Legacy (31 page)

It certainly seemed that way to me as we drifted past. The downed locomotive had fallen over both tracks, it appeared, dragging the coal car over on its side along with it and pulling some of the other cars off the track, too, making a zigzag formation of boxcars and coaches that blocked the tracks for nearly a quarter of a mile. We could see the telegraph poles that had been knocked over, and the broken wires from the slightly bent poles on either side dangled and swayed in the breeze. No work appeared to be going on to repair them as yet. Just a number of irritated-looking train passengers were standing around in little knots of conversation, no doubt complaining and speculating on how long it would be until an engine was brought out from Grampian to carry them back to civilization.

As we drifted past, several of the passengers hailed us, for we were no more than forty yards away from the north shore.

They called for us to put in by the bank and give them a ride into town, some offering as much as two dollars for the trip.

Billy Joe looked at me for instructions. I was really not in the mood for company, but it was impossible not to feel sympathy for these people, stranded as they were out here along the river. 'It's all right, Billy Joe,' I said. 'We can take a few. But make certain they're the ones who need it the most.'

I lowered the rudder into the current and we turned towards the shoreline. But we had not gone more than a few yards in that direction when I saw something that nearly made me lose my hold on the rudder.

Behind a group of men in black business suits who were talking in front of the tender, a man leaned casually against the roof of the stricken locomotive. He was dressed in blue jeans and a dark brown work shirt.

And the man had red hair.

I nearly screamed out in fright, but I caught myself in time. Hardly able to speak without my voice quavering, I said to Billy Joe, 'Look - up there next to the engineer's cab. Isn't that Campbell?'

He looked that way and swore softly. 'Damned if it ain't,' he said quietly. 'You want me to sing out and have him arrested?'

I pictured the scene: a scuffle, then testimony required, and questions from the crowd, from the sheriff, or whoever was here representing the law.

It added up to more of a delay and more publicity about the Rawlings family and their troubles.

I set the rudder to carry us away from the shore, my eyes all the while on Campbell. He was looking in our direction; in fact, as nearly as I could determine from that distance, he appeared to be asleep on his feet. It served him right to be that tired. And then, after all his activity, he'd have an unpleasant surprise waiting for him when he returned to Eagles Mere Lake and that smelly, dark cave.

'Let's keep on going,' I said. 'Campbell can wait until we get to the next town and notify the sheriff.'

He looked at me open-mouthed and perplexed. 'But he's right up there now! You want to take a chance on him gettin' away? That don't make no sense!'

I stepped behind the raft's small shed as we passed directly in front of the locomotive. Maybe Campbell wasn't looking our way, but there was no point in making my presence obvious. Then I explained to Billy Joe how it was important that I reach home to comfort Mother as quickly as I could and that to remain here to arrest Campbell would only cause a scene and delay us unnecessarily.

'Besides,' I said, 'I know exactly where he can be picked up if they miss him here by the train. I'll just give the sheriff directions to that cave on the far shore of the lake, and you can tell him how to reach Parsons's cabin. All they'll have to do is wait for Campbell to walk into their trap.'

I could hear Billy Joe's footsteps as he came to take the rudder. He coughed, and after a moment or two he said, 'Damnation, if I had a gun I could shoot the son-of-a-bitch from here. You sure you don't want me to get him now? That son-of-a-bitch don't deserve to draw another breath, if you ask me.'

Billy Joe's righteous anger awakened my own, and I very nearly gave in. Only the thought that every second I spent here would allow time for still more of Father's reputation and our financial empire to slip away kept me from running to the other side of the raft and calling out for the bystanders to seize the murderer of my father. But Father's empire was too important to waste on scum like Campbell. Aloud I said, 'I want him killed, too, Billy Joe. But I can't afford to have a lot of people asking me questions right now. I've got to get back and start putting our affairs in order. And, besides,' I continued, even though I was surprised to hear myself speak this way, 'I don't really want the law to have Campbell. They'd be too easy on him after what he's done.' The bitterness in my voice seemed to have a life of its own, and I felt the deep burning of anger inside my heart.

His voice was quiet, respectful. 'Well, you can count on me, Miss Rawlings. I'm your man whenever you want to see it happen. He'll get what he deserves. You can count on it.'

I thanked him, recognizing the sincerity in his voice. Billy Joe was loyal, and Father had said often enough that loyalty in a man was more worth paying for than brains were, because you could always do the brainwork yourself. I would remember Billy Joe's loyalty. And I knew that somehow, some way, I would put that loyalty to work in getting me the revenge Red Campbell so much deserved.

In a few minutes we had drifted out of sight of the locomotive and its stranded passengers and cargo.

The rest of the afternoon, except for the time we used in alerting the sheriff of a little river town that there was a wanted criminal about five miles upstream, I spent resting, gazing at the sky and the wonderful green mountains, or asking Billy Joe questions about the lumber business. It was astonishing to me how much he knew about board feet and pricing and grades of wood, about how to 'top' the trees and skid the logs down to the river, and about how to manage one of the big rafts during the late-winter and early spring runs, when six crewmen and a cook lived on board one of these rafts and kept control, he said, of hundreds and thousands of board feet of logs as they came roaring down in the current. He told me about log-rustling, where men changed the wooden brands burned into the logs to mark one owner's lumber from another.

