The Blazed Trail
by
Stewart Edward White
Part 1 out of 7
This etext was produced by Douglas E. Levy.
THE BLAZED TRAIL
by Stewart Edward White
TO MY FATHER-- From whose early pioneer life are drawn many
of Harry Thorpe's experiences.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I: THE FOREST
PART II: THE LANDLOOKER
PART III: THE BLAZING OF THE TRAIL
PART IV: THORPE'S DREAM GIRL
PART V: THE FOLLOWING OF THE TRAIL
PART I: THE FOREST
Chapter I
When history has granted him the justice of perspective, we
shall know the American Pioneer as one of the most picturesque
of her many figures. Resourceful, self-reliant, bold; adapting
himself with fluidity to diverse circumstances and conditions;
meeting with equal cheerfulness of confidence and completeness of
capability both unknown dangers and the perils by which he has been
educated; seizing the useful in the lives of the beasts and men
nearest him, and assimilating it with marvellous rapidity; he
presents to the world a picture of complete adequacy which it would
be difficult to match in any other walk of life. He is a strong
man, with a strong man's virtues and a strong man's vices. In him
the passions are elemental, the dramas epic, for he lives in the age
when men are close to nature, and draw from her their forces. He
satisfies his needs direct from the earth. Stripped of all the
towns can give him, he merely resorts to a facile substitution.
It becomes an affair of rawhide for leather, buckskin for cloth,
venison for canned tomatoes. We feel that his steps are planted on
solid earth, for civilizations may crumble without disturbing his
magnificent self-poise. In him we perceive dimly his environment.
He has something about him which other men do not possess--a frank
clearness of the eye, a swing of the shoulder, a carriage of the
hips, a tilt of the hat, an air of muscular well-being which marks
him as belonging to the advance guard, whether he wears buckskin,
mackinaw, sombrero, or broadcloth. The woods are there, the plains,
the rivers. Snow is there, and the line of the prairie. Mountain
peaks and still pine forests have impressed themselves subtly; so
that when we turn to admire his unconsciously graceful swing, we
seem to hear the ax biting the pine, or the prospector's pick
tapping the rock. And in his eye is the capability of quiet humor,
which is just the quality that the surmounting of many difficulties
will give a man.
Like the nature he has fought until he understands, his disposition
is at once kindly and terrible. Outside the subtleties of his
calling, he sees only red. Relieved of the strenuousness of his
occupation, he turns all the force of the wonderful energies that
have carried him far where other men would have halted, to channels
in which a gentle current makes flood enough. It is the mountain
torrent and the canal. Instead of pleasure, he seeks orgies. He
runs to wild excesses of drinking, fighting, and carousing--which
would frighten most men to sobriety--with a happy, reckless spirit
that carries him beyond the limits of even his extraordinary forces.
This is not the moment to judge him. And yet one cannot help
admiring the magnificently picturesque spectacle of such energies
running riot. The power is still in evidence, though beyond its
proper application.
Chapter II
In the network of streams draining the eastern portion of
Michigan and known as the Saginaw waters, the great firm of
Morrison & Daly had for many years carried on extensive logging
operations in the wilderness. The number of their camps was legion,
of their employees a multitude. Each spring they had gathered
in their capacious booms from thirty to fifty million feet of
pine logs.
Now at last, in the early eighties, they reached the end of their
holdings. Another winter would finish the cut. Two summers would
see the great mills at Beeson Lake dismantled or sold, while Mr.
Daly, the "woods partner" of the combination, would flit away to
the scenes of new and perhaps more extensive operations. At this
juncture Mr. Daly called to him John Radway, a man whom he knew to
possess extensive experience, a little capital, and a desire for
more of both.
"Radway," said he, when the two found themselves alone in the mill
office, "we expect to cut this year some fifty millions, which will
finish our pine holdings in the Saginaw waters. Most of this timber
lies over in the Crooked Lake district, and that we expect to put
in ourselves. We own, however, five million on the Cass Branch
which we would like to log on contract. Would you care to take
the job?"
"How much a thousand do you give?" asked Radway.
"Four dollars," replied the lumberman.
"I'll look at it," replied the jobber.
So Radway got the "descriptions" and a little map divided into
townships, sections, and quarter sections; and went out to look at
it. He searched until he found a "blaze" on a tree, the marking
on which indicated it as the corner of a section. From this corner
the boundary lines were blazed at right angles in either direction.
