly, as though this were great effort.
Here stood the great Luke Taylor! Here stood this arch devastator, this man who had made waste of forests, this man who had been ruthless and cruel and greedy; but who yesterday had wept as he listened to a bird singing in Foraker's Folly!
"You may come in," she said, as though she conferred a measurable favor.
They entered the living room silently. Helen turned an arm chair to face her desk and stood by it while Taylor, still without speaking, moved slowly forward and seated himself stiffly. Then she turned to her desk and sat down. She had ignored Rowe completely; she rested her hands on the chair arms and looked directly into the cold blue eyes of the old man.
However, Rowe was the first of the three to speak.
He put down his hat and drew up a chair for himself. He was raging, but he covered that rage; his case was all but lost and he fought humiliation and anger to save what he might of the ruin of his hopes. He cleared his throat nervously.
"In our first talk, Miss Foraker, I outlined Mr. Taylor's wants. I tried to make it clear that we were willing to pay a very fair figure and that the terms would be such as would enable you to realize on your investment and your work."
Helen moved ever so slightly with a suggestion of weariness, and folded her hands as though this was something that must be endured.
"Since that time many things have happened which must be considered factors in the case. It is to be regretted that you have misunderstood my motives, and have seen fit to think that Mr. Taylor comes here as an agressive, unscrupulous enemy. He comes on a straight business proposition."
He hitched his chair forward, indicating that after this preamble they could get down to business. He started to speak, checked himself and rubbed his palms together, as if considering. But before he could proceed the girl spoke. Her voice was low and she directed what she had to say at Taylor himself, who sat eyeing her steadily.
"I have told Mr. Rowe that my forest was not for sale. Evidently, he does not yet understand. I did not ask you here today to talk of selling."
"Not to talk selling!" Rowe cried. "What then?"
Again he was ignored for Helen did not remove her gaze from Luke as she said: "It seems that I have few confidences from the public. Consequently, there are not many things for me to explain. Mr. Rowe," there was in the name the slightest amount of bitterness, "has indicated that I need help and that there is no help in sight. He is right, quite largely. That is why I wanted to talk to you today, Mr. Taylor. I need help. I want you to help me."
Luke's start was confined to the change in his eyes; they blinked once and in that blink their absorption gave way to amazement.
"To help you?" cried Rowe derisively.
Then for the first time the girl turned to him. "Yes, Mr, Rowe; you appear to understand."
"I don't understand at all! You say you are determined not to sell; yet you are asking Mr. Taylor for help!"
The girl looked at Luke as though she hoped he would speak, giving her an opportunity to put her proposal directly to him, not through Rowe; but the old man sat with chin drawn against his chest. His eyes still showed amazement and in their depths was a gleam that might have been admiration—as he would have admired while he planned to undo a man who had braved his wrath. Still, he did not speak and alter a moment Helen addressed Rowe.
"I don't want to sell. I want Mr. Taylor to give me the help I need so I will not be forced to sell. I have come to a parting of the ways. I can no longer go on with my present resources; the financial situation is against me. My property is not taking care of itself yet; obligations are due; I have suffered the loss of my water-power, which cuts off all my income and repairs mean an outlay of money at once."
"And you ask Mr. Taylor to help in this hair-brained adventure?"
"I ask his help in carrying my pine until the investment is ripe, so I may follow through a plan which has been followed for nearly fifty years and needs a few years more."
Rowe sat back with a whiff of amazement. He looked at Luke and smiled, but the old man did not respond. His eyes were still on the girl's face.
Rowe touched his bruised lips absently. "That's amusing," sardonically. "Quite amusing, Miss Foraker. Quite the most preposterous request I have ever heard made!"
"It is unusual, I understand. Mr Taylor seems to be my last chance. I—I don't care much about asking this of him," with a slight hesitancy.
"This is so amusing that it's interesting," said Rowe. "I take it you want a loan. How much—and for how long?"
"I don't know."
"Don't know!"
