The Challenge of the North

Oskar Hedin, head of the fur department of old John McNabb's big store, looked up from his scrutiny of the Russian sable coat spread upon a table before him, and encountered the twinkling eyes of old John himself.

"It's a shame to keep this coat here-and that natural black fox piece, too. Who is there in Terrace City that's got thirty thousand dollars to spend for a fur coat, or twenty thousand for a fox fur?"

Old John grinned. "Mrs. Orcutt bought one, didn't she?"

"Yes, but she bought it down in New York--"

"An' paid thirty-five thousand for a coat that runs half a dozen shades lighter, an' is topped an' pointed to bring it up to the best it's got. Did I ever tell ye the story of Mrs. Orcutt's coat?"

"No."

"It goes back quite a ways-the left-handed love me an' Fred Orcutt has for one another. We speak neighborly on the street, an' for years we've played on opposite sides of a ball-a-hole foursome at the Country Club, but either of us would sooner lose a hundred dollars than pay the other a golf ball.

"It come about in a business way, an' in a business way it's kept on.

Not a dollar of McNabb money passes through the hands of Orcutt's

Wolverine Bank-an' he could have had it all, an' he knows it.

"As ye know, I started out, a lad, with the Hudson's Bay Company, an' I'd got to be a factor when an old uncle of my mother's in Scotlan' died an' left me a matter of twenty thousand pounds sterling. When I got the money I quit the Company an' drifted around a bit until finally I bought up a big tract of Michigan pine. There wasn't any Terrace City then. I located a sawmill here at the mouth of the river an' it was known as McNabb's Landin'.

"D'ye see those docks? I built 'em, an' I've seen the time when they was two steamers warped along each side of 'em, an' one acrost the end, an' a half a dozen more anchored in the harbor waitin' to haul McNabb's lumber. The van stood on this spot in the sawmill days, an' when it got too small I built a wooden store. Folks began driftin' in. They changed the name from McNabb's Landin' to Terrace City, an' I turned a many a good dollar for buildin' sites.

"The second summer brought Fred Orcutt, an' I practically give him the best lot of the whole outfit to build his bank on. The town outgrew the wooden store an' I built this one, addin' the annex later, an' I ripped out the old dam an' put in a concrete dam an' a power plant that furnished light an' power for all Terrace City. Money was comin' in fast an' I invested it here an' there-Michigan, an' Minnesota, an' Winconsin pine, an' the Lord knows what not. Then come the panic, an' I found out almost over night that I was land poor. I needed cash, or credit at the bank, or I had to take a big loss. I went to see Fred Orcutt-I banked with him, those days, an' he knew the fix I was in. Yes, the bank would be glad to accommodate me all right; if you could of been there an' heard Fred Orcutt lay down his terms you'd know just how damn glad they'd of been to accommodate me. It kind of stunned me at first, an' then I saw red-the man I'd befriended in more ways than one, just layin' back till he had me in his clutches! Well, I lit out an' told him just what I thought of him-an' he got it in log camp English. It never fazed him. He just sat there leanin' back in his chair, bringin' the points of his fingers together an' drawin' 'em apart again, an' lookin' me square in the face with them pale blue fishy eyes of his. When I'd used up all the oaths an' epithets in common use, an' some new ones, an' had to quit, he says, in the same cold, even voice that he'd used in layin' down his terms, he says, 'You're a little excited now, John, and I'll not hold it against you. Just drop in sometime to-morrow or next day and we'll fix up the papers.'"

"I walked out of the bank with a wild scheme in my head of going to Detroit or Chicago for the money. But I knew it was no use-and so did Orcutt. He thought he had me right where he wanted me-an' so did I. Meanwhile, an' about six months previous, a young fellow named Charlie Bronson-president of the First National now-had opened up a little seven-by-nine bank in a tin-covered wooden shack that I'd passed a dozen times a day an' hadn't even looked into. I'd met Bronson once or twice, but hadn't paid no attention to him, an' as I was headin' back for the store, he stood in his doorway. 'Good mornin' Mr. McNabb,' he says. I don't think I'd of took the trouble to answer him, but just then his bank sign caught my eye. It was painted in black letters an' stuck out over the sidewalk. I stopped an' looked past him through the open door where his bookkeeper-payin'-an'-receivin'-teller-cashier, an' general factotum was busy behind the cheap grill. Then I looked at Bronson an' the only thing I noticed was that his eyes was brown, an' he was smilin'. 'Young man,' I says, 'have you got any money in that sardine can?'

