and glanced at the evil face of the hunchback driver he settled himself with a sigh, and thought—
“Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the fact that I’ve been a fool, I am glad that I’m here.”
At noon the road plunged out of the scant jack-pine forest into the gloom of a hemlock swamp. Toppy shuddered as he contemplated what the fate of a man might be who should be unfortunate enough to get lost in that swamp. A mile in the swamp, on a slight knoll, they came to a tiny cabin guarding a gate across the road. An old, bearded woodsman came out of the cabin and opened the gate, and the hunchback pulled up and proceeded to feed his team.
“Dinner’s waiting inside,” called the gate-tender. “Come in and eat, miss—and you, too; I suppose you’re hungry?” he added to Toppy.
“And hurry up, too,” growled the hunchback. “I give you twenty minutes.”
“Thank you very much,” said the girl, diving into her suitcase. “I’ve brought my own lunch.”
She brought out some sandwiches and proceeded to nibble at them without moving from the sleigh. Toppy tumbled into the cabin in company with the hunchback driver. A rough meal was on the table and they fell to without a word. Toppy noticed that the old woodsman sat on a bench near the door where he could keep an eye on the road. Above the bench hung a pair of field-glasses, a repeating shotgun and a high-power Winchester rifle.
“Any hunting around here?” asked Toppy cheerily.
“Sometimes,” said the old watcher with a smile that made Toppy wonder.
He did not pursue the subject, for there was something about the lonely cabin, the bearded old man, and the rifle on the wall that suggested something much more grim than sport.
The driver soon bolted his meal and went back to the sleigh. Toppy followed, and twenty minutes after pulling up they were on the road again. With each mile that they passed now the swamp grew wilder and the gloom of the wilderness more oppressive. To right and left among the trees Toppy made out stretches of open water, great springs and little creeks which never froze and which made the swamp even in Winter a treacherous morass.
Toward the end of the short afternoon the swamp suddenly gave way to a rough, untimbered ridge. Red rocks, which Toppy later learned contained iron ore, poked their way like jagged teeth through the snow. The sleigh mounted the ridge, the runners grating on bare rock and dirt, dipped down into a ravine between two ridges, swung off almost at right angles in a cleft in the hills—and before Toppy realised that the end of the drive had come, they were in full view of a large group of log buildings on the edge of a dense pine forest and were listening to the roar of the waters of Cameron Dam.
CHAPTER IV—“HELL-CAMP” REIVERS
In the face of things there was nothing about the place to suggest that it deserved the title of Hell Camp. The Cameron Dam Camp, as Toppy saw it now, consisted of seven neat log buildings. Of these the first six were located on the road which led into the camp, three on each side. These buildings were twice as large as the ordinary log buildings which Toppy had seen in the woods; but they were thoroughly dwarfed and overshadowed by the seventh, which lay beyond them, and into the enormous doorway of which the road seemed to disappear. This building was larger than the other six combined—was built of huge logs, apparently fifteen feet high; and its wall, which stretched across the road, seemed to have no windows or openings of any kind save a great double door.
Toppy had no time for a careful scrutiny of the place, as the hunchback swiftly pulled up before the first building of the camp, a well-built double-log affair with large front windows and a small sign, “Office and Store.” Directly across the road from this building was one bearing the sign, “Blacksmith Shop,” and Toppy gazed with keen curiosity at a short man with white hair and broad shoulders who, with a blacksmith’s hammer in his hand, came to the door of the shop as they drove up. Probably this was the man for whom he was to work.
“Hey, Jerry,” greeted the blacksmith with a burr in his speech that labelled him unmistakably as a Scot.
“Hey, Scotty,” replied the hunchback.
“Did ye bring me a helper?”
“Yes,” grunted Jerry.
“Good!” said the blacksmith, and returned to his anvil.
The hunchback turned to the girl as soon as the team had come to a standstill.
“This is where you go,” he said, indicating the office with a nod. “You,” he grunted to Toppy, “sit right where you are till we go see the boss.”
An Indian squaw, nearly as broad as she was tall, came waddling out of the store as Miss Pearson stepped stiffly from the sleigh. Toppy wished for courage to get out and carry the girl’s suitcase, but he feared that his action would be misinterpreted; so he sat still, eagerly watching out of the corner of his eyes.
“I carry um,” said the squaw as the girl dragged forth her baggage. “You go in.”
Then the sleigh drove abruptly ahead toward the great building at the end of the road, and Toppy’s final view of the scene was Miss Pearson stumping stiffly into the office-building with the squaw, the suitcase held in her arms, waddling behind. Miss Pearson did not look in his direction.
And now Toppy had his first shock. For he saw that the building toward which they were hurrying was not a building at all, but merely a stockade-wall, which seemed to surround all of the camp except the six buildings which were outside. What he had thought a huge doorway was in reality a great gate.
This gate swung open at their approach, and Toppy’s second shock came when he saw that the two hard-faced men who opened it carried in the crooks of their arms wicked-looking, short-barrelled repeating shotguns. One of the men caught the horses by the head as soon as they were through the gate, and brought them to a dead stop, while the other closed the gate behind them.
“Can’t you see the boss is busy?” snapped the man who had stopped the team. “You wait right here till he’s through.”
Toppy now saw that they had driven into a quadrangle, three sides of which were composed of long, low, log buildings with doors and windows cut at frequent intervals, the fourth side being formed by the stockade-wall through which they had just passed. The open space which thus lay between four walls of solid logs was perhaps fifty yards long by twenty-five yards wide. In his first swift sight of the place Toppy saw that, with the stockade-gate closed and two men with riot-guns on guard, the place was nothing more nor less than an effective prison. Then his attention was riveted spellbound by what was taking place in the yard.
On the sunny side of the yard a group of probably a dozen men were huddled against the log wall. Two things struck Toppy as he looked at them—their similarity to the group of Slavs he had seen back in Rail Head, and the complete terror in their faces as they cringed tightly against the log wall. Perhaps ten feet in front of them, and facing them, stood a man alone. And Toppy, as he beheld the terror with which the dozen shrank back from the one, and as he looked at the man, knew that he was looking upon Hell-Camp Reivers, the man who was called The Snow-Burner.
Toppy Treplin was not an impressionable young man. He had lived much and swiftly and among many kinds of men, and it took something remarkable in the man-line to surprise him. But the sight of Reivers brought from him a start, and he sat staring, completely fascinated by the Manager’s presence.
It was not the size of Reivers that held him, for Toppy at first glance judged correctly that Reivers and himself might have come from the same mold so far as height and weight were concerned. Neither was it the terrible physical power which fairly reeked from the man; for though Reivers’ rough clothing seemed merely light draperies on the huge muscles that lay beneath, Toppy had played with strong men, professionals and amateurs, enough to be blasé in the face