Wolf's Head (A Neal Fargo Adventure--Book Seven) Page 5

  Hoskins’ hand was hard and strong; the tremendous muscles required for his job—the hardest, most dangerous in logging—rippled under his shirt. But his smile was warm, friendly, and unassuming. “Glad to know you, Fargo.” Then his eyes widened, “Ah hah, looks like we got company.”

  Fargo followed the direction of his gaze. Two riders had splashed across the shallows below the dam; now their horses crested the edge of the bank and loped toward the wagons. One was a burly man in his mid-forties, in a battered Forest Service hat, not unlike Fargo’s cavalry hat, mackinaw, and jodhpurs. The girl beside him wore a jacket, tight blue jeans, and her coppery hair glinted in the sun. When they pulled up alongside the wagon Fargo got a better look at her and whistled soundlessly.

  Jonah, Hotchkiss had said. Right, Fargo thought. Any girl that looks like that in a camp full of horny men is about the worst bad medicine there is.

  As if to underscore the thought, she took off her jacket and stuffed it between her thighs and the saddle horn, as Fargo’s eyes raked over big round breasts bulging against a shirt just a shade too tight—and deliberately so. He heard Milligan make a sound in his throat, and Hoskins was beginning to wear a silly smile. “Hello, Miss Mannix,” he said.

  She looked at the men in the wagon and smiled back. Her hair was indeed the color of copper, with maybe a tinge of gold. Her forehead was high, eyes huge and sea green, with long lashes; her skin ivory, her nose short and straight, her mouth lush and red. She drew in a breath that made the breasts move under the straining fabric, shifted one superb leg, not an inch of its outline blurred by denim that might have been painted on. “Hello, boys,” She sat like that, almost posing, for a second more—giving us all a thrill, Fargo thought wryly—and then she spurred up to rein in beside her father.

  “Thought I’d be on hand when you start the new side, Duke.” Mannix’s voice was deep. “Barbara always likes to watch the high-climber work, anyhow.”

  “That’s the Government Inspector,” Milligan whispered to Fargo. “Forest Service.”

  “Glad to have yuh, Mannix,” Hotchkiss rumbled. “Okay, let’s move out!”

  The wagons lumbered ahead. They entered a road that led through forest where raw stumps gleamed—the butts of giant firs that had taken hundreds of years to attain their soaring heights of up to two hundred feet. Now they were gone, to be turned into houses for an exploding population that, Fargo thought bitterly, was eating up the wilderness like a bunch of termites. Or like sheep, he thought with the wolf’s contempt for animals that could be herded. Again Fargo felt sympathy with The Colonel’s concern for the cutting of this tract. When he’d been President, The Colonel had, in 1907, established the first system of National Forests, setting aside sixteen million acres in six far Western states. This was part of it; The Colonel hated to see it logged at all, but if it had to be logged, better that it be done right.

  Hotchkiss and MacKenzie had been doing it right so far. They’d got the timber out, Fargo noted, with the minimum amount of destruction of the remaining woods. Again his mouth twisted, thinking of what he knew of Saul Lasher’s method of operation. This vast tract of fir was worth a fortune but it would be worth double to Lasher what MacKenzie would get from it. Lasher would cut everything that could possibly be worth a nickel and rip up the rest getting out his cut. That way he’d double MacKenzie’s quarter of a million, maybe triple it—and a man like Saul Lasher would stop at nothing for money like that. Fargo knew what Milligan had meant. Along with the sharp, clean tang of fir, it seemed to him he could smell trouble, bitter and acrid, like the taint of a distant, invisible fire …

  As the wagon lurched over the rough road, straining uphill, then banging down steep slopes, the girl let her mount drop back slightly. She wanted to give the men another good look at her, Fargo guessed. He took one, raking his eyes insolently over her from head to toe, letting them pause at the bouncing breasts joggling to the gait of her horse, the rounded rump planted in the saddle. She felt the pressure of his eyes, and when he looked up again her own were fastened on his scarred and ugly face. Something seemed to swirl in them as he met them directly, and he thought she smiled faintly, and not without invitation.

  Presently they entered a level, cut-over clearing of considerable size within a great, forested bowl. Here sat the yarder, a big donkey engine on skids, its several drums wound with heavy cables. Its operator and fireman had already gotten up steam and it was chugging rhythmically.

