The Man in the Twilight by Ridgwell Cullum

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Bull did as he was bid. And the missionary's eyes were on the fair head
of the man as he leant down over the smouldering embers stewing his own
meagre midday meal.

Bull Sternford was a creature of vast stature and muscular bulk. It was
no wonder that the redoubtable Laval had run up against defeat. The camp
boss had lived for twenty years the hard life of the forests. His body
was no less great than this man's. His experience in physical battle was
well-nigh unlimited. But so, too, was his debauchery.

Bull Sternford was younger. He was clean and fresh from one of the
finest colleges of the world. He was an athlete by training and nature.
Then, too, his mentality was of that amazing fighting quality which
stirs youth to go out and seek the world rather than vegetate in the
nursery of childhood. It was all there written in his keen, blue eyes,
in the set of his jaws of even white teeth. It was all there in the
muscular set of his great neck, and in the poise of his handsome head,
and in the upright carriage of his breadth of shoulder. Even his walk
was a thing to mark him out from his fellows. It was bold, perhaps even
there was a suggestion of arrogance in it. But it was only the result of
the military straightness of his body.

Little wonder, then, a man of Arden Laval's brutal nature should mark
him down as desired victim. This man was "green." He was educated. He
possessed a spirit worth breaking. Later he would learn. Later he would
become a force in the calling of the woods. Now he would be easy.

The brute had sought every opportunity to bait and goad the man to his
undoing. For months he had "camped on his trail," and Bull had endured.
Then came that moment of the filthy epithet, and Bull's spirit broke
through the bonds of will that held it. The insult had been hurled at
the moment and at the spot where the battle had been fought. Bull had
flung himself forthwith at the throat of the French Canadian almost
before the last syllable of the insult had passed the man's lips. And
the end of nearly a two hours' battle had been the downfall of the
bully, with the name of Bull Sternford hailed as a fighting man in his
place.

The firebrand was passed to the waiting missionary. He sucked in the
pleasant fumes of a lumberman's tobacco. Then the stick was flung back
to its place in the fire.

Father Adam nursed one long leg, which he flung across the other, while
his wide, intelligent eyes gazed squarely into the eyes of the man
opposite.

"Tell me," he said. "What brought you into the life of the woods? What
left you quitting the things I can see civilisation handed you? This is
the life of the wastrel, the fallen, the man who knows no better. It's
not for men starting out in possession of all those things--you have."

Bull sat for a moment without replying. Father Adam's "dope" had done
its work. His passionate moments had vanished like an ugly dream. His
turbulent spirit had attained peace. Suddenly he looked up with a frank
laugh.

"Now, why in hell should I tell you?"

It was an irresistible challenge. The missionary nodded his approval.

"Yes. Why--in hell--should you?"

He, too, laughed. And his laugh miraculously lit up his ascetic
features.

Instantly Bull flung out one bandaged hand in a sweeping gesture.

"Why shouldn't I--anyway?" he cried, with the abandon of a man
impatient of all subterfuge. "Guess I ought to turn right around and ask
who the devil you are to look into my affairs? Who are you to assume the
right of inquisitor?" He shook his head. "But I'm not going to. Now I'm
sane again I know just how much you did for me. I meant killing Laval.
Oh, yes, there wasn't a thing going to break my hold until he was
dead--dead. You got me in time to save me from wrecking my whole life.
And you got in at--the risk of your own. If I'd killed him all the
things and purposes I've worried with since I left college would have
been just so much junk; and I'd have drifted into the life of a bum
lumber-jack without any sort of notion beyond rye whiskey, and the camp
women, and a well swung axe. You saved me from that. You saved me from
myself. Well, you're real welcome to ask me any old thing, and I'll hand
you all the truth there is in me. I'm an 'illegitimate.' I'm one of the
world's friendless. I'm a product of a wealthy man's licence and
unscruple. I'm an outcast amongst the world's honest born. But it's no
matter. I'm not on the squeal. Those who're responsible for my being did
their best to hand me the things a man most needs. Mind, and body, and
will. Further, they gave me all that education, books, and college can
hand a feller. More than that, my father, who seems to have had more
honesty than you'd expect, handed me a settlement of a hundred thousand
dollars the day I became twenty-one. I never knew him, and I never knew
my mother. The circumstances of my birth were simply told me on my
twenty-first birthday. I know no more. And I care nothing to hunt out
those spectres that don't figger to hand a feller much comfort. The rest
is easy. I hope I'm a feller of some guts--"

Father Adam nodded, and his eyes lit.

