MacNutt

“ It was MacNutt who spoke. “An honest man! Then what were you hanging round Sunset Bryan for?”
“Yes, an honest man,” went on the woman’s voice impetuously; “he is honest in his love for me, and that is all I care! Leave him to me, and I’ll give you everything. If it’s money you want, I’ll get you anything—anything in reason! I can still cheat and lie and steal for you, if you like—it was you who taught me how to do that!”
Durkin felt that he could stand no more of it; but still he listened, spellbound, incapable of action or thought.
“I’ve got to have money!” agreed MacNutt quietly. ”

“ It surprised him a little, as he held her, to find that the woman was not inebriate.
"I want this woman!" cried Durkin, and at the sound of his voice MacNutt leaned forward from the shadows of the half-closed carriage, and the eyes of the two men met, in one pregnant and contending stare. ”

“ That was the utter and ultimate solution of the tangled problem; it would be over and done with in a minute. She had lived by the sword and she could die by the sword; from that moment, too, would be counted the days of MacNutt’s own doom, the release and the deliverance of Durkin! ”

“ I’ve always waited, though, and everything has dragged on and on and on, and I’ve been half afraid of MacNutt—he’s the type of man, you know, who never forgives a person—and half-afraid of myself. But, some day—”
“Oh, I know what it’s like,” cried Durkin, drawn toward her, strangely nearer to her, in some intangible way. ”

“ As he noticed the wealth of her waving chestnut hair, and the poise of the head, and the quiet calmness of the eyes, that appeared almost a violet-blue in contrast to the soft pallor of her face, Durkin felt that they had made a mistake in the house number. But, seeing MacNutt step quickly inside, he himself awkwardly took off his hat. Under the spell of her quiet, almost pensive smile, he decided that she could be little more than a mere girl, until he noticed the womanly fullness of her breast and hips and what seemed a languid weariness about the eyes themselves. ”

“ This conversation, retailed at the camp by Devlin, Regan, and others, with such additions, mainly blasphemous, as the imagination of the individual narrator could suggest, sent MacNutt’s stock booming. The lumber jack loves a fighter, and a man who could run three of McCane’s crew out of the woods and bluff Rough Shan himself was one after their own hearts. Regan, himself a rough-and-tumble artist of considerable ability, voiced the sentiments of the better men. ”

“ MacNutt was silent from habit. A foreman cannot mingle socially with his men to any extent and preserve his authority. Hence his life is lonely and loneliness begets silence. He answered questions with clear brevity, but did not make conversation. He was not at all embarrassed by the presence of his employer ”

“ Something like an oath escaped from MacNutt’s lips.
“Be brave,” he said, speaking earnestly. “It won’t be but a few weeks now before I will have you out of here, and maybe in a few days. Ricker is engaged in some lawless business besides mere cattle raising. He has a collection of the worst crooks in the country about him, and I mean to get to the bottom of his game.”
After saying a few more words of comfort to the girl, MacNutt strolled leisurely out and joined the party near the targets.
He had again assumed his slouching gait and halfwit smile. ”

“ Covertly opening that eye which remained in the heavy shadow, separating the lashes by little more than the width of a hair, he could make out a large room, upholstered and carpeted in green, with green-shaded electroliers above two billiard tables that stood ghastly and bier-like beneath their blanketing covers of white cotton. Against the walls stood massive, elephantine club chairs of green fumed oak, and it was into one of these that MacNutt had dropped the inert and unresponding Durkin. ”

“ MacNutt smiled, gently and placidly, and stroked his short beard, touched here and there with gray. “And what good would all that do you?” he asked.
“You are a cool specimen!” ejaculated the other.
“Oh, I guess I know men; and I sized you up, first thing, in the court-room. You’re the sort o’ man I want. You’re not a funker, and you’ve got brains, and—well, if you don’t come out of this quite a few thousand to the good, it’s all your own fault!”
Durkin whistled softly. Then he looked meditatively out at the flashing motor-cars as they threaded their way up the crowded avenue. ”

“ She was inwardly confessing to herself that they who live by the sword must die by the sword.
“Then what’s the use o’ crucifyin’ yourself?” cried MacNutt, seeming to catch hope from her change of tone. “You know as well as I do that I can hound this Durkin off the face o’ the globe. I can make it so hot for him here in New York that he daren’t stick his nose within a foot o’ the Hudson. And I’m goin’ to do it, too! I’m goin’ to do it, unless you want to come and stop me from doin’ it!”
“Why?” she asked emptily.
“Didn’t you save my life once, Frank, right in this room? ”

“ He noted, also, with an eye experienced in reading signs of trouble, that most of McCane’s crew were working, or making a pretence of working, just across the line.
“These men is sawyers, MacNutt,” said Rough Shan. “Yesterday, late on, they dropped a tree an’ cut her into two lengths. This morning the logs is gone.”
“What have I got to do with that?” asked MacNutt.
“That’s what I’ve come to find out,” retorted McCane. “Our teamsters never touched them. Logs don’t get away by themselves.” ”

“ No other man could hold ’em down.”
“How does he get his work done with whiskey in camp?” Joe asked.
“He can make a man work, drunk or sober—or else he half kills him. The worst is that with a booze-camp handy our boys will get it once in awhile. Still, MacNutt can hold ’em down. McCane laid him out a couple of years ago with a peavey, and he hates him. He won’t stand any nonsense. A good man is Mac!”
MacNutt, the foreman of the Wind River crew, was a lean, sinewy logger who had spent twenty years in the camps. ”