She shook her head. "Only in a general way. It depends on what happens to me and to the lumber market. I need thirty thousand dollars at once. That is to take care of a mortgage coming due and rebuild my dam and give me a small working capital. I may need as much more next spring; perhaps a greater amount. If my taxes are increased as the township officers have the authority to increase them under the present law, I will need help there. I will need loans from time to time until I can begin to make my regular turn-over—until I can start with a full annual cutting budget."
"A what? Oh, and then you do plan to cut this timber, sometime! When, Miss Foraker?"
"I can't tell you that exactly. It depends on market values and interest rates and how much capital I must put in—The cut begins when the stumpage value on approximately two hundred acres of timber is equal to the current carrying charges."
Rowe drew a hand back over his sleek hair. "Why the two hundred when you have ten thousand?" he asked. "You're sure of decent prices now and—you don't know how many more risks you will have to run in the future—risks and difficulties and unpleasant circumstances, Miss Foraker. Our proposition is to take over the whole block; we're not interested in a little fraction. Why the two hundred, if I may ask?"
"Because I'm trying to establish a forest business, Mr. Rowe, a forest business in which the annual income meets carrying charges and gradually amortizes the capital investment."
She waited. Rowe frowned. Luke blinked again. She sighed briefly, as though this bored her.
"A peculiar business," Rowe laughed, "that heads straight into bankruptcy for the sake of an abstract idea."
"Is it peculiar business to keep the capital invested well invested? Or to expect that the business should yield fair returns on the capital, Mr. Rowe? Is it unusual when the early period of a new business requires increasing investments with a growing burden of compounding interest, all of which are returned and multiplied when the business becomes established and its turn-over regular?"
"Theory, Miss Foraker. You're trying to apply very fine-sounding phrases to an enterprise which hasn't been proven. A real business does not refuse to sell its products when they're ready for market and when the firm is embarrassed by the demands of its creditors, you know."
"Nor does a factory sell its unfinished products, Mr. Rowe. My timber is merchantable, but it is not ripe. If you were a stock grower and owned a good calf which might bring ten dollars for veal, you would resent it if some one insisted that you sell when you knew that by keeping the calf until it matured, even though it cost you for care and feed and involved risk, it would bring ten or twenty times that price as a pure-bred cow. I'm in the position of such a stock grower. My volume growth of timber is increasing, increasing faster than the carrying charges, and real quality increment has just commenced to show. What are northern pine uppers quoted at now, Mr. Rowe? Then there is the increment of price due to the national timber shortage which sent white pine from twenty-five dollars a thousand to over two hundred and fifty. What average annual per cent of increase does that represent? And do you see any signs yet that the up-curve is flattening out? And why is it unreasonable for me to consider these things in my forest business?"
When she began this argument Rowe's eyes had strayed out the window, as if watching for an arrival; he turned his head as though listening for an anticipated sound, but when she stopped Luke Taylor gave a slight twitching gesture to one hand and his secretary plucked at a crease in his pant leg and attempted a superior smile, unconvincing because of the confusion growing in his eyes.
"The head of the class, Miss Foraker," with an ironic nod. "But quite a long ways from our proposition. To get back where we started; what stumpage value do you place on the whole block?"
Helen sighed sharply and looked again at Luke. His cold eyes were on her, lighted with something that might have been interest, that might as well have been scorn.
"I have tried to tell you that this business is not for sale. No offer would be satisfactory, but I shall soon have timber for sale, about two hundred acres each year. I will want to harvest it myself, of course, because no one else would understand the job, any more than a stranger could successfully handle another man's farm without making mistakes. The stumpage value should come to around twenty dollars a thousand. Your cruiser has reported on that, beyond a doubt, and it will increase as the output becomes steady and special markets are developed."
"You can't get away from that idea of continuous output, can you? Honestly, considering everything, what you've been through, what you're going through right now, do you think it practical?"
"I am as insistent on it as you are on scaring me. I know what you've been up to, you and your friends. You've backed me into a corner. There's no place to turn and that is why I have to come to you, Mr. Taylor, for help."