"Sure," was all he commented.

"Anyway, I feel like it," Bull laughed. "When I learned all these
things I started right in to think. I thought like hell. I said to
myself something like this: 'There's nothing to hold me where I am.
There's no one around to care a curse. There's that feeling right inside
the pit of my stomach makes me feel I want to make good. I want to build
up around me all that my birth has refused me. A name, a life circle, a
power, a--anyway, get right out and do things! Well, what was I going to
do? It needed thinking. Then I hit the notion."

He laughed again. He was gazing in at himself and laughing at the
conceits he knew were real, and strong, and vital.

"Say." He nodded at the prospect through the doorway. "There it is. This
country's beginning. We don't know half it means to the world yet. Well,
I hadn't enough capital to play with, so I resolved right away to start
in and learn a trade from its first step to its topmost rung, and to
earn my keep right through. Meanwhile my capital's lying invested
against the time I open out. I'm going to jump right into the groundwood
pulp business when the time comes. And out of that I mean to build a
name that folks won't easily forget. Well, I guess you won't find much
that's interesting in all this. It don't sound anything particularly
bright or new. But for what it is it's my notion, and--I'm going to put
it through. That's why I'm here. I'm learning my job from the bottom."

The decision and force of the man were remarkable. The conciseness of
his story, and his indifference to the tragedy of his birth, indicated a
level mind under powerful control. And Father Adam knew he had made no
mistake.

"It's the best story I've heard in years," he replied, a whimsical smile
lighting his dark eyes.

"Is it?"

Bull's smile was no less whimsical.

"Yes. You've guts of iron, boy. And I've been looking years for just
such a man."

"That sounds--tough," Bull laughed, but he was interested. "What's the
job you want him for? Are you yearning to hand out a killing? Is it a
trip--a trip to some waste space of God's earth that 'ud freeze up a
normal heart? Do you want a feller to beat the laws of God and man? Guts
of iron! It certainly sounds tough, and I'm not sure you've found the
feller you're needing."

"I am."

Father Adam was no longer smiling. The gravity of his expression gave
emphasis to his words.

Bull was impressed. His laugh died out.

"I don't know I'm yearning," he said deliberately. "Anyway I don't quit
the track I've marked out. That way there's nothing doing. It's a crank
with me; I can't quit a notion."

"You don't have to."

"No?"

They were regarding each other steadily.

"Here, it's not my way to beat around," the missionary exclaimed
suddenly. "When you find the thing you need you've got to act quick and
straight. Just listen a while, while I make a talk. Ask all you need as
I go along. And when I've done I'd thank you for a straight answer and
quick. An answer that'll hold you, and bind you the way your own notions
do."

"That's talk."

Bull nodded appreciatively. The missionary let his gaze wander to the
pleasant sunlight through the doorway, where the flies and mosquitoes
were basking.

"There was a fellow who started up a groundwood mill 'way out on the
Labrador coast. He was bright enough, and a mighty rich man. And he'd
got a notion--a big notion. Well, I know him. I know him intimately. I
don't know if he's a friend to me or not. Sometimes I think he isn't.
Anyway, that doesn't matter to you. The thing that does matter is, he
set out to do something big. His notions were always big. Maybe too big.
This notion was no less than to drive the Skandinavians out of the
groundwood trade of this country. He figured his great mill was to be
the nucleus of an all-Canadian and British combination, embracing the
entire groundwood industry of this country. It was to be Canadian trade
for Canada with the British Empire."

Bull emitted a low whistle.

"An elegant slogan," he commented.

He shifted his position. In his interest his pipe had gone out, and he
leant forward on his upturned box.

"Yes," Father Adam went on. "And, like your notion, it was something not
easily shifted from his mind. It was planned and figured to the last
detail. It was so planned it could not fail. So he thought. So all
concerned thought. You see, he had ten million dollars capital of his
own; and he was something of a genius at figures and finance--his people
reckoned. He was a man of some purpose, and enthusiasm, and--something
else."

"Ah!"

Bull's alert brain was prompt to seize upon the reservation. But denial
was instant.

"No. It wasn't drink, or women, or any foolishness of that sort," the
missionary said. "The whole edifice of his purpose came tumbling about
his ears from a totally unexpected cause. Something happened. Something
happened to the man himself. It was disaster--personal disaster. And
when it came a queer sort of weakness tripped him, a weakness he had
always hitherto had strength to keep under, to stifle. His courage
failed him, and the bottom of his purpose fell out like--that."

