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Updated: June 20, 2025
It irritated her further that she should feel in the least constrained to obey the calmly expressed wish of this quiet-spoken woodsman. Certain possible phases of a lengthy sojourn in Jack Fyfe's camp shot across her mind. He seemed of uncanny perception, for he answered this thought before it was clearly formed.
Brought into close contact with the man himself, Stella felt the radiating force of his personality. There it was, a thing to be reckoned with. She felt that whenever Jack Fyfe's gray eyes rested impersonally on her. His pleasant, freckled face hovered before her until she fell asleep, and in her sleep she dreamed again of him throwing that drunken logger down the Hot Springs slip.
As she went about her daily tasks, that prospect of trying a fresh fling at the world as Jack Fyfe's wife tantalized her with certain desirable features. Was it worth while to play the game as she must play it for some time to come, drudge away at mean, sordid work and amid the dreariest sort of environment?
I can't help my feeling or my lack of it." Fyfe's face whitened a little. His hands dropped from her shoulders. "Now you're talking to the point," he said quietly. "Especially that last. We've been married some little time now, and if anything, we're farther apart in the essentials of mating than we were at the beginning.
For an hour or two after that the three men sat about in shirt-sleeved ease, puffing at Jack Fyfe's cigars. Then Benton excused himself and went to bed. When Howe and his wife retired, Stella did likewise. The long twilight had dwindled to a misty patch of light sky in the northwest, and she fell asleep more at ease than she had been for weeks.
And the struggle, if not of and by her deed, had at least sprung into malevolent activity through her. Men, she told herself, do not forget these things; they rankle. Jack Fyfe was only human. No, Stella felt that they could only come safe to the old port by virtue of a passion that could match Fyfe's own. And she put that rather sadly beyond her, beyond the possibilities.
There has been one man killed, and there's half a dozen loggers in the hospital, suffering from burns and other hurts. Nobody knows where it will stop. Charlie's limits have barely been scorched, but there's fire all along one side of them. A change of wind and there you are. Jack Fyfe's timber is burning in a dozen places. We've been praying for rain and choking in the smoke for a week."
As she sat there, a man dressed in the blue shirt and mackinaw trousers and high, calked boots of the logger turned in off the road, a burly woodsman that she recognized as one of Jack Fyfe's crew. "Well," said he, "if it ain't Mrs. Jack. Say ah " He broke off suddenly, a perplexed look on his face, an uneasiness, a hesitation in his manner. "What is it, Barlow?" Stella asked kindly.
It was not a fight for her. Dimly she had a feeling that back of her lay something else. An echo of it had been more than once in Fyfe's speech. Here and now, they had forgotten her at the first word. They were engaged in a struggle for mastery, sheer brute determination to hurt each other, which had little or nothing to do with her.
"You're It." Monohan pivoted, and rushing, swung right and left, missing by inches. Fyfe's mocking grin seemed to madden him completely. He rushed again, launching another vicious blow that threw him partly off his balance. Before he could recover, Fyfe kicked both feet from under him, sent him sprawling on the moss. Stella stood like one stricken. The very thing she dreaded had come about.
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