She turned to address Luke, hands on her chair arms, leaning forward eagerly. He did not change a muscle, a line of expression; he waited, and Rowe waited. Her voice was not so steady when she started in again:
"When we commence to turn over, Mr. Taylor, we should produce about four million feet a year—indefinitely. But from the time the cutting starts there will be an increasing amount for fifty years because each year, for fifty years, there will be another year's growth on the balance of the stand, until the last cut of the first rotation would be a hundred years old. That would be very nice pine, Mr. Taylor, even compared to the pine you cut yourself in Michigan—"
The old man's mouth worked briefly and he swallowed otherwise, no movement.
"And during all those years there will be a steady pick-up in quality. Dense pine cleans itself fast after fifty years—and we will be near the peak of the national shortage, then. There should be prices, Mr. Taylor—big prices, to say nothing of the need it will fill—When the last block of the hundred-year-old pine was going through the mill the first block will be back again, fifty years old and ready, and from then on there would always be a fifty-year-old lot ready for the saw—always, Mr. Taylor—always—every year!"
She brought a fist down on her chair arm and shifted her position slightly. In the pause, Rowe stirred.
"And every year the interest keeps piling up, and the risks—You've really considered the risks, Miss Foraker, or do you just talk about them?"
"Risks!" she cried in contempt. "I've lived with risks since I can remember, Mr. Rowe. Lived with risks from fire to moles—and other underground workers! Because of those risks I must provide the forest with a margin of safety, as in any other business. My margin of safety is in the quality growth and increasing markets. If I cut too soon, I cancel my insurance of a future; I can't cut now and keep my capital intact. I will not do either because there is a chance for help left. Mr. Taylor is that chance. He could carry my pine until it is self-supporting; that will be only a few years, and then—forever after—"
She stopped speaking, for her voice had tightened.
Rowe spoke again: "Foraker's Folly! It seems to have been well named! Continuous crops from the same soil without putting anything back? That's considered bad business in agriculture. Anyhow, pine won't follow pine. Or will it, according to your unproven theories?"
The girl looked at him again, forcing herself to remain patient.
"I am reasonably confident it will, Mr. Rowe, and quite sure that the soil will hold up. You see, ninety-seven per cent of pine cellulose comes from the air instead of the soil. If you won't take my word, I can show you," gesturing toward the shelves of books. "Properly tended forest soil gets better for—well, for at least a good many years. Do you know of the Sihlwald at Zurick, for instance, Mr. Rowe? Of course, the Swiss may be wrong; they've only been growing timber on the same land for six or seven centuries," looking down at her hands demurely.
"Pine trees produce pine seed and that seed will grow more pine trees. My books show that we netted over a thousand dollars on seed harvested and sold to the commercial nurseries last year. I hope that this item will almost offset the cost of growing our own seedlings and replanting when we're finally under way."
Rowe's color was rising. He was conscious that Luke was looking at him. He was out of his depth, challenging statements which concerned facts new to him; he was losing his temper. But it was win or lose, now! This was the thing for which he had come to Pancake: to cow this girl. If he lost in this interview, he would lose his standing with Luke and with that, all that he desired would go, as well!
"This gets better and better," he remarked sarcastically. "You are asking Mr. Taylor for help and you don't know how much you need or how long you will need it. And you're asking this because somebody has done something somewhere else. Do you actually know your capital investment, Miss Foraker?"
"Mr. Taylor may check my books. They are complete, from the time my father began."
"In due season, perhaps, should he have—any curiosity." He waved his hand, trying to be casual in his desperation. He could not stop, now. Luke was watching him, the eyes of the girl challenged him. He blundered on.
"Your whole proposition is hinged on higher prices and a purely hypothetical timber shortage. In six months the lumber market will be busted flat. I suppose you'll resurrect the Lumber Trust and ignore the billions of feet left in the South and the thousands of billions out on the Coast. What about that, for instance?"