"'Quite a lot,' he answers with a grin. 'More than I wish I had.'

"'You got a hundred thousand?' I asks-it was more than I needed, but I thought I'd make it big enough to scare him.

"'More than that,' he answers, without battin' an eye. 'But-what's the matter with the Wolverine?'

"'The Wolverine?' I busted out. 'Young man, if I was to tell you what I think of the Wolverine here on the street, I'd be arrested before I'd got good an' started.'

"'Better come inside, then,' he grins, an' I followed him into a little box of a private office. 'Of course,' I says later, when I'd told him what I wanted, 'most of my collateral is pine timber, an' I suppose, as Orcutt says, it's depreciated--'

"'Depreciated?' he asks. 'Why has it depreciated? It's all standin' on end, ain't it?' he says. An' it ain't gettin' no smaller, is it? An' they're layin' down the pine a damn sight faster than God Almighty can grow it, ain't they?' An' when I admitted that such was the facts, he laughed. 'Well then, we'll just go over your reports an' estimates, an' I don't think we'll have any trouble about doin' business.'

"An we never have had no trouble, an' we've been doin' business every day since."

"But the coat?" reminded Hedin, after an interval of several minutes.

"I'm coming to that. Orcutt ain't human, but his wife is. When he found out I'd slipped out of his clutches an' swung all my business over to Bronson's bank he never by so much as a word or a look let on that he even noticed it. They still have an account at the store; they can't help it, because no other store in Terrace City keeps the stock we do. But Mrs. Orcutt does all her real shoppin' in New York or Chicago."

Oskar Hedin loved fur, and the romance of fur. From his earliest recollection he had loved it as he had curled up and listened to the stories of his father, a great upstanding Viking of a sailor man, who year after year had forced his little vessel into the far North where he traded with the natives, and who had lost his life in the ice floes of the frozen sea while sailing with Nordenskjold.

Furs were to Hedin an obsession; they spoke a language he knew. He hated the grosser furs, as he loved the finer. He despised the trade tricks and spurious trade names by which the flimsiest of furs are foisted upon the gullible purchasers of "seal," "sable," "black fox," "ermine," and "beaver." He prided himself that no misnamed fur had ever passed over his counter, and in this he was backed up by his employer. The cheaper furs were there, but they sold under their true names and upon their merits.

In the social democracy of the town of twenty thousand people Oskar Hedin had earned a definite place. After graduating from the local high school he had entered the employ of McNabb, and within a very few years had been promoted to head his department. At the Country Club he could be depended upon to qualify with the first flight in the annual golf tournament, and the "dope" was all upset when he did not play in the finals on the courts. He lived at the city's only "family hotel," drove his own modest car, and religiously spent his Sundays on the trout streams.

Hedin picked up the coat and reverently deposited it in the fur safe. "It's a coat fit for a queen," he decided as he closed and locked the door. And Jean was the one woman in the world to wear it. Jean with the red blood coursing through her veins, her glow of health, and the sparkle of her eyes-McNabb's own daughter. "And, yet, I can't suggest it because-" Hedin muttered aloud and scowled at the floor. "I'd have asked her before this," he went on, "if that Wentworth hadn't butted in. Who knows anything about him, anyway? I'll ask her this afternoon." He stopped abruptly and smiled into the eyes of the girl who was hurrying toward him down the aisle.

"Oh, Oskar, I've just got a minute. I stopped in to remind you that this is Saturday, and we're going tobogganing this afternoon, and I've asked Mr. Wentworth and some of the crowd, and there'll be four or five toboggans, and it will be no end jolly. And this is my birthday, and you're a dear to think of it and send me all those flowers, and I'm going to wear 'em to-night. Listen, Elsie Campbell is giving a dinner for me this evening and of course you're not invited because it's just too funny the way she has snubbed you lately, and there's a show in town and after dinner we're going. Of course it won't be any good, but she's making a theatre party of it, and it sounds grand anyway. And I must hurry along now because I must remind Dad that he promised me a fur coat the day I was twenty-one, and I'll be back after a while and you can help me pick it out. Good-by, see you later!" And she was gone, leaving Hedin gazing after her with a smile as he strove to digest the jumble of uncorrelated information of which she had unburdened herself. "Wentworth, and some of the crowd! Oh, it will be jolly, all right-damn Wentworth!"

Old John McNabb looked up from his papers as his daughter burst into his private office and, rushing to his side, planted a kiss squarely upon the top of his bald head. "I came in to tell you I'm twenty-one to-day," she announced.