  “We’ll skid the yarder into place first!” Duke called out as the teams stopped. After that, for a long time, the morning was a nightmare.

  The loggers had eaten out all the timber around the clearing. The spar tree, naked now of the blocks and cables that had formerly been rigged on it, towered nearly two hundred feet into the air. Presently it would be taken down, converted into lumber, but for the moment it would still be needed, later. Meanwhile, the donkey engine had to be gotten to the new location where the cutting was to take place.

  That was accomplished by letting it winch itself along with its own cables, fastened to trees ahead of it. But a path had to be cleared for it, and, as Hotchkiss had warned, this country was all straight up and down. They spent four hours moving the donkey, downhill and up, with Duke yelling and driving like a madman and Fargo re-establishing his acquaintance with an ax and cross cut.

  He was thoroughly expert with both, but they used special muscles, certain ones he had not called into play in years. He knew he had put in a morning’s work by the time Hotchkiss was satisfied. When the wagon from the cook shack came with hot tea and coffee and huge meat sandwiches, he was ready for the chow. Soaked in sweat, he sat cross-legged with Milligan and Hoskins under a huge fir and wolfed the food ravenously.

  Then a shadow fell across him, and, surprisingly, he thought he caught a tinge of perfume. He looked up to see Barbara Mannix standing over them, cup in one hand, sandwich in the other. “Hello, boys,” she said in a deep and husky voice. “Would it jinx you if I ate here?”

  Milligan blinked his eyes. “Duke might not like it much ...”

  She laughed and sat down cross-legged, soft flesh of thighs straining at the tight denim. “I can handle Duke.” Her green eyes went to Fargo. “You’re new.”

  “That’s right.” He met her gaze levelly.

  “White haired. You’re not that old.”

  “I’ve led a hard life,” he said.

  She nodded, almost seriously. “I’ll bet you have. You look it. You look tough as nails. Funny, though. Those legs of yours. You look more like a rider than a lumberjack.”

  “I’ve done a lot of things in my time,” said Fargo.

  “And will probably do more,” She smiled, showing small white teeth. Then she turned to Hoskins, who immediately smiled that silly grin again.

  “Chuck, you’re going to put on a show?”

  “Well, ma’am, I’m gonna top a spar tree if that’s a show.”

  “It’s the best show I know of.” She put out a hand, touched his belt and coiled rope and spikes. “To go two hundred feet up, work there with nothing to hold you but these. I’d love to try it sometime. I don’t know how you can possibly do it.” She finished her sandwich, washed it down with a swallow of coffee and set down her cup. She picked up one of the heavy climbing irons. “How does it go on?” she asked, trying to fit her own booted foot into it. “Like this?”

  “You’ve got it wrong side to,” said Hoskins, his lean face brick red.

  “Then show me the right way. Maybe someday I’ll be the world’s only female high-climber.” She smiled at Fargo. “You see, I’m sort of the mascot of this outfit.”

  “I can imagine,” said Fargo thinly.

  But Hoskins had laid his food aside. When Barbara Mannix held out one small foot, he almost leaped at the opportunity to show her how the climbing iron should fit. He lashed it into place.

  She held up the other foot. “Now, the left one.”

  He put that one on, too. She got to her feet
awkwardly, holding her legs apart to clear the in-pointed spikes. The way she stood emphasized the swell of buttocks beneath the denim, and Fargo heard Hoskins draw in a quick breath. Barbara bent, picked up the leather tool belt and the rope. “Show me how this works.”

  “Chuck,” said Jerry Milligan warningly, with a glance toward Duke Hotchkiss. But the Duke was hunkered down with the girl’s father, deep in conversation. Hoskins disregarded Milligan; his huge hands shook as he buckled the heavy belt around the girl’s slender waist, showed her how to snap on one end of the climbing rope.

  She ran her hands along it, then went to a small spruce nearby. “Like this?” She looped the rope around the trunk, latched the other end. Then, wrapping her arms around the tree, she tried to sink in the spike, failed, fell back, laughing, into Hoskins’ waiting arms. Fargo did not miss how she leaned into his embrace for a split second longer than necessary to gain her balance. Then she straightened up, pulled free. “Unharness me, Chuck. I’ll never make a high-climber.”