"There is timber—billions of feet. There was once in Michigan. Perhaps Mr. Taylor used to think there was enough here to last forever. Perhaps he had friends who moved into the southern pineries and who are junking their mills now and getting ready to move into the Pacific Coast States. The market may slump; everything is going to slump for a time; it's natural reaction—
"But the timber is going and in New England they're sawing box wood out of pine trees that stand in fields which were cultivated at the time of the Civil War. Your shoes, your clothes probably were shipped to Detroit in boxes made of that stuff. Why? Because it's grown on the ground and the manufacturers are tired of paying freight rates on material. Why, I can raise and sell white pine at Buffalo for less than the freight alone on Oregon fir and—"
"Oh, freight rates! A socialistic mess! They'll come down; and besides, you've just admitted that there is timber—timber in Canada and all sorts of places. Now let's quit this and get down to our proposition. Will you—"
Luke stirred and hitched himself nearly erect.
"Oh, shut up, Rowe! When you don't make a fool of yourself with your questions, this young woman does with her answers!"
A moment of silence while Luke glared at Rowe. To ridicule and curse had been habitual, but now there was something new in his face, a fresh bitterness, a disdain, a fading trust, that made the other go cold. The old man turned to the girl, and his gesture marked the collapse of years of scheming and service and hope that Philip Rowe had erected.
"You've been talkin' a lot of moonshine!" Luke said sharply. "Like th' rest of your doddy generation—Moonshine! But you make a case, th' sort of case that'd convince a lot of old women!" He ran a hand over his chin and his eyes flashed.
"You need money all right. It'd do you no good to deny that and try to bluff me, but you've got your cheek, comin' to me for help!"
Helen's head was dropped forward a bit, arms folded. She did not flinch as he made the charge. Her eyes, very somber, gave him stare for stare. "You are the only man I know who can realize the value—and who has the money. That is why I come to you. I would rather go somewhere else—but there is no choice."
"You're high an' mighty for a begger!" he scoffed. "You're brazen!"
"I am only saying what I think, as you are."
He rubbed his chin again and his lips worked.
"And what makes you think you've got a chance with me?" he burst out. "I don't want to back you. I want this stuff myself. That's why I sent Rowe up here, to make a bargain. I come to buy somethin' an' you're in a pinch, where you've got to sell; I offered to do th' right thing an' by the Lord Harry you won't listen—but come askin' favors from me!" His brittle voice was louder.
"Yes, Mr. Taylor, that is it. I do not want to sell, so I ask you to help me past the point where I might be forced to sell."
He sat back, tapping the chair arms briskly with his palms. "You have got cheek! Cheek?—Never seen it before!
"You won't listen to me when I want to buy, but expect me to listen to you when you want my money—an' after you've filled that young cub's head full of moonshine an' turned him against his father—after I thought I'd found something in him!" He lifted his hand and a quick flush came into Helen's cheeks and Rowe, watching her, detected something that was almost fright in her expression. "I sent him up here, a worthless cub; he makes good, where I'd 've said nobody could make good. He makes a fine start an' for th' first time since he was a kid I was—proud of him. And then you pumped moonshine into him until his head's addled. He called on me for backin' in some pine deal and gets me all worked up! I send Rowe here to investigate and find that th' cub don't want to buy, but wants to invest in your damned moonshine!" He was gripping the chair arms now, leaning forward, and his eyes were very pale against the dark mask of his anger.
"He's so full of your theories that he don't even expect he'll have trouble in convincing me—a practical man. And then when he finds out I won't have it, that I won't back him, what does he do? He stands in my way, by damn! He fights his own father when he tries to buy this Pine! He tries to do me at every turn so 's to help you, and ends up in jail because he beats up my—my book-keeper!" He spat out the last words venomously as he glared at Rowe.
One of the girl's hands went slowly to her breast and the made at if to rise from her chair. Her lips were parted and the flush which had gone into her cheeks drained until they were parchment white. "Not that," she said weakly.
