FullReads

It was all green and gray and blue and yellow-white and stern. The sky was not more illimitable than the rugged forest which extended on every hand.

“Oh, this is glorious–glorious!” said the wife. “Do I own some of this town?” she asked, as they rose to go out.

“I reckon you do.”

“Oh, I’m so glad!”

As they stepped out on the platform, a large man in corduroy and wolf-skin faced them like a bandit.

“Hello, Ed!”

“Hello, Jack! Well, we’ve found you. My wife, Mr. Ridgeley. We’ve come up to find out how much you’ve embezzled,” he said, as Ridgeley pulled off an immense glove to shake hands all round.

“Well, come right over to the hotel. It ain’t the Auditorium, but then, again, it ain’t like sleeping outdoors.”

As they moved along they heard the train go off, and then the sound of the saw resumed its domination of the village noises.

“Was the town named after you, or you after the town?” asked Field.

“Named after me. Old man didn’t want it named after him; would kill it,” he said.

Mr. and Mrs. Field found the hotel quite comfortable and the dinner wholesome. They beamed upon each other.

“It’s going to be delightful,” they said.

Ridgeley was a bachelor, and made his home at the hotel also. That night he said: “Now we’ll go over the papers and records of your uncle’s property, and then we’ll go out and see if the property is all there. I imagine this is to be a searching investigation.”

“You may well think it. My wife is inexorable.”

As night fell, the wife did not feel so safe and well pleased. The loud talking in the office below and the occasional whooping of a crowd of mill-hands going by made her draw her chair nearer and lay her fingers in her husband’s palm.

He smiled indulgently. “Don’t be frightened, my dear. These men are not half so bad as they sound.”

II

Mrs. Field sat in the inner room of Ridgeley’s office, waiting for the return of her husband with the team. They were going out for a drive.

Ridgeley was working at his books, and he had forgotten her presence.

She could not but feel a deep admiration for his powerful frame and his quick, absorbed action as he moved about from his safe to his desk. He was a man of great force and ready decision.

Suddenly the door opened and a stranger entered. He had a sullen and bitter look on his thin, dark face. Ridgeley’s quick eyes measured him, and his hand softly turned the key in his money drawer, and as he faced about he swung shut the door of the safe.

The stranger saw all this with eyes as keen as Ridgeley’s. A cheerless and strange smile came upon his face.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “I’m low, but I ain’t as low as that.”

“Well, sir, what can I do for you?” asked Ridgeley. Mrs. Field half rose, feeling something tense and menacing in the attitude of the two men.

But the intruder quietly answered, “You can give me a job if you want to.”

Ridgeley remained alert. His eyes ran over the man’s tall frame. He looked strong and intelligent, although his eyes were fevered and dull.

“What kind of a job?”

“Any kind that will take me out into the woods and keep me there.”

There was a self-accusing tone in his voice that Ridgeley felt.

“What’s your object? You look like a man who could do something else. What brings you here?”

The man turned with a sudden resolution to punish himself. His voice expressed a terrible loathing.

“Whiskey, that’s what. It’s a hell of a thing to say, but I can’t let liquor alone when I can smell it. I’m no common hand, or I wouldn’t be if I–But let that go. I can swing an axe, and I’m ready to work. That’s enough. Now the question is, can you find a place for me?”

Ridgeley mused a little. The young fellow stood there, statuesque, rebellious.