Part 13

Now the thing in its entirety had been recreated. The block house sat squat beside the lock, with its mushroom top projecting just as in years before. Clark, it seemed, was, after all traditional, and not one who lived entirely in the future, and with this touch of romance he took new attributes. His Japanese cook inhabited the lower story through which one entered to mount to the main floor. Inside the place revealed the taste of the man of the world. It looked pigmy beside the enormous structures which began to rise hard by, but was all the more diminutively impressive. One passed it on the way to the works, and often by night drifted out the sound of Clark's piano mingling with the dull boom of the rapids. For it would seem that these were the two voices to which the brain of this extraordinary man took most heed.

VI.--CONCERNING IRON, WOOD AND A GIRL

A year passed and the folk of St. Marys had not yet accustomed themselves to drawing water from a tap and turning on the light with a switch ere Clark began a frontal attack on the resources of the country to the north. It was typical of his methods that he invariably used new agencies by which to approach affairs which, in the main, differed from those already existing. Thus he called on many and widely separated individuals, who, answering his imperious summons, fell straightway under the spell of his remarkable personality, and found themselves shortly in positions of increasing responsibility. They became the heads of various activities, but, in a way, the secondary heads, for Clark retained all kingship for himself. So it came that as months passed he was surrounded by a constantly increasing band of active and loyal retainers.

Such was John Baudette, for whom Clark had sent to talk pulp wood, but, it is recorded, that Baudette's manner and bearing changed not at all when Clark stared at him across the big flat topped desk and remarked evenly that he wanted pulp wood and was assured that there was an ample supply within fifty miles.

Baudette's hard blue eyes met the stare placidly. "Yes, there is pulp wood north of here."

"I know it, because I've had some," said Clark, "but I want fifty thousand cords next May and seventy-five thousand the year after."

Baudette felt in a way more at home, but he had never contemplated seventy-five thousand cords of wood. "Am I to go and take it?"

Clark laughed, then settled back with the shadow of a smile on his lips, and bent on the woodsman that swift inspection which discomforted so many. It embarrassed Baudette not at all. He was rather small and of slight build, but he was constructed in the manner of a bundle of steel wire that enfolds a heart of inflexible determination. On casual inspection he did not appear to be a strong man, but his body was a mass of tireless sinew. His eyes were of that cold, hard blue which is the color of fortitude, his face clean shaven and rather thin; his jaw slightly underhung, his lips narrow and tightly compressed. In demeanor he was quiet and almost shy, but it was the quietness of one who has spent his days in the open, and the shyness of a life which has dealt with simple things in a simple but efficient way. The longer Clark looked at him the more he liked this new discovery. Presently he began to talk.

"I want a man to take charge of my forest department, and one who has got his experience at the expense of some one else. We need pulp wood in larger quantities than have been required in this country before. Next year we begin to grind wood that you will cut this winter."

The little man neither moved nor took his eyes from Clark's face, and the latter, with the faintest twitch of his lip, went on.

"I'm satisfied that this wood exists in ample quantities and the rest is up to you. You can have any reasonable salary you ask for."

"Where are the timber limits?" Baudette said quietly. He was, apparently, uninterested in the matter of salary.

Clark flattened out a big map of the district that obliterated the piles of letters and telegrams. Baudette's eyes brightened. He loved maps, but never before had he seen one so minute and comprehensive.

"That's compiled from all available surveys and records. It took three months to make it. I was getting ready for you."

Baudette nodded. He was interested in how the thing was compiled, and his eyes traced the birth and flow of rivers and the great sweep of well remembered lakes. Presently Clark's voice came in again.

"Where's the best pulp wood? We've been getting it from everywhere."

A lean brown forefinger slid slowly over the edge of the map. Clark noted its delicacy and strength. It halted a moment at St. Marys, then, as though Baudette counted the miles, traversed the shore of Superior and turned into a great bay to the westward. At the belly of the bay the finger struck inland following a wide river, and halted in a triangle of land where the river forked. Baudette looked up and nodded.

"Ah!" said Clark thoughtfully. "How much good wood is there?"

The forefinger commenced an irregular course during which it struck into salients that followed up lesser and tributary streams. It had enclosed perhaps five hundred square miles of Canadian territory when it reached its starting point.

"Four years' wood." Baudette's voice was still impressive.

The other man smiled as though in subdued mirth, and with a red pencil outlined the area. Following this his eyes rested contemplatively on the lumberman who sat still focussed on the map.

"Come back in two weeks," he said suddenly. "Good morning."

Baudette glanced at him, and went out so quietly that there was not the sound of a footstep. Clark's manner of speech and person had set him thinking as never before. Ten thousand cords of wood a year was the usual order of things, but of fifty thousand cords he had never dreamed.

He had a new set of sensations which filled him with a novel confidence in his own powers. He was reacting, like all the others, to the intimate touch of a communicative confidence. He passed thoughtfully through the general office, noting as he closed the door that on a bench near Clark's door sat Fisette, a French halfbreed whom he knew. He remarked also that Fisette's pockets were bulging, it seemed, with rocks.

A moment later Fisette was summoned. He went in, treading lightly on the balls of his feet, and leaning forward as though under a load on a portage. Clark's office always frightened him a little. The rumble of the adjoining power house, the great bulk of the buildings just outside, the masses of documents,--all of this spoke of an external power that puzzled and, in a way, worried him. He halted suddenly in front of the desk.

"Well?" said Clark, without offering him a seat, for Fisette was more at ease when he stood.

The half breed felt in his pockets. The other unrolled a duplicate of the map he had shown Baudette and held out his hand, in which Fisette placed some pieces of rock.

At the weight and chill of them, Clark experienced a peculiar thrill, then, under a magnifying glass he examined each with extreme care, turning them so that the light fell fair on edge and fracture. One after another he scrutinized, while the breed stood motionless.