"Well, well, so ye are! Ye come into the world on the first of March, true to the old sayin', an' ye've be'n boisterous ever since. Twenty-one years old, an' tell me now, what have ye ever accomplished? When I was your age I'd be'n livin' in the bush north of 60 for two years, an' could do my fifty miles on snowshoes an' carry a pack."

"Maybe I can't do fifty miles a day on snowshoes, and I'm sure it isn't my fault I don't live north of 60. But I'm in a hurry; I promised to help Mr. Wentworth pick out a toboggan cap. I stopped in to remind you that you promised me a fur coat on my twenty-first birthday."

The old man regarded her thoughtfully. "So I did, so I did," he repeated absently. "This Wentworth, now-he's been kickin' around an uncommon lot, lately. Tell me again, who is he? What does he do for a livin'?"

"Why, he's a civil engineer-hydraulic work is his specialty. He has been employed by some company that intended to put in a power plant of some kind on Nettle River, and either the company broke up, or they found the plan was not feasible, or something, and they abandoned it. So Mr. Wentworth isn't doing anything, at present. But he is a fine fellow-so jolly, and so good looking, and he has a wonderful war record. He was with the engineers in Russia."

"U-m-m, where d'ye get hold of his war record?"

"Why-why-he-he has told us about the things they did-his company."

"Um-hum," Old John was stroking his nose.

"But, if he's civil engineer, an' out of a job, you might tell him to stop in a minute-after he gets the right color of a toboggan cap picked out."

When the door closed behind the girl old John readjusted his nose glasses and leaned back in his chair. "A clever engineer he is, beyond a doubt," he mused. "For I kept my eye on him while he was layin' out Orcutt's Nettle River project. If he'd made a botch of the job 'twould have saved me offerin' my plant to the city. But he has the look of a man ye couldn't trust in the dark-an' 'twould be clever engineerin' to marry a million. I'll set him a job that'll show the stuff that's in him.

If he's a crook, I'll give him the chance to prove it." Reaching into a pigeon-hole of his desk, McNabb withdrew a thick packet of papers and removed the rubber band.

A few moments later Jean entered, the office followed by a rather well set up young man, whose tiny mustache was chopped square, like a miniature section of box hedge. "This is Mr. Wentworth, Dad," introduced the girl. "And now I'll leave you two men, because Oskar has promised to help me pick out a coat, and it's after ten o'clock. And, by the way, Dad, what kind of a coat shall I get? I want a good one."

"I'll warrant ye do! Well, just you tell Oskar to let you pick out a pony, or a crummer, or a baum marten, or a squirrel. They're all good."

As the door closed behind his daughter, old John McNabb motioned the younger man to a chair. "My daughter tells me you're an engineer," he began.

"Yes, sir, temporarily unemployed."

"Come up here on the Nettle River project, I hear. What's the matter?

Couldn't you dam the river?"

"Oh, yes. The Nettle River presents no serious engineering problem. I spent four months on the ground and reported it favorably, and then all of a sudden, I was informed that the project had been abandoned, at least for the present. The trouble, I presume, was in the financing. It certainly was not because of any physical obstacles."

"What was the idea in building the dam in the first place?"

"Why, for power purposes. I believe it was their intention to induce manufacturing enterprises to locate in Terrace City, and to furnish them electric power at a low rate--"

"An' underbid me on the lightin' contract-an' then unload onto the city at a big profit."

Wentworth smiled. "I was not advised as to the financial end of it. I suppose, though, that that would have been the logical procedure."

Old John chuckled. "You're right, it would, with Fred Orcutt mixed up in it. But they didn't catch me nappin', an' I slipped the word to the city dads that I'd sell out to 'em, lock, stock, an' barrel, at a figure that would have meant a loss to Orcutt's crowd to meet. So I'm the one that busted the Nettle River bubble, an' seein' I knocked ye out of a job, it's no more than fair I should offer ye another."

"Why, thank you--"

"Don't thank me yet," interrupted McNabb. "Ye may not care to tackle it. It's a man's size job, in a man's country. Part of it's the same kind of work you've been doin' here-locatin' a dam to furnish power to run a pulp mill. Then you'll have to check up the land covered by that batch of options, an' explore a couple of rivers, an' locate more pulpwood, an' get options on it. An' lay out a road to the railway. It's in Canada, in the Gods Lake Country, three hundred miles north of the railhead."

"How soon would you expect me to start?"

