Tongues of Flame

Front matter

Tongues of Flame

By Peter Clark MacFarlane Author of "Man's Country", etc.

Illustrations by Walt Louderback

Chapter 1

THE conversation was taking place in Henry Harrington's law office—a not particularly prosperous-looking law office, with the usual sheepskin volumes rather meager upon the shelves. The room boasted one window. Against the side of this window Harrington leaned, a tall half-indolent figure in a gray serge suit which fitted loosely yet revealed the army training of the frame beneath.

The Harrington features were regularly chiseled and inclined to leanness, with a streak of humor showing in the mouth and a play of it in the keen gray eyes that looked out under bushy brows which beetled slightly; while the nose and chin both indicated force enough when the nature behind them was roused. Just now it was quite unroused. Not one of the brown hairs in the Harrington head was out of place; the long white line of the part upon the left stood neat and perfectly ordered, thus completing the contrast between a rather immaculate personal appearance and the general untidiness of desk and office.

"It's quite a show, Henry," urged Charlie Clayton.

Harrington's lip curled, half-humorously, half-cynically, and a far-away look got into his eye while his gesture seemed to dismiss the whole world and even life itself from consideration. "There never was but one big show, Charlie, in the history of the whole world," he said, "and I was in that, thank God!"

"And it's ruined you, Henry!" accused Clayton. "Here you are, a young fellow with all sorts of stuff in you, mooning around, going stale on life because you think you've seen all of life there is—all the emotions, all the thrills—and that everything is now anticlimax. You make me sick, Henry; you do for a fact. Your men, they tell me, used to call you 'Hellfire' Harrington; but you're tame as a pussycat now, feeding yourself up on this all-in-the-past stuff. I tell you, old man, these three towns are full of good fights right now if you'd only wake up and hop into a few of them. Why, you could win in a walk from this assembly district, and with me from the other and Madden in the senate, we could form a little triumvirate that would take care of the three towns like an old maid taking care of her cat. Besides, it's a big show, I tell you—this state legislature; out of it come the governors, the congressmen and senators—jobs that lead to the biggest show."

"You're right, old-timer, no doubt," admitted Harrington wearily, "but I can't seem to help it. My emotions have been pumped out so they don't come back. God! it's an awful feeling to realize that at thirty everything's behind you."

Clayton laughed satirically and tried another bait.

"Well, if you won't consider the legislature, let's abandon practical things and consider esthetic ones. Let's consider woman—and the fairest of her kind!"

"I'm off of 'em!" Harrington declared.

"Billie Boland is coming home today—prettiest girl west of the Rockies!" tantalized Clayton.

Billie Boland? Daughter of John Boland, of course. Harrington turned his glance out the window and the name of Boland smote him every where. His eyes were peering into the busiest street of a harbor town on the west coast of the United States. The street was wide. Upon its left-hand side as Harrington gazed, were two- and three-floor store and office buildings, while upon the other was a line of wharves and docks with long warehouses squat upon them and here and there smoke-stacks and masts sticking up above, with the gleam of a tidal stream behind.

Across this stream was a line of sawmills with vast acres of log booms, broken into at intervals by areas of wharfing upon which piles of lumber or shingles gleamed yellow or glowed dull red in the sunshine.

This was the town of Edgewater that Henry Harrington looked out upon—Edgewater which called itself a city, for was it not hustling and bustling with the energies of twenty thousand souls and pregnant with the harnessed industries of a group of great corporations—the John Boland corporations?

There was the Boland Mill and Lumber Company which operated the lumber mills; there was the Boland Cedar Company, which made the shingles; there was the Boland Logging Company which operated railroads that went nosing up into the hills and snaked out the raw material of both the lumber and the shingles.

There was the Boland Fisheries Corporation that gathered salmon from the nearby waters and cod from far-off Alaska and smoked or packed them on the wharves; there was the Boland Navigation Company that carried Boland products to the distant corners of the globe and operated as well the busy ferryboats upon the tidal stream; there were also the interurban trolley line and other minor tributaries and feeders to the larger corporations. There was finally the huge parent corporation called Boland General.