'They used to do that a lot just down here a ways,' he said, 'down here by the boom. A man would store a couple of hundred logs, and then when it came time to get 'em out we couldn't find 'em - just like they disappeared. It'd be there on the company books, and he'd have his receipt and everythin', but there just wasn't any findin' the logs.'

He paused for a moment and pushed us away from an uprooted maple tree that had washed away from the riverbank during the spring flood and got caught on a rock. The tree, dead branches and all, now rested close to the middle of the river.

'Have to clear that out of here before long,' he said. 'Gonna block things up a lot worse if we don't tend to it.' Then he went on to explain about how they caught the 'log-rustlers'. They had checked the books - this had been Justin McKay's idea, he said - and found that some of the entries had been tampered with to give hundreds of additional board feet of lumber to the Sprague mill. 'Never did prove nothin' against old Sprague himself,' Billy Joe went on, 'but after a few nights of watchin' the bookkeeper and two of the guards, they had themselves three rustlers. Yep. Two with hot irons, and one with an ink pen. That was eight months ago, and I guess they're still in jail.'

We drifted in silence for a while, and then as we came around a bend Billy Joe said, 'Well, up here's the long reach, right straight ahead. You can just see the start of the boom over there in the middle of the bend.'

And I could. About two hundred yards away, at the centre of the long blue pathway made by the river, now darkening in the shadows of the late afternoon, I could see what looked to be an even darker shadow that stretched from the middle of the left bank as though someone had built a low wall out of logs halfway across the river.

As we drifted closer, I could see the long diagonal barrier that held the other logs that were in storage from drifting downriver any further. These barrier logs were set on stone pilings, attached with strong ropes and spikes so that they could be swung open and shut to let the raft men get at a group of logs that was stored there on the outside. Together, the barrier logs acted as a giant trap that funneled everything that came down the north side of the river over towards the north bank. When the boom was full, as it was now, a huge triangular segment of the river nearly half a mile long was packed so thick with logs that a man could walk across it.

There were three 'boom rats' doing just that as we went slowly past. Clad in dirty grey woolens and spiked boots, they were prying and turning up the logs with their long pikes. They looked up and waved, and then they went back to their work. From the steady, systematic prodding, Billy Joe explained, it looked as though they were taking inventory of the logs in that particular section of the boom, making certain that the right number of logs with the right brands on them were stored and ready for shipment the next morning. That was when the raft men would come and take them the remaining five miles down to Grampian and the mills.

Billy Joe squinted at the sun, which had now dropped down almost below the crest of the mountains behind us. 'Guess we're a mite slower than I thought,' he said. 'It's sundown already and we've still got five miles to go. Reckon we'll be in town before dark, anyhow.'

It seemed hard to believe that I would be back in our family mansion in only an hour or two. After the days with Father and my ordeal in the wilds, and especially this long and peaceful ride downstream with Billy Joe, the everyday comforts of life in town would seem almost strange. But I told myself there would be other ordeals ahead. I would have to be stronger in the next few weeks than I had been during these last trying days. There was a fortune at stake. Others would be fighting for a piece of Father's empire, and it was up to me alone to protect it. Mother, I knew instinctively, would not have the stomach for a prolonged battle. She would be grieving for the loss of Sam Rawlings, and I would be, too - but the difference was that I would have to shed my remaining tears privately and steel myself each day to carry on.

I was thinking what it would be like to give orders to one of the mill foremen when Billy Joe called out, 'Hard left now! Hard left!'

Ahead of us I glimpsed something large and shadowy before I turned to the rudder. It was another downed tree, but this one was blocked up with some logs and debris that must have come loose from the boom and drifted here. I lowered the rudder and forced it to the left as hard as I could, holding the long oar against the current until my arms ached.

But then I heard the scraping, hollow clatter as the front of our raft plowed into the branches and logs that blocked our path.

'Wait, now, hard right!' called Billy Joe, even as we slowed and the current began to hiss around the back corners of the raft, splashing up around my feet and wetting my shoes through with the cold river water. I fought off the impulse to panic as the raft tilted backward and the current came up around my ankles. Instead, I gritted my teeth and took as firm a foothold as I could while I forced the rudder to move.

The current against the rudder gradually began to turn us away from the logs and branches that were blocking our way. As I strained at the rudder, Billy Joe leaned all his weight on to his pole and pushed until we had moved around where the current was hitting us sideways, and then we were spinning, traveling rudder first, around the roots of the tree and out into the open river again.

Billy Joe waved and gave me a big grin. 'Hey, now, that was some piece of work with that rudder, I want ya to know.'

I managed to grin back. 'You weren't so bad yourself!' My teeth were chattering, and even though I felt warm inside, my feet were wet and I was shaking with fatigue.

'Hey, now!' Billy Joe came back to where I was standing by the rudder and looked at me hard. 'This'll never do. You got wet back there, didn't you? Can't have that.'

He ignored my protests and led me into the shed, dragging the chair with him. Inside it was shadowy now that the sun had set, but I could make out the shape of a stove in the corner. Quickly Billy Joe had set me down on the chair, adjusted the wick of the kerosene stove and got it lit.

The flame shone through the grating and gave the little shed a warmer glow. After waiting a moment to be sure the wick was right, Billy Joe brushed off his hands and stood up. 'You get your feet close to this here and get dry. We got about a half hour till we reach Grampian, I calculate. Now I gotta get out and steer.'