Father Adam clipped his fingers in the air and his regretful eyes
conveyed the rest. Then, after a moment, he smiled.

"He'd no--iron guts," he said, with a sigh. "He had no stomach for
battle in face of this--this disaster that hit him."

"It has no relation to his--undertaking?"

"None whatever. I know the whole thing. We were 'intimates.' I know his
whole life story. It was a disaster to shake any man."

The missionary sighed profoundly.

"Yes, I knew him intimately," he went on. "I deplored his weakness. I
censured it. Perhaps I went far beyond any right of mine to condemn. I
don't know. I argued with him. I did all I could to support him. You
see, I appreciated the splendid notion of the thing he contemplated.
More than that, I knew it could be carried out."

He shook his head.

"It was useless. This taint--this yellow streak--was part of the man. He
could no more help it than you could help fighting to the death."

"Queer."

A sort of pitying contempt shone in the younger man's eyes.

"Queer?" Father Adam nodded. "It was--crazy."

"It surely was."

The missionary turned back to the prospect beyond the doorway. But it
was only for a moment. He turned again and went on with added urgency.

"But the scheme wasn't wholly to be abandoned. It was--say, here was the
crazy proposition he put up. You see I was his most intimate friend. He
said: 'The forests are wide. They're peopled with men of our craft.
There must be a hundred and more men capable of doing this thing. Of
putting it through. Well, the forests must provide the man, or the idea
must die.' He said: 'We must find a man!' He said: 'You--you whose
mission it is to roam the length and breadth of these forests--you may
find such a man. If you do--when you do--if it's years hence--send him
along here, and there's ten million dollars waiting for him, and all
this great mill, and these timber limits inexhaustible waiting for him
to go right ahead. It doesn't matter a thing who he is, or what he is,
or where he comes from, so long as he gets this idea--sticks to it
faithfully--and puts it through. I want nothing out of it for myself.
And the day he succeeds in the great idea all that would have been mine
shall be his.'"

As Father Adam finished, he looked into the earnest, wonder-filled eyes
of the other.

"Well?" he demanded.

Bull cleared his throat.

"The mill? Where is it?" He demanded.

"Sachigo. Farewell Cove."

"Sachigo! Why it's--"

"The greatest groundwood mill in the world."

There was a note of pride and triumph in the missionary's tone. But it
passed unheeded. Bull was struggling with recollection.

"This man? Wasn't it Leslie Standing who built it? Didn't it break him
or something? That's the story going round. There was something--"

Father Adam shook his head.

"There's ten million dollars says it didn't. Ten millions you can handle
yourself."

"Gee!"

Bull drew a sharp breath. Strong, forceful as he was the figure was
overwhelming.

"This--all this you're saying--offering? It's all real, true?" Bull
demanded at last.

"All of it."

"You want me to go and take possession of Sachigo, and ten--Say, where's
the catch?"

"There's no 'catch'--anywhere."

The denial was cold. It was almost in the tone of affronted dignity. The
missionary had thrust his hand in a pocket. Now he produced a large,
sealed envelope. Bull's eyes watched the movement, but bewilderment was
still apparent in them. Suddenly he raised a bandaged hand, and smoothed
back his hair.

Father Adam held out the sealed letter. It was addressed to "Bat
Harker," at Sachigo Mill.

"Here," he said quietly. "You're the man with iron guts Leslie Standing
wants for his purpose. Take this. Go right off to Sachigo and take
charge of the greatest enterprise in the world's paper industry. You're
looking to make good. It's your set purpose to make good in the
groundwood industry. Opportunities don't come twice in a lifetime. If
you've the iron courage I believe, you'll grab this chance. You'll grab
it right away. Will you? Can you do it? Have you the nerve?"

There was a taunt in the challenge. It was calculated. There was
something else. The missionary's dark eyes were almost pleading.

Bull seized the letter. He almost snatched it.

"Will I do it? Can I do it? Have I the nerve?" he cried, in a tone of
fierce exulting. "If there's a feller crazy enough to hand me ten
million dollars and trust me with a job--if it was as big as a war
between nations--I'd never squeal. Can I? Will I? Sure I will. And
time'll answer the other for you. Iron guts, eh! I tell you in this
thing they're chilled steel."