And last of all, dominating all, creating and energizing all, was John Boland himself, a man in the later fifties with a brow like Napoleon and recessed peering eyes, whose boast it was that where one of his corporations went in, two blades of grass began at once to grow where one had grown before. He boasted this so many times that his intimates began to speak of him humorously at first and afterwards affectionately, as "Old Two Blades."

And the people of the three towns, Edgewater, Socatullo and Wahpeetah—his towns that he had created—were proud of him also. Was he not their patron saint? Was he not first in every good work in the community—the public libraries, the hospitals, the community centers, with gymnasium and playground and athletic field attachments, all to keep the people, young and old, amused and entertained and contented and out of mischief—were they not all in a large sense monuments to his generosity and foresight? They were.

Why, not even a butcher's boy in any of the three towns could display talent in business but the Boland corporations sought him out, attached him to their enterprises and hung glittering baits before him—gave him a chance, an incentive to rise. And they were hanging glittering baits before Henry Harrington this morning. Some argus eye of Boland General had noted Henry and coveted him.

But Charlie Clayton, handy messenger of the Boland interests, had failed entirely to excite the cupidity of his friend. Chagrined, he sought revenge by tantalizing him with a gust of his own enthusiasm for Billie Boland, of whom Harrington, but two years resident of the community, could be presumed to know nothing.

"Billie's smart, you know," he was blurbing, "got sense—common sense, I mean—business sense. She'll inherit the old man's millions and she'll know how to handle 'em too. She handles everybody, Billie does. Grew up in Edgewater—a typical darling of the town. Off in Europe since the war closed. Democratic to the heels, Billie is. She used to be a good deal of a tomboy and if she's anything like the old Billie, with all the tricks she's learned abroad and probably with two or three counts and dukes trailing at her heels, she'll give this town the thrill of its young life from the moment she strikes it. There's a reception for her at the Country Club this afternoon. You better horn in. Everybody's welcome."

This speech drew Henry away from the window but the expression on his face was one of mild annoyance. "For one thing I especially dislike managing women," he frowned; "and for another"—he waved his hand with that same gesture of dismissal which he had employed before—"I've seen 'em all."

"Not till you've seen Billie Boland, you haven't," challenged Clayton as he rose to his feet.

Henry's answer was a shrug. "Your idea is to marry her, I suppose," he commented, casually, filling his pipe.

Clayton became suddenly serious. "I'd jump at the chance. All those good looks—all those millions!"

"I wish you luck, Charlie, old man," smiled Henry, offering a hearty hand.

"Thanks, Henry, you good old stiff," said Clayton, and then, laying a hand affectionately upon Harrington's shoulder as his glance swept the room, presumed to give some serious advice. "Let me tell you something, Henry, pal of mine. You ought to be more thrifty. Youth is slipping along. You're not making money enough. You're wasting pretty decent talent on a lot of rag-tag and bob-tailed cases."

"Oh, I don't know." Harrington's expression was thoughtful again. "I make enough for my wants," he defended, slipping down in his chair. "I'm lazy, you know, along with the rest. I've made the supreme physical effort of my life along with the emotional. I shall never get over being tired. I don't want to work hard. I don't want to get on. I only want to get by, Charlie, and I take only the kind of cases that—well, I couldn't tell you why I take a single darned one of them." He confessed this, looking quite surprised with himself. "I couldn't really."

Clayton, pushing and practical, gazed a moment perplexed, and then his features broke up in hearty laughter. "You win, Henry," he cried. "You're just the most truthful darned soul in the world and the most modest. That's why people like you so and they see through your modesty; they know you're a lot bigger and better man than you think you are."

Henry looked puzzled by this speech and embarrassed. "You don't mean, Charlie2" he began to inquire, and then stopped as if perceiving that vanity was about to trick him into reprehensible loquacity. "How about a little game of draw tonight?" he asked.

"Fine," ejaculated Clayton, his face lighting with instant acquiescence.

"About eight-thirty?"

"You're on. Shows that even if you won't go to the legislature with me, at least you'll play poker with me."

"And thereby sadly deplete your campaign fund," smiled Henry.