  No, thought Fargo, but you tried hard enough.

  When she had the gear off she sat down again and drained the coffee cup. “Don’t you get afraid so high in the air?” she asked Hoskins. “What would happen if the rope broke?”

  He grinned, “I might come down awful quick. But that rope ain’t gonna break. I checked it this mornin’ myself; I always check it every mornin’, even if I did the night before. It’ll hold an elephant. The only thing I got to worry about is accidentally cuttin’ it when I’m trimmin’ limbs.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of that?”

  Hoskins laughed. “Not hardly. I been toppin’ timber fer nearly fifteen years. I ain’t come close yet.”

  The girl’s face turned serious. “All the same, Chuck,” and she put a hand on his, “be careful when you’re up there. Sometimes my heart just stops when I see you up there; it stops and doesn’t start again until you’re down safely.”

  Hoskins’ face reddened deeper. “Golly, Miss Barbara—”

  “Barbara!” The summons rang out clearly in the noon silence. Mannix had gotten to his feet. He strode over to her, and Fargo saw him close up for the first time. He saw angry black eyes beneath heavy brows, a nose like a blade, the thin blue veins of the drinking man webbed through the cheeks, the mouth like a slash. Mannix seized his daughter’s wrist, jerked her roughly to her feet. “Listen—” His fierce eyes swept over the trio, Fargo, Milligan, and Hoskins without apology for the interruption. “You know what I told you!”

  “Dad!” She twisted in his grasp. “You’re hurting me.”

  “I’ll hurt you worse if you don’t start listening to what I tell you.” He shoved her roughly across the clearing in which they had halted, sat her down hard beside the tethered horses. “You stay there.” She looked after him with swirling eyes as he went back to Hotchkiss, squatted, and they conferred for a moment more.

  Then the Duke jumped to his feet. “All right, you plow-jockies! You’ve had your break! Time to hit the woods!”

  Chapter Five

  An hour later they were in virgin timber. The huge firs soared up on every side. One among them was a giant, towering fifty feet above its fellows.

  Duke pointed toward its top. “There,” he said. “That’s our spar.”

  Hoskins looped upward, nodded, coolly spat tobacco juice. “Right enough. She’s a beauty.”

  She was indeed, Fargo thought. Rig an enormous bull-block up there at its top, run heavy cables through it and the other rigging, cinch the chokers feeding off of them around the timber the fallers would cut down and the buckers cut up into thirty or forty-foot lengths, let the yarder man reel in his cables, and you could walk a long stick of timber through the trees at the end of a cable like a big fish being hauled in on a line. Re-rig to another cable, another spar and keep it walking until it reached the bank of the Wolf’s Head where it would slide down the chute and join its fellows for the drive. Mechanized logging, high-lead logging. About the only way to get the timber out of such mountains, and a far cry from the old days of skidding each stick out behind straining mules or oxen.

  But even more dangerous than the old method. In the old days, there were no steel cables under high tension that might snap, chopping down anything of flesh in their paths. No boilers to blow, no high-climbing … Add those to the dangers of falling trees and glancing axes, combine the hell-for-leather business of balancing on a log while it swirled down a roaring stream at flood time, and you had the most dangerous industry in the world. Even under the best of circumstances logging killed men or crippled them; and this, everyone had said, was a jinxed job.

  But if Hoskins had any reservations he didn’t show them. Until he topped the spar tree there was nothing for the rest of the crew to do; besides, this was a show that all were entitled to watch. Fargo admired the coolness with which the tall man strapped on his climbing irons, cinched on his belt, fastening ax and saw, and locked the end of the safety rope before he threw it around the gigantic trunk. Fargo had faced nearly every imaginable danger in all parts of the world but the only thing that truly frightened him was height. He had an inborn fear of high places. It was something instinctive that he had trained himself to overcome but, even mastering it, he never felt at home high up. He had done high climbing himself and for all he knew, he might be as expert at it as Hoskins. But for him it was a serious matter requiring a supreme act of will, while Hoskins, obviously indifferent to height, might have been getting duded up for a Sunday afternoon drive with his girl. Now Chuck accepted the other end of the safety rope, which was also an aid in climbing such an enormous trunk. Hotchkiss handed it to him and Chuck fastened it tightly, and then all conversation died as he raised a leg, took a strain, and sank the climbing iron on his right leg into the soft fir. Then, like a monkey or a telephone lineman going up a pole, he climbed.