"Good!"

Father Adam was smiling. A great relief, a great happiness stirred his
pulses as he stood up and moved over to the miserable fire with its
burden of stewing food.

"Now we'll eat," he said. And he stooped down and stirred the contents
of the pot.

CHAPTER III

BULL LEARNS CONDITIONS

The _Myra_ ploughed her leisurely way up the cove. There was dignity in
the steadiness with which she glided through the still waters. The
cockleshell of the Atlantic billows had become a thing of pride in the
shelter of Farewell Cove. Her predecessor, the _Lizzie_, had never risen
above her humble station.

Her decks were wide and clean. Her smoke-stack had something purposeful
in its proportions. The bridge was set high and possessed a spacious
chart house. She had an air of importance not usual to the humble
coasting packet.

"Old man" Hardy was at his post now. One of his officers occupied the
starboard side of the bridge, while he and another looked out over the
port bow.

"It's a deep water channel," the skipper said, with all a sailor's
appreciation. "That's the merricle that makes this place. It'ud take a
ten-thousand tonner with fathoms to spare right away up to the mooring
berth. Guess Nature meant Sachigo for a real port, but got mussed fixing
the climate."

Bull Sternford was leaning over the rail. For all summer was at its
height the thick pea-jacket he was wearing was welcome enough. His keen
eyes were searching, and no detail of the prospect escaped them. He was
filled with something akin to amazement.

"It compares with the big harbours of the world," he replied. "And I'd
say it's not without advantages many of the finest of 'em lack. Those
headlands we passed away back. Why, the Atlantic couldn't blow a storm
big enough to more than ripple the surface here inside." He laughed.
"What a place to fortify. Think of this in war time, eh?"

The grizzled skipper grinned responsively.

"It's all you reckon," he said. "But she needs humouring. You need to
get this place in winter when ice and snow make it tough. This cove
freezes right around its shores. You'd maybe lay off days to get inside,
only to find yourself snow or fog bound for weeks on end. We make it
because we have to with mails. But you can't run cargo bottoms in
winter. It's a coasting master's job in snow time. It's a life study.
You can get in, and you can get out--if you've nerve. If you're short
that way you'll pile up sure as hell."

He turned away to the chart room, and a moment later the engine-room
telegraph chimed his orders to those below.

Bull was left with his busy thoughts.

It was a remarkable scene. The forest slopes came right down almost to
the water's edge on either hand. They came down from heights that rose
mountainously. And there, all along the foreshore were dotted
timber-built habitations sufficient to shelter hundreds of workers.
Their quality was staunch and picturesque, and pointed much of the
climate rigour they were called upon to endure. But they only formed a
background to, perhaps, the most wonderful sight of all. A road and
trolley car line skirted each foreshore, and the mind behind the
searching eyes was filled with admiration for the skill and enterprise
that had transplanted one of civilisation's most advanced products here
on the desperate coast of Labrador. Many of the forest whispers of
Sachigo had been incredible. But this left the onlooker ready to believe
anything of it.

The mill, and the township surrounding it, were already within view, a
wide-scattered world of buildings, occupying all the lower levels of the
territory on both sides of the mouth of the Beaver River before it rose
to the heights from which its water power fell.

Bull was amazed. And as he gazed, his wonder and admiration were
intensified a hundredfold by his self-interest. This place was to be in
his control, possibly his possession if he made good. He thrust back the
fur cap pressed low on his forehead.

His thought leapt back on the instant to the man who had sent him down
to this Sachigo. Father Adam, with his thin, ascetic features, his long,
dark hair and beard, his tall, spare figure. His patient kindliness and
sympathy, and yet with the will and force behind it which could fling
the muzzle of a gun into a man's face and force obedience. He had sent
him. Why? Because--oh, it was all absurd, unreal. And yet here he was on
the steamer; and there ahead lay the wonders of Sachigo. Well, time
would prove the craziness of it all.

"Makes you wonder, eh?" The coasting skipper was at his side again. "You
know these folks needed big nerve to set up this enterprise. It keeps me
guessing at the limits where man has to quit. I've spent my life on this
darn coast, an' never guessed to see the day when trolley cars 'ud run
on Labrador, and the working folk 'ud sit around in their dandy houses,
with electric light making things comfortable for them, and electric
heat takin' the place of the cordwood stove it seemed to me folk never
could do without. Can you beat it? No. You can't. Nor anyone else."