Clayton laughed also and passed out through the anteroom where a man with a silver button in his lapel, with one trouser-leg pinned up and a crutch at his side, sat before a typewriter. Several persons were waiting in this anteroom; two were young men, one of these a cripple, the other tubercular; each wore the Loyal Legion button; each eyed wistfully the door Clayton had closed behind him. But besides these two there was a meek, worried-looking man of Scandinavian type with an expression of mild wonder in his blue eyes.

"Not a fifty-dollar fee in the lot," Charles was commenting, and then his roving eye halted, wavered and retreated before the innocent, appraising glance of a young woman.

"What a pippin!" he blurted, once outside. "Gosh! If a dream like her needs legal advice why didn't somebody hand her my card?"

Harrington, crowding more tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and refraining from touching the button that would tell Sergeant Thorpe he was ready to receive clients, was meditating what Charlie had said to him. It was true that life was running along, true that he was unthrifty; that his luck—or his disposition—did not run to making money. He did not get that kind of case somehow.

The poor, the outclassed, the financially unimportant it was who had the habit of dragging their causes like foundlings to his door; and he had a habit of taking them when something about the prospective client moved his pity, or something in the issue outraged his sense of justice, rather than because of any prospect of gain.

Chapter 2

HARRINGTON reached out and touched the button and began to get through with his callers.

Quickly but considerately, although with that slightly bored air which characterized his manner, he dealt with each.

A certain accumulated atmosphere of misery and gloom, these clients left behind them; then all at once sweetness and light came in, dispelling the gloom as the morning sun dispels a fog. The young woman had entered. She presented quite as much beauty to Henry's gaze as she had to Charlie Clayton's, only Harrington was not so much impressed by beauty.

The young lady was not over five feet and an inch. She wore a belted suit of some tan shade, with brown silk stockings and oxfords that matched. She was unmistakably Caucasian and yet there was something about her just as unmistakably not Caucasian.

"Kanaka strain—Kanaka away up here where the Japan Current comes down," thought Henry to himself as he noted the spun jet gloss of her hair.

"Mr. Harrington?" the girl inquired in a voice that was low and rich and carried the slightest possible trace of accent.

"I am Henry Harrington," said the young lawyer, rising politely, while noticing that his visitor's expression beneath its mask of modest beauty was wistful and concerned. "Will you be seated?"

The young lady advanced but instead of sitting down immediately, stood with a certain something of the wild in the intentness of her scrutiny. "I am Miss Marceau," she vouchsafed; "teacher of the Indian School at Shell Point."

"Yes?" encouraged Henry. "Won't you please be seated?"

Miss Marceau decided that she would, and the big velvety black eyes rested upon the lawyer's face concernedly while she announced surprisingly: "I have come to you because you are the one man in this community who is not afraid of John Boland."

This was a compliment in an absurdity—for who that was honest would be afraid of John Boland?

"How did you guess it?" the lawyer bantered, frankly amused.

But the young woman was not amused at all. "Because I know that you are not afraid of anything," she returned with simple seriousness. "Some of the Indians who were in your company in the war are in my school now—Adam John and others, grown men struggling among the youngsters for more of the white man's knowledge—and they call you Hellfire Harrington."

Henry laughed blushingly.

"You do not look like Hellfire now," observed the young lady almost disappointedly.

"I guess I'm not, any more," chuckled Harrington. "I guess I never was," he deprecated. "Besides, let me assure you that it requires no special brand of courage not to be afraid of Mr. Boland."

The pretty little woman in the chair looked stubbornly doubtful. "Oh, I don't know," she almost shivered, as if under the spell of some intuitional awe; "Mr. Boland has very great power and he mistakes his will for God's sometimes, don't you think?"

This conceit was so quaint that Henry had to smile again. This woman-girl or girl-woman—she looked eighteen but must have been twenty-four—was an odd piece certainly. She proved it now: "Someone will have to stand up against John Boland some day," she prophesied gravely, "and that someone will have to be very strong. It has seemed to me that that someone might be you."

"But why ever, Miss Marceau, should you think it might be necessary for anyone to stand up against Mr. Boland?"

"But if it ever should be necessary," his caller persisted, "as a matter of truth and justice—for someone to stand up against him . . ."