"Just that!" The old man's voice was a rasp. "He's fought me to a standstill! He's fought me because you pumped him full of your damned moonshine, but that can't stop me—Nothin' can stop me now. I've had everything I've ever wanted until now. I want this Pine and you can't stop me!"
She had settled back to her chair and sickness swept through her—and a rebound of great strength—and then fresh dismay—His words rang in her ears as she drove back the tumult, crowding all the conflicting factors out of her consciousness, laying bare this one problem. She rose and spoke:
"You have had everything you wanted, Mr. Taylor?—Until now?—And so have I. But it happens now that we both want the same thing. I want it and you want it, but I am not going to let you have it, and you are going to let me keep it, safe—always."
"Eh?" He was stung by her confidence. "I'm going to help you! How's that? What makes you think that?"
"This," she said simply. "You think you have had everything you ever wanted. That is not so. You have missed the biggest thing, Mr. Taylor; you have missed contentment." She was holding to the edge of her desk with one hand to keep her body steady; she spoke slowly, so her voice would be clear; her heart seemed to have been stopped.
"I never saw you before yesterday, but I know a great deal about you. Men still tell stories of your camps. I had a man here only two years ago who worked with you on the Saginaw. Your—your son has told me about you.
"Your—your bookkeeper, here, told me in our first talk that you wanted this pine, because—well, not for the money. You want it because it will take you back to those days when you were happier, when you thought you were contented—"
"Darned moonshine!—Moonshine, like the rest!"
"No, Mr. Taylor." She did not lift her voice beyond its low pitch. "My father felt the same way; all you men who logged off Michigan pine lands felt lost when the last drive went down—I know—I was a little girl with them. And I saw you, yesterday, walking in my forest, walking in Michigan white pine. I think I know something of how you felt—"
His eyes fell away from her face; then flashed back. She took a step nearer him.
"They're gone, the old Michigan stands, Mr. Taylor, but there's a new forest coming on, here—we're in the heart of it. If I should sell to you and you should run twenty million a year, which was big those days, but isn't now—Foraker's Folly wouldn't last long. But if we go through with my father's plan—you and I—we can cut four million and up a year—forever."
"Moonshine! It's—"
"No, it isn't a dream, Mr. Taylor!" voice lifting. "It's real! It's as real as those trees outside my house! The last faller hasn't cried, 'Timber!' for the last Michigan white pine! We haven't seen the last of it going down iced roads to the dumps; we haven't seen the Blueberry bank-full in the winter time with white pine logs for the last time! We haven't seen the last drive; we haven't heard the last pine log going against a saw here in Michigan; we haven't seen the last pond full of them, floating fine and high—cork pine, Mr. Taylor—with the sun bringing on the resin blisters on them so you can smell it—as you can smell the new lumber in the yard—and the big pile of fine sawdust—"
She paused and the uneasy wind soughed in the tops outside. The girl smiled, lips tremulous, as though tears smarted at her eyes. "It isn't a big operation, Mr. Taylor, but it will go on and on forever! There'll never be a Michigan man who is lonesome for white pine who can't walk through a stand of it, who can't watch 'em creeping up the slide, who can't feel the corks in his boots biting into the bark—if he wants to—It could be wiped out in a very few winters, Mr. Taylor. I want it to go on forever—"
She clasped her hands lightly before her and looked down on him with that sweet, confident smile. She saw the amazement in his face, the mist in his eyes. She saw him swallow, and then he snapped: "Damn moonshine, I tell you! Damn—"
Outside, Pauguk whined sharply. A shout. A horse galloping. Black Joe ran past the house calling a question to the patrolman who rode out of the smoke.
"For God's sake get out there! It's south of the old cranberry marsh in the timber and comin' like hell. Somebody smashed the telephone so I couldn't call!"
For a moment the girl poised before Luke Taylor. Then fright came into her eyes and she ran out the door. Phil Rowe started and turned and smiled—as though he had suddenly remembered some pleasurable thing.