Radway followed the blazed lines. Thus he was able accurately to
locate isolated "forties" (forty acres), "eighties," quarter
sections, and sections in a primeval wilderness. The feat, however,
required considerable woodcraft, an exact sense of direction, and a
pocket compass.
These resources were still further drawn upon for the next task.
Radway tramped the woods, hills, and valleys to determine the most
practical route over which to build a logging road from the standing
timber to the shores of Cass Branch. He found it to be an affair of
some puzzlement. The pines stood on a country rolling with hills,
deep with pot-holes. It became necessary to dodge in and out, here
and there, between the knolls, around or through the swamps, still
keeping, however, the same general direction, and preserving always
the requisite level or down grade. Radway had no vantage point from
which to survey the country. A city man would promptly have lost
himself in the tangle; but the woodsman emerged at last on the
banks of the stream, leaving behind him a meandering trail of
clipped trees that wound, twisted, doubled, and turned, but kept
ever to a country without steep hills. From the main road he
purposed arteries to tap the most distant parts.
"I'll take it," said he to Daly.
Now Radway happened to be in his way a peculiar character. He was
acutely sensitive to the human side of those with whom he had
dealings. In fact, he was more inclined to take their point of view
than to hold his own. For that reason, the subtler disputes were
likely to go against him. His desire to avoid coming into direct
collision of opinion with the other man, veiled whatever of justice
might reside in his own contention. Consequently it was difficult
for him to combat sophistry or a plausible appearance of right. Daly
was perfectly aware of Radway's peculiarities, and so proceeded to
drive a sharp bargain with him.
Customarily a jobber is paid a certain proportion of the agreed
price as each stage of the work is completed--so much when the
timber is cut; so much when it is skidded, or piled; so much when
it is stacked at the river, or banked; so much when the "drive"
down the waters of the river is finished. Daly objected to this
method of procedure.
"You see, Radway," he explained, "it is our last season in the
country. When this lot is in, we want to pull up stakes, so we
can't take any chances on not getting that timber in. If you don't
finish your Job, it keeps us here another season. There can be
no doubt, therefore, that you finish your job. In other words,
we can't take any chances. If you start the thing, you've got to
carry it 'way through."
"I think I can, Mr. Daly," the jobber assured him.
"For that reason," went on Daly, "we object to paying you as the
work progresses. We've got to have a guarantee that you don't quit
on us, and that those logs will be driven down the branch as far as
the river in time to catch our drive. Therefore I'm going to make
you a good price per thousand, but payable only when the logs are
delivered to our rivermen."
Radway, with his usual mental attitude of one anxious to justify
the other man, ended by seeing only his employer's argument. He
did not perceive that the latter's proposition introduced into the
transaction a gambling element. It became possible for Morrison &
Daly to get a certain amount of work, short of absolute completion,
done for nothing.
"How much does the timber estimate?" he inquired finally.
"About five millions."
"I'd need a camp of forty or fifty men then. I don't see how I can
run such a camp without borrowing."
"You have some money, haven't you?"
"Yes; a little. But I have a family, too."
"That's all right. Now look here." Daly drew towards him a sheet
of paper and began to set down figures showing how the financing
could be done. Finally it was agreed. Radway was permitted to draw
on the Company's warehouse for what provisions he would need. Daly
let him feel it as a concession.
All this was in August. Radway, who was a good practical woodsman,
set about the job immediately. He gathered a crew, established his
camp, and began at once to cut roads through the country he had
already blazed on his former trip.
Those of us who have ever paused to watch a group of farmers working
out their road taxes, must have gathered a formidable impression of
road-clearing. And the few of us who, besides, have experienced the
adventure of a drive over the same highway after the tax has been
pronounced liquidated, must have indulged in varied reflections as
to the inadequacy of the result.