There was a charm so irresistible about the young woman's exhibition of concern, that Harrington felt compelled to humor her by entertaining this preposterous conception. "Why, it would be some fight," he smiled. "Some fight!" His lids lowered and his glance became far-away as his imagination kindled with a fighting man's love of conflict. Unconsciously he turned from Miss Marceau and gazed into the street and along the line of wharves and warehouses. Every where he looked he saw, as before, the name of Boland—Boland this and Boland that. It was written over all the town.

And the spirit of Boland went even where the name did not. It stalked along the pavements; it reigned in the lives of the people around. If any man ever did stand up to oppose John Boland in this community—one lone little man against the massed might of Boland General, well, the little man would know he had been in a fight, all right.

The vernacular of Harrington's thought portrayed exactly that kind of hopeless odds which alone could have challenged the imagination of one who thought that all his great fights were behind him; and it fascinated him whimsically until his mind was side-tracked by something unusual that his eyes fell upon.

The ferryboat Salmon Queen was just discharging a load of passengers, apparently amid considerable excitement. The center of this excitement was a very shiny open automobile in a very extreme design. As this car rolled off on to the dock a crowd pressed round waving hats and handkerchiefs and hands. If Harrington had been sufficiently interested to raise the window he would have heard cries of "Billie!" "Billie!" "Hello, Billie!" "Welcome home, Billie!" with notes of affection in these greetings.

But he was not sufficiently interested. He only took account of what he saw—a John Boland automobile and in the rear seat the tall chesty figure of Mr. Boland himself with his full-fed wife beside him; and a standing, gesticulating, girlish figure in the front seat at whom everybody was waving and shouting.

The girl had a spirited bearing, he conceded at once. There was an audacious poise to her head, which was crowned by a small hat with a long rakish plume that swept down over a black circular cape of military cut, thrown back over the left shoulder to reveal a bright blue facing, thus imparting a swaggerish, blue-devil effect. As the car rolled slowly forward she steadied herself with one hand upon the wind-shield while the other waved to the enthusiastic group of welcomers.

"You must be seeing something very interesting," commented a demure voice from the chair beside the desk.

"Oh, I beg your pardon!" exclaimed the lawyer, conscience-stricken, instantly recalling his mind and his eye. "No; a train of thought—rather," he dissembled. "I was just thinking how odd it would seem to be fighting John Boland, and why on earth anybody should think of doing such a thing."

"The Shell Point Indians believe he is planning to rob them of their land," announced the teacher of the Government School.

"Rob them?" inquired Henry with a certain indignation. "Why, that, Miss Marceau, is absurd. Mr. Boland is the soul of business honor."

"My Indians—I call them that—have an unexplained fear of John Boland, almost traditional, it seems," expounded Miss Marceau. "They mutter vague hints that Indian rights have suffered before when John Boland wanted land. They offer no details, no specifications. They have a superstition that keeps them silent about their past wrongs—a superstition or a pride—and I have come to respect this reticence. But I have also come to respect their intuitions. They fear John Boland. They say that someone some day must stand up against him for them.

"The oldest of these tribesmen are children in many respects and they are all so pathetic in their fear," the girl ranged on, naively appealing. They are so reduced that they depend on me for advice. Yet they still hope. Disappointed so often by the white man's word and the white man's law, they find their faith once more centering in a man of that race. That man is you. Your name, your character is almost worshiped for what it became to the half-dozen Indian boys from Shell Point who fought under you, and some of whom—did not come back.

"Mr. Harrington," she concluded, lifting sincere eyes to his, for somehow they were standing and fronting each other, "those helpless, fear-stricken children of the woods and water have asked me to tell you of their fears and to appeal to you to consent to be their champion if the need arises; provided, of course, that you have not been retained by the other side," she concluded anxiously.

Harrington straightened proudly, "I will never be retained by the other side," he declared with emphasis. "I'll help your Indians, of course, any time they need me."

"Oh, thank you!" breathed the ambassador of the Shell Pointers, and gazed at him with such gratitude as made the young man feel that in the appealing faith of these dark eyes there was being conferred on him something a little finer than the decoration which a three-star general had once pinned upon his breast.

He was, moreover, surprised to discover, from its impulsive pressure, that there was a warm little hand in his, almost flaming hot. He got a thrill of pleasure in the contact, and, rather astonishingly, he continued to hold this warm little hand and it continued to grasp his.

