id="Page_14" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[14]"/>statements which he proposed to make to the big men of the Comas. He had assorted and classified those statements before he entered the castle of the great corporation. With youth’s optimism he had anticipated a certain measure of sympathy—had in some degree pictured at least one kindly man in the Comas outfit who would listen to a young chap’s troubles.

Walking to the door, standing with his hand on the knob, he knew he must go back to the woods with the dolorous prospect of being obliged to fight to hold together the remnants of the Latisan business. He set his teeth and opened the door. He would have gone without further words, but the sallow man snapped a half threat which brought Ward around on his heels.

“Mr. Latisan, I hope you will carry away with you the conviction that fighting the Comas company will not get you anything.”

Ward choked for a moment. Old John was stirring in him. A fettered yelp was bulging in his throat, and the skin of the back of his head tingled as if the hair were rising. But he spoke quietly when he allowed his voice to squeeze past the repressed impulse. “There’s a real fight ready to break in the north country, sir.”

“Do you propose to be captain?”

“I have no such ambition. But your Mr. Craig is forcing the issue. No company is big enough to buck the law in our state.”

“Look here, my good fellow!” The sallow man came around in his chair. Ward immediately was more fully informed as to the personage’s status. “I am one of the attorneys of this corporation. I have been attending to the special acts your legislature has passed in our behalf. We are fully protected by law.”

“The question is how much you’ll be protected after facts are brought out by a fight,” replied Ward, stoutly. “I know the men who have been sent down to the legislature from our parts and how they were elected. But even such men get cold feet after the public gets wise.”

“That’ll be enough!” snapped the attorney. He turned to his desk again.

“Yes, it looks like it,” agreed young Latisan; he did not bang the door after him; he closed it softly.

The attorney was obliged to look around to assure himself that his caller was not in the room. Then he pushed a button and commanded a clerk to ask if Mr. Craig was still in the president’s office. Informed that Mr. Craig was there, the attorney went thither.

“I have just been bothered by that young chap, Latisan, from the Tomah region,” reported Dawes, the attorney. “He threatens a fight which will rip the cover off affairs in the north country. How about what’s underneath, provided the cover is ripped off, Craig?”

“Everything sweet as a nut! Any other kind of talk is bluff and blackmail. So that’s young Latisan’s latest move, eh?” he ejaculated, squinting appraisingly at Dawes and turning full gaze of candor’s fine assumption on Horatio Marlow, the president.

“Just who is this young Latisan?” inquired Marlow.

“Oh, only the son of one of the independents who are sticking out on a hold-up against us. Did he name his price, Dawes?”

“He didn’t try to sell anything,” acknowledged the attorney. “Craig, let me ask you, are you moving along the lines of the law we have behind us in those special acts I steered through?”

“Sure thing!” asserted the field director, boldly.

“We’ve got to ask for more from the next legislature,” stated the lawyer.

The president came in with a warning. “Credit is touchy these days, Mr. Craig. We’re going into the market for big money for further development. It’s easy for reports to be made very hurtful.”

“I’m achieving results up there,” insisted Craig, doggedly.

“We’re very much pleased with conditions,” agreed the president. “We’re able to show capital a constantly widening control of properties and natural advantages. But remember Achilles’s heel, Mr. Craig.”

“I haven’t been able to fight ’em with feathers all the time,” confessed the field director. “There wasn’t much law operating up there when I grabbed in. I have done the best I could, and if I have been obliged to use a club once in a while I have made the fight turn something for the corporation.” He exhibited the pride of the man who had accomplished.

The attorney warned Craig again. “We can’t afford to have any uproar started till we get our legislation properly cinched. Tomah seems to be attended to. But we need some pretty drastic special acts before we can go over the watershed and control the Noda waters and pull old Flagg into line. He’s the last, isn’t he?—the king-pin, according to what I hear.”

“I’ll attend to his case all right,” declared Craig, with confidence. “I’ll tackle the Noda basin next. Flagg must be licked before he’ll sell. He’s that sort. A half lunatic on this independent thing. I reckon you’ll leave it to me, won’t you?”

“We’ll leave all the details of operation in the field to you, Craig,” promised the president. “But you must play safe.”

“I’ll take full responsibility,” affirmed Craig, whose pride had been touched.

“Then we shall continue to value you as our right bower in the north,” said Marlow. “The man on the ground understands the details. We don’t try to follow them here in the home office.”

Craig walked out with Dawes.

“That talk has put the thing up to you square-edged, Craig.”

Craig had been heartened and fortified by the president’s compliments. “Leave it to me!”

CHAPTER THREE

LATISAN had eaten his breakfast in the grill of a big hotel with a vague idea that such an environment would tune him up to meet the magnates of the Comas company.

In his present and humbler state of mind, hungry again, he went into a cafeteria.

Waiting at the counter for his meat stew and tea—familiar woods provender which appealed to his homesickness—he became aware of a young woman at his elbow; she was having difficulty in managing her tray and her belongings. There was an autumn drizzle outside and Ward had stalked along unprotected, with a woodman’s stoicism in regard to wetness. The young woman had her umbrella, a small bag, and a parcel, and she was clinging to all of them, impressed by the “Not Responsible” signs which sprinkled the walls of the place. When her tray tipped at an alarming slant, as she elbowed her way from the crowded counter, Ward caught at its edge and saved a spill.

The girl smiled gratefully.

“If you don’t mind,” he apologized; his own tray was ready. He took that in his free hand. He gently pulled her tray from her unsteady grasp. “I’ll carry it to a table.”

The table section was as crowded as the counter space. He did not offer to sit opposite her at the one vacant table he found; he lingered, however, casting about himself for another seat.

“May I not exchange my hospitality for your courtesy?” inquired the girl. She nodded toward the unoccupied chair and he sat down and thanked her.

She was an extremely self-possessed young woman, who surveyed him frankly with level gaze from her gray eyes.

“You performed very nicely, getting through that crush as you did without spilling anything,” she commended.

“I’ve had plenty of practice.”

She opened her eyes on him by way of a question. “Not as a waiter,” he proceeded. “But with those trays in my hand it was like being on the drive, ramming my way through the gang that was charging the cook tent.”

“The