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"Elliston will be convicted and hanged," was Bernard's verdict. On the very day of Harry's arrival at the farm-house, he, with the old farmer, was summoned to visit one who had met with a fatal accident and was about to die. It proved to be Martin Skidway, who lay on a barn floor with his head in his mother's lap, gasping his life away, an ugly wound in his side.
She started at the cold softness of the tones of his voice. "Leduc," he said, "just a minute it will hardly take longer." The man turned quickly at the sound of the voice at his side, and for the space of seconds the two big men faced each other on the packed snow of the skidway.
Did you recognize me when we first met?" "No. It was an afterthought." "I thought so. You shall suffer for this. You've got the wrong man, Mr. Darrel." "You seem to know me." "Everybody does." "You flatter me." "My name isn't Skidway, but Wilks, and I can prove it." "Do so." "Release me and I will." "I'm not that green." The prisoner muttered angrily.
"But I am in the employ of the railroad company, and will lose my place " "You gain another one, so it doesn't matter," retorted the detective. "No use making a fuss, Mr. Skidway; you cannot evade the punishment which awaits you. Any confession you choose to make I am willing to hear. The late tragedy, for instance?" "You'll get nothing out of me." "I am sorry," "Of course you are.
"It is possible that you may get your freedom at an early day," said the detective. "I have heard of men turning State's evidence, and profiting by it." "I suppose so." "I would advise you to think on this, Martin Skidway." "Why should I think on it? Do you think I'm a fool, Dyke Darrel?" "Not quite," and the detective smiled.
Before the man had time to recover, the foreman advanced a step and struck again. This time it was his left hand that clove the air in a long, clean swing, and the man went down into the snow without a sound as the fist thudded against his neck just below the ear. Without so much as a glance at the man in the snow, Bill Carmody turned on his heel and started back down the skidway.
He took his way down the trail, his face set straight before him, the smoke of his breath streaming behind. The first skidway he scaled with care, laying his rule flat across the face of each log, entering the figures on his many-leaved tablets of beech, marking the timbers swiftly with his blue crayon. The woods were empty.
Radway had confidence in him because he lived in the same shanty with him. This one fact a good deal explains Radway's character. The scaler's duty at present was to measure the diameter of the logs in each skidway, and so compute the number of board feet. At the office he tended van, kept the books, and looked after supplies.
Roughly speaking, each of the three hauling teams had its own gang of sawyers and skidders to supply it with logs and to take them from it, for of the skidding teams, one was split; the horses were big enough so that one of them to a skidway sufficed. Thus three gangs of men were performing each day practically the same work. Thorpe scaled the results, and placed them conspicuously for comparison.
"The jacks shifted some logs around to act as a track to give the logs on the skidway a good start down the bank; they further cleared a channel lower down so that the water might undermine the skidway still more, then, when the trap was properly set, undoubtedly gave the top of the pile a start with their hooks.
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