"Mr. Harrington, at the first sign of what we fear, I shall come to you," Miss Marceau was saying earnestly. "In the meantime, you will be carefully guarded. Your life has, by your promise, become of the greatest importance to a now humble, ignored peo- ple who are capable of rare faithfulness and devotion. From this hour forward some one of its members will be always near you. You will not often be conscious of this watchful eye or guarding hand, but it will be near if danger threatens."

With difficulty Henry kept his lips straight. "Why, thank you!" he said courteously. "But"—he permitted himself an amused frown—"look here, now, Miss Marceau," he warned, "I don't want anybody bothering round like that about me. Just tell 'em I can take care of myself and that I'll be glad to advise 'em if anything comes up."

Miss Marceau was verbally noncommittal, yet looked demurely submissive and at the same time extremely well satisfied. "I will tell them what you say, Mr. Harrington, and it will encourage them immensely. Thank you ever and ever so much! Good-by, Mr. Harrington." And the black eyes presumed to flash him both a grateful and an understanding look.

Harrington had smoked half a cigarette upon the subject of Miss Marceau, leaving her Shell Point Indians out of consideration altogether, when he was interrupted first by Sergeant Thorpe announcing another caller, and then by the caller himself.

Chapter 3

GUH morning, Henry," announced a huge windy person with largeness and looseness written all over him—wide flabby face, wide paunchy figure, large soft hands, large mushy legs, large hairless head, everything physical about him large except his eyes. They were small and hard, roving shiftily, peering cunningly.

"Good morning, Hornblower!" responded the young attorney, but with brusqueness and reserve. "What is it?"

"Big stuff today, Henry; big stuff!" breezed the large man, who seated himself uninvited and began to beam as if hoping thereby to warm his chilly welcome.

Julius Hornblower was an attorney well-known—too well-known—in the three towns. He was brilliant, slightly eccentric and considered crooked; yet made a great parade of honesty.

"Henry," began Hornblower, moistening his lip and assuming the attitude and the tone of spread-eagle oratory, though he remained sitting; "Henry! The cause of Justice, the cause of a grossly betrayed people sends me to you. Such a cause as has ever appealed to the chivalric instincts of my nature, as well you know. A great wrong has been perpetrated—is being perpetrated. It is a cause in which the contestants will endure scorn and ridicule and persecution; but in which ultimately justice will triumph and punish- ment will be meted out if—if we can get a man of your standing in the community, rather than of mine, to lead the fight. You know, Henry"—the large and pseudo-benevolent features of Hornblower passed for a moment under shadow—"you know folks don't quite appreciate me here, Henry, simply because they don't understand me."

But for some time Harrington's face had been a study in self-control. "Hornblower," he frowned, "I have a fairly vivid imagination but I am unable to conceive of any legal cause in which I could be associated with you. Suppose you get down out of the clouds with your proposition so that I can tell you to take it to the devil as quickly as possible. I'm rather busy this morning."

Hornblower looked surprised—and deflected, but neither humiliated nor offended. He smiled a gentle reproach and inquired in a voice meant to be craftily suggestive: "Henry, what would you say if I should tell you that the title to this Edgewater townsite is faulty—that it belongs every foot of it to clients of mine who entrusted the title to me by a power of attorney? That for all practical purposes it is mine? Every damn foot of the city of Edgewater, mine!" he exulted. "What would you say if I should tell you that, Henry?"

"I should say you were a liar," answered Harrington bluntly.

But Hornblower's lip only curled and he went on to loose his big sensation—for he always had a big sensation: "And if I told you that I was going to put a plat of the townsite upon that billboard across the corner from the bank there and climb up on that lumber pile on the curb in front of it and offer it for sale lot by lot, block by block, to the highest bidder this very afternoon, what would you say to that?"

"I should say that you were a fool besides," snapped Henry.

Hornblower's face was suddenly immobile, save that the small eyes blinked once. "Henry, don't laugh at me," he protested. "I'm serious."

"And hang it, man, can't you see that I am?" blazed Henry, patience quite departed. "Hornblower! The man who deliberately unsettles land titles is the most conscienceless of scoundrels!"