"Monday wouldn't be none too soon; to-morrow would be better. It's this way. I've got options on better than half a million acres of pulpwood lyin' between Hayes River an' the Shamattawa. Ten years ago I cut the last of my pine, an' I got out my pencil an' begun to figure how I could keep in the woods. I pig-ironed a little-got out hardwood for the wooden specialty factories to cut up into spools, an' clothes-pins, an' oval dishes an' whatnot-an' then I turned my attention to the pulpwood. I figured it wouldn't be long before the papermills would be hollerin' for raw materials the way they was turnin' out the paper, so I nosed around a bit an' bought options on pulpwood land here an' there. An' now's the time to get busy, with the big newspapers an' the magazines all howlin' for paper, an' all the mills workin' overtime."

"Do you mean that you're going to manufacture paper yourself-way up there? How do you expect to get your product to market?"

"Easy enough. Make the paper in the woods, an' float it a little better than a hundred miles to Hudson Bay in barges, or scows. You see, the Shamattawa runs into Hayes River, an' Hayes River empties into the Bay just across a spit of land from Port Nelson. And the railway from The Pas to Port Nelson is being pushed to completion. With the paper on the Bay, I can ship by rail or boat to the market."

"And you want to locate the mill on the Hayes River?"

"No; the Hayes runs too flat. Either on the upper Shamattawa, or on Gods River, which lies between the two, an' flows into the Shamattawa. There's plenty of water in either one, an' I think both or 'em have got fall enough. I want the mill where it will be easy to get the wood to it, an' at the same time, where we'll have a good head of water-an' it's got to be done quick. The options expire the first of August, an' I've nosed around an' found out there's no chance to renew 'em on decent terms. When you get the mill located, then you've got to slip down the river an' find out what kind of scows we'll need, an' lay out a road to the new Hudson Bay Railway that's headed for Port Nelson. We'll haul in the material an' save time. An' when you've finished that, you can make a survey of the pulpwood available outside our present holdin's."

"Quite a job, take it all in all."

"Yes-an' takin' it all in all, it'll take quite a man to fill it," retorted McNabb brusquely. "The man that puts this through won't never need to hunt another job, because this is only the beginnin' of the pulpwood game for me--" The telephone on the desk rang, and after a moment's conversation, McNabb arose and tossed the packet of papers into Wentworth's lap. "I've got to step out for a matter of ten or fifteen minutes," he said. "Here's the papers, an' a map of the country. Look 'em over, an' if you care to tackle it, let me know when I come back."

Alone in the office, Wentworth studied the map fully five minutes; then he read over the option contract. Suddenly, he straightened in his chair, and read the last clause of the contract carefully:

Be it further agreed that if the said John McNabb, or his authorized representative, does not demand fulfillment of the terms of this agreement, and accompany the said demand by tender of at least ten percent of the purchase price named herein, on or before noon of the first day of July, nineteen hundred and twenty-one, this agreement shall automatically become null and void in its entirety.

Be it further agreed between the said John McNabb, and the said Canadian Wild Lands Company, Ltd., that aforementioned demand and tender of payment shall be made at and in the store of that trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company, situated upon the north shore of Gods Lake, and known as Gods Lake Post.

Swiftly Wentworth stepped to the desk and, lifting the receiver from its hook, called a number. "Hello! Wolverine Bank? I want to speak with Mr. Orcutt. Hello, Mr. Orcutt? This is Wentworth-No, I don't want any money. Listen, I must see you at once. I'm on the trail of something big, and I need you to help swing it. There's a million in it-can't say more now. What? One o'clock at the bank? Right, I'll be there. Good-by."

A few moments later McNabb entered the office. "Well, did you look the proposition over? Ye see by the map how we can get the paper to the Bay. What d'ye say? Take it, or leave it?"

"I'll take it," answered Wentworth.

"An' ye'll start to-morrow?"

"Why-it's pretty short notice-but-yes, I'll start to-morrow."

Old John McNabb drew a check which he handed to Wentworth.

"Expenses, an' a month's advance salary," grunted the older man.

"And when do you want a report on the mill site?"

"As soon after the ice goes out as you can make it."

"And you will be up during the summer?"

"Some time in July-I've got to be there on the first of August to close that option. Take those location papers with ye. Ye'll need them, an' the map-I have another copy in the vault at the bank. I'll bring 'em up when I come, so if somethin' comes up so you couldn't be at the post on the first of August, it won't hold up the deal. Run along now, I must catch the 11:45 train for Grand Rapids-see you in July."