"Who is it? A corporation?" Bull asked, knowing full well the answer. He
wanted to hear, he wanted to learn all that this man could tell him.

Hardy shook his head.

"Standing," he said. "That was the guy's name who started it all up.
But," he added thoughtfully, "I never rightly knew which feller it was.
If it was Standing, or that tough hoboe feller who calls himself Bat
Harker. They never talk a heap. But since Leslie Standing passed out o'
things eight years back--the time I was first handed command of this
kettle--the mill's jumped out of all notion. Those trolleys," he pointed
at the foreshore of the cove: "They started in to haul the 'hands' to
their work only two years back. I'd say it's Bat Harker. But he looks
more like a longshore tough than a--genius."

He shrugged expressively. Then he shook his head.

"No," he went on. "I don't know a thing but what any guy can learn who
comes along up this coast. I've thought a heap. An', like you, I've ast
questions all the time. But you don't learn a thing of this enterprise
but the things you see. Bat Harker don't ever talk." He laughed in quiet
enjoyment. "He's most like a clam mussed up in a cement bar'l. There
don't seem any clear reason either. The only thing queer to me was
Standing's 'get out.' There was talk then when that happened along. But
it was jest talk. Canteen talk. Something sort of happened. No one
seemed rightly to know. They guessed Bat was a tough guy who'd boosted
him out--some way. Then I heard his wife had quit and he was all broke
up. Then they said he'd made losses of millions on stock market gambles.
But the yarns don't fit. You see, the mill's gone right ahead. The
capital's there, sure. They've just built and built. There's more than
twice the 'hands' there was eight years back. And get a look at the
'bottoms' loading at the wharves. No. Say, when I came aboard the _Myra_
and they scrapped the _Lizzie_, I never guessed to get a full cargo.
Well, I can load right down to the water line for this place alone all
the time. No. Sachigo's a mighty big fixture in the trade of this coast.
It's a swell proposition for us sea folk. It keeps our propellers moving
all the time. They're bright folk, sure."

The old seaman laughed and moved off again to his telegraphs. The
business of running in to the quayside was beginning in earnest.

* * * * *

The hawsers creaked and strained at the bollards. The vessel yawed. Then
she settled at her berth. The engine-room telegraph chimed its final
order, and the vessel's busy heart came to rest. Instantly activity
reigned upon the deck, and the discharge of cargo was in full swing.

Bull Sternford was one of the first to pass down the gangway. Clad in
the pleasant tweeds of civilisation, part hidden under a close-buttoned
pea-jacket, he bulked enormously. His more than six feet of height was
lost against his massive breadth of shoulder. Then, too, his keen face
under a beaver cap, and his shapely head with its mane of hair, were
things to deny his body that attention it might otherwise have
attracted.

For all that, at least one pair of critical eyes lost no detail of his
personality. Bat Harker was unobtrusively standing amongst the piled
bales of groundwood that stacked the wharf from end to end. There was
nothing about him to single him out from those who stood on the quay.
The rough clothing of his original calling was very dear to him, and he
clung to it tenaciously. He seemed to have aged not one whit in the
added eight years. His iron-grey hair was just as thick and colourful as
before. There was no added line in his hard face. His girth was no less
and no more. And his eyes, penetrating, steady, had the same spirit
shining in them.

He had laboured something desperately in the past eight years. With the
passing of Leslie Standing from the life of Sachigo he had realized a
terrible loss. His loss had more than embarrassed him. There was even a
moment when it shook his purpose. But with him Sachigo was a religion,
and his faith saved him. For a while, in both letter and spirit, he
obeyed his orders, and Sachigo stood still. Then his philosophy carried
the day. It was his dictum that no one could stand still on Labrador
without freezing to death. He saw the application of it to his beloved
mill. It must be "forward" or decay. So he scrapped his original orders,
and drove with all his force.

Bull stared about him for the fascination of his journey up the cove was
still on him. His pre-occupation left him watching the hurried, orderly
movement going on about him.

"That all your baggage?"

The demand was harsh, and Bull swung round with a start. He was gazing
down into the upturned face of Bat Harker, who was pointing at the suit
case he was carrying.

"Guess I've a trunk back there in the hold somewhere," Bull replied
indifferently, taking his interrogator for a quayside porter.

"That's all right. I'll have one of the boys tote it up. Best come right
along. It's quite a piece up to the office. You've a letter for me?"

"I've a letter for Mr. Bat Harker."

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