Hornblower's flat face became flatter for a moment before the blast of Harrington's indignation; yet in a second he was countering blandly with: "Correct, Henry, correct; but the real scoundrel is the man who made 'em uncertain in the first place."

"What do you mean by that now, that utterly Hornblower-like insinuation?" demanded Harrington with tightening lips.

"It isn't what I mean, but who I mean," responded Julius with nasty emphasis.

Harrington's eyes flashed and his cheeks mantled: "Hornblower, leave my office," he commanded in the low tones of controlled anger. "Never come into it. Never speak to me again."

This was enough to prick even Hornblower's thick skin. He rose huffily and retorted: "You needn't get so blamed cocky! When did you begin to work for John Boland? Everybody else does in the community, but I thought you were one man, by God, that called his soul his own."

Harrington's hand clenched at the insult, but he could not be a common brawler. Controlling himself and his voice with an effort that was obvious he urged: "Hornblower, will you please go?" And himself opened a door leading directly into the hall.

Hornblower, huge human squid, went out.

"The skunk!" remarked Harrington, quite inelegantly, and threw open the window.

Henry lunched that day with the gang at Ben's Beanery. The Beanery was a more elegant place to lunch than the name suggested and the gang was a coterie that styled itself "The Live Wire League." The talk today was all of Billie Boland, and Harrington, after listening with a bored air, thought he was leaving the whole subject behind him when he sauntered out; but to his astonishment found a sort of blurred Miss Billie Boland had come with him and seemed intent upon spending the afternoon there in his office. That was odd. It was even annoying!

At length, when a face, indistinct but beautiful, stared up at him from a page of the Pacific Reporter, Henry closed the vohmme upon it with an impatient bang, put on his hat and dropped casually down the stairs, meaning to smoke a cigar and take the air for half an hour. But as he gained the street, his attention was attracted by a voice and a crowd on the corner of that dock which was visited every thirty minutes by the Salmon Queen. This was the corner across from the bank, the corner upon which were the billboard and the lumber pile which Hornblower had pointed out. To Harrington's amused scorn the shyster was actually there now upon the lumber pile, a mountainous, gesticulating, vociferating figure. With a lath in his hand he pointed from time to time to the billboard on which some sign-painter had been employed to sketch neatly and largely the plat of the town site of Edgewater.

Of course, the crowd had gathered.

"Come on up and buy a lottery ticket," the fellow was bawling. "Take a chance and win a fortune! The site of the First National Bank now—how much am I offered for the site of the First National Bank?"

The very audacity of the proposal was breath-taking. The crowd laughed as it caught the idea.

"Offer! Offer! Make me a bid! How much am I offered for the site of the First National Bank?" chanted the auctioneer and was vastly enjoying his sensation when James H. Gaylord, president of this said First National Bank, appeared, and stared in wrathful astonishment as if unable to believe his ears.

Salzberg, president of the Socialist Local, smiled craftily. He stood for one thing in the community; Gaylord epitomized quite another.

"Five dollars!" he shouted to Hornblower, with a grin and a wink.

Hornblower snapped it up. "Five dollars! Five dollars I am offered, five dollars for the site of the First National Bank of Edgewater," he chanted.

There was a fresh burst of laughter. Even some of the property owners joined in this laugh.

Eventually the bank site was knocked down to Salzberg for twenty-four dollars, with Hornblower beaming, coat off, collar loosened, happy as Mephistopheles; and Gaylord redder and more wrathful still; while Salzberg, grinning widely, clambered up to a table which was also atop the lumber pile and before which sat a clerk and notary prepared to execute and witness "Agreements to Sell" which lay in blank before them.

And the show continued. Hornblower sold the site of Schuler's Department Store for nineteen dollars with Schuler looking on; he sold the site of the City Hall for forty-two dollars with His Honor, Mayor Foster, staring indignantly; and he capped this audacity by selling the ground from under the fire-engine house at the very moment when the Mayor was threatening to have the hose turned on him. Besides these he sold lots here and there throughout the town, always for absurdly low prices, because the purchasers never assented to more than a lottery-ticket scale of value and because to create as many widely scattered contestants as possible seemed both to gratify Hornblower's cheerful malevolence and to fall in with his plans.