  His speed was fantastic, and the hush over the clearing persisted as he scaled seventy feet up to the lower branches. Fargo’s eyes flickered to Barbara Mannix across the clearing beside her father. Her face was turned up, her breasts rose and fell magnificently under her shirt. Danger, Fargo thought. Danger stoked her furnace. He grinned wryly, then watched Hoskins again.

  Now the high-climber had reached the first branches. He leaned back against the rope, balanced on his spikes; the ax-blade gleaming as he began to chip. The first small limbs drifted to earth.

  Chuck went higher. Now the branches were bigger. But he was expert with his tools and unconcerned about working almost a hundred feet above the ground. He was, thought Fargo, who knew the demands this work made, a genius at his trade. Huge limbs were crashing down now, their butts as thick as the very trunks of shade trees on the lawns of people who lived in town. Ax and saw, ax and saw … Slowly Hoskins cleared the trunk. Now he was hardly more than forty feet from the top. Another twenty and he’d halt, cut off the limber end of the trunk—and then would come the time of maximum danger. Nearly two hundred feet up, if he misjudged his cut, the treetop pitched the wrong way, crashed down upon him—well, then, Fargo thought, he was finished.

  He was glad that tiny figure up there moving monkey-like was Hoskins and not himself.

  Chuck moved up another three feet. Now a huge limb blocked his way. He unslung his ax, got ready for a beginning cut. Fargo saw the double-bitted blade gleam as it swung out, chopping in. The blade moved rhythmically, a shining arc, too fast for the eye to follow …

  Then something happened, Fargo had no idea what, Chuck was cutting too fast to tell. But something. He saw the long, lean body give a strange lurch. Then Hoskins reached out with one hand, desperately trying to embrace the trunk. He missed his grip; the ax dropped, came hurtling down. Then Fargo saw the loose end of the severed rope flashing.

  “Jesus Christ,” breathed Milligan. “He cut his climbin’ rope!”

  The chopped rope fell free. Now Hoskins hugged with both arms, but he was off balance, had been, in mid-stroke. Inexorably, his own weight threw him outward. He turned on
the climbing spikes as if they were an axle. He hung head downward. They heard him scream.

  Then he fell.

  He screamed all the way down.

  More than one hundred and fifty feet.

  His body made a sickening sound when it landed in the forest duff.

  Barbara Mannix screamed, too. She had, Fargo realized, been screaming as Hoskins fell, and she went on screaming when he hit.

  All the men rushed forward. Fargo shoved past the others, reached the inner circle around what had been Chuck Hoskins as Duke Hotchkiss bent over the mangled body. Fargo saw the one leg had been totally twisted and fractured; the razor-sharp climbing spike had come up on its weirdly cramped length and was rammed through Hoskins’ belly. But that had not been what killed him. The fall had done that.

  Duke looked down at his man with a strangely impassive face. Then a touch of sadness registered as he stood up. “Good God,” he husked. “An old hand like him cutting his own climbing rope. Good God ...” He shook his head, turned away, back to Fargo. Fargo saw the broad, enormous shoulders tremble. But when the Duke turned, his face was hard, composed.

  “That tears it,” he said. “We can’t open up this Side until I can get back to Seattle and hire another high-climber.” He struck his iron-hard thigh. “Goddammit! Another four, five days delay, anyhow, for a third of our operation. And as bad as we need to pile up the timber—” His eyes swept over the crew. “But there ain’t another high-climber in the whole damned camp!”

  For Fargo, it was almost as if a great hand propelled him forward. “Yes,” he heard himself say. “There is.”

  Duke started at him. “You? You can top a spar tree?”

  “I’ve done it before.”

  “It’s no job for an amateur,” Duke rapped.

  “I ain’t,” said Fargo, “an amateur.”

  Hotchkiss kept on staring. “You mean you want to go up there?” He gestured.

  “When we get another climbing rope,” said Fargo.