“ And she knew that she would kill herself, gladly, rather than go with him.
“Now, cool down, little woman,” MacNutt was saying to her in his placid guttural. “We’ve been through enough scrapes together to know each other, so there’s no use you gettin’ high-strung and nervous. And I guess you know I’m no piker, when it comes to anybody I care about. I never went back on you, Frank, even though you did treat me like a dog and swing in with that damned welcher Durkin, and try to bleed me for my last five hundred. I tell you, Frank, I can’t get used to the thought of not havin’ you ’round!” ”

“ She stood there motionless, trying to think out the first moves in that grim game for which freedom and love and life itself were the stakes.
“Then, by God, you will!” repeated MacNutt, with the sweat coming out in beads on his twitching temples.
CHAPTER XXXI Frances Durkin knew the man she had to face. She knew the pagan and primordial malevolence of the being, the almost demoniacal passions that could sweep through him. More than once she had seen his obsessions tremble on the verge of utter madness. ”

“ MacNutt had again thrown off his assumed role of a half-wit and was alert and thinking rapidly. The girl had noticed the change, and shrank back against the wall staring at him dumbly.
“I know you are a good girl, Waneda,” he was saying rapidly and in a low voice, “I can generally size a person up at first glance, and you have a good face. Now, I wish to clear my mind on one point: did you know the contents of the note you delivered to the Bar X ranch that sent the cowboys into the mountains after Powers and the half-breed?” ”

“ You see, there's a delay of nearly fifteen minutes, naturally, in getting a result to the pool-rooms. That gives us our chance; so, we hold up the message here, 'phone it at once over to MacNutt's rooms, three doors from Penfield's, and, when he has had time to drop in and place his money, we send through our intercepted message."
"Then Penfield has no idea who or what MacNutt is?"
"He knows him only as a real-estate agent with a passion for plunging a great deal of money, and—and—" The girl shrugged a rounded shoulder, and did not finish.
"And you—?" Durkin hesitated, in turn. ”

“ He saw no man drunk, but the little signs were unmistakable. The percentage of quarrels and fights became higher; the bunk-house at night, usually noisy, was now uproarious; some of the men obeyed with less alacrity and grumbled with a great deal more; and through the entire crew there spread a spirit of devil-may-care slackness very hard indeed upon a foreman.
One Sunday MacNutt shouldered an axe and took the well-marked trail which led through the forest to McCane's camp. Arrived at the compass line dividing the limits, he sat down and lit his pipe. ”

“ I instructed him to seek to win the inhabitants by peaceful means, and if unsuccessful to fight them. He went there, and had several encounters with them, but, on account of the ruggedness of the country, it was impossible to conquer it entirely. I had also ordered him, in the same instructions, that, having accomplished this, he should go to the city of Zacatula, and, to proceed with his people and those whom he might collect there to the province of Coliman, where, as I have related in the preceding chapters, they had routed and captured the people who had come from the province of Mechuacan ”

“ That night, I, with all my people, slept on the other side of the river, and the next day set out to follow the track of the scouts who were opening the road, having no other guide but the river bank itself. We marched thus about six leagues, and arrived under a pouring rain in a forest, where we slept. During the night, the Spaniard who had gone up the river to the town of Çagoatan came back with some seventy Indians, natives of that place, and told me that he had opened the road on the other side, but that if I wished to take it I would have to retrace my steps for a distance of two leagues. ”

“ When the adelantado, Francisco de Garay, arrived in that province, as I shall relate to Your Cæsarian Majesty later, neither he, nor any of those with him, would have escaped alive; for the wind drove them thirty leagues from Panuco where they lost some ships, and the others were driven disabled ashore, where, had they not found the people at peace, and ready to carry them on their backs, and serve them, in a Spanish town, they would have all perished, even had there been no other hostilities. ”

“ God, Who in our greatest afflictions often comes to our help, was pleased to permit that, while we were encamping in great sadness and distress, believing we were all destined to perish of hunger, two Indians should arrive, bringing letters from the Spaniards whom I had sent ahead. They informed me that upon reaching the village of Iztapan, they found that the natives had sent all their women and property across a large river, which ran close to that place, and that the village itself was full of natives, who thought the Spaniards would not be able to pass the great swamp near by ”

“ One of the women, however, said that she knew of a town, two days' journey from there, called Chianteco, where we would find people who could give us news of those Spaniards whom we sought; for many merchants lived in that town who traded everywhere. So I immediately sent people thither with this woman for a guide, and, although the town was two long days' journey from where we were, and accessible only by a rough and deserted road, the natives of it had already heard of my coming and no guide could be secured. ”

“ The boyish enthusiasm of Las Casas's character appears on this occasion, for, consumed with impatience, tortured by hopes and fears, he had waited outside in the upper cloister as long as he could stand it and had then finally descended a staircase which brought him unexpectedly to the sacristy door, just in time to hear that he was being searched for; some one asked him if he knew Las Casas, to which he meekly replied, “I am he.” ”

“ Being left without any guide, which was cause enough to double our troubles, I sent squads of people, not only Spaniards, but also Indians, in all directions through the province, and they explored for eight consecutive days without meeting any living creature, save some women, who were of little use to our purpose, because neither did they know any road, nor could they give any account of the lord of the province. ”

“ I questioned the Indian prisoners to obtain information about the Christians whom I sought, and one of them, who was a native of Acalan, told me that he was a trader, having his principal trade in the town of Nito where those Spaniards lived, that there was a large traffic carried on there by merchants from all parts of the country, and that his own people of Acalan lived in a quarter of their own, having as their chief a brother of Apaspolon, the lord of Acalan. ”

“ There are many lords all living in this city, and the people who are tillers of the soil are their vassals, though each one has his lands to himself, some more than others. In undertaking wars, they all gather together, and thus assembled they decide and plan them. It is believed that they must have some system of justice for punishing the wicked, because one of the natives of this province stole some gold from a Spaniard, and I told this to that Magiscatzin, the greatest lord among them. ”