Radway's task was not merely to level out and ballast the six feet
of a road-bed already constructed, but to cut a way for five miles
through the unbroken wilderness. The way had moreover to be not
less than twenty-five feet wide, needed to be absolutely level and
free from any kind of obstructions, and required in the swamps
liberal ballasting with poles, called corduroys. To one who will take
the trouble to recall the variety of woods, thickets, and jungles
that go to make up a wooded country--especially in the creek bottoms
where a logging road finds often its levelest way--and the piles of
windfalls, vines, bushes, and scrubs that choke the thickets with a
discouraging and inextricable tangle, the clearing of five miles to
street width will look like an almost hopeless undertaking. Not only
must the growth be removed, but the roots must be cut out, and the
inequalities of the ground levelled or filled up. Reflect further
that Radway had but a brief time at his disposal,--but a few months
at most,--and you will then be in a position to gauge the first
difficulties of those the American pioneer expects to encounter as
a matter of course. The cutting of the road was a mere incident in
the battle with the wilderness.
The jobber, of course, pushed his roads as rapidly as possible, but
was greatly handicapped by lack of men. Winter set in early and
surprised him with several of the smaller branches yet to finish.
The main line, however, was done.
At intervals squares were cut out alongside. In them two long
timbers, or skids, were laid andiron-wise for the reception of the
piles of logs which would be dragged from the fallen trees. They
were called skidways. Then finally the season's cut began.
The men who were to fell the trees, Radway distributed along one
boundary of a "forty." They were instructed to move forward across
the forty in a straight line, felling every pine tree over eight
inches in diameter. While the "saw-gangs," three in number,
prepared to fell the first trees, other men, called "swampers,"
were busy cutting and clearing of roots narrow little trails down
through the forest from the pine to the skidway at the edge of the
logging road. The trails were perhaps three feet wide, and marvels
of smoothness, although no attempt was made to level mere inequalities
of the ground. They were called travoy roads (French "travois").
Down them the logs would be dragged and hauled, either by means of
heavy steel tongs or a short sledge on which one end of the timber
would be chained.
Meantime the sawyers were busy. Each pair of men selected a tree,
the first they encountered over the blazed line of their "forty."
After determining in which direction it was to fall, they set to
work to chop a deep gash in that side of the trunk.
Tom Broadhead and Henry Paul picked out a tremendous pine which
they determined to throw across a little open space in proximity
to the travoy road. One stood to right, the other to left, and
alternately their axes bit deep. It was a beautiful sight this,
of experts wielding their tools. The craft of the woodsman means
incidentally such a free swing of the shoulders and hips, such a
directness of stroke as the blade of one sinks accurately in the
gash made by the other, that one never tires of watching the grace
of it. Tom glanced up as a sailor looks aloft.
"She'll do, Hank," he said.
The two then with a dozen half clips of the ax, removed the
inequalities of the bark from the saw's path. The long, flexible
ribbon of steel began to sing, bending so adaptably to the hands
and motions of the men manipulating, that it did not seem possible
so mobile an instrument could cut the rough pine. In a moment the
song changed timbre. Without a word the men straightened their
backs. Tom flirted along the blade a thin stream of kerosene oil
from a bottle in his hip pocket, and the sawyers again bent to
their work, swaying back and forth rhythmically, their muscles
rippling under the texture of their woolens like those of a panther
under its skin. The outer edge of the saw-blade disappeared.
"Better wedge her, Tom," advised Hank.
They paused while, with a heavy sledge, Tom drove a triangle of
steel into the crack made by the sawing. This prevented the weight
of the tree from pinching the saw, which is a ruin at once to the
instrument and the temper of the filer. Then the rhythmical z-z-z!
z-z-z! again took up its song.
When the trunk was nearly severed, Tom drove another and thicker
wedge.
"Timber!" hallooed Hank in a long-drawn melodious call that melted
through the woods into the distance. The swampers ceased work and
withdrew to safety.
But the tree stood obstinately upright. So the saw leaped back and
forth a few strokes more.
"Crack!" called the tree.
Hank coolly unhooked his saw handle, and Tom drew the blade through
and out the other side.
The tree shivered, then leaded ever so slightly from the
perpendicular, then fell, at first gently, afterwards with a
crescendo rush, tearing through the branches of other trees,
bending the small timber, breaking the smallest, and at last
hitting with a tremendous crash and bang which filled the air with
a fog of small twigs, needles, and the powder of snow, that settled
but slowly. There is nothing more impressive than this rush of
a pine top, excepting it be a charge of cavalry or the fall of
Niagara. Old woodsmen sometimes shout aloud with the mere
excitement into which it lifts them.
Then the swampers, who had by now finished the travoy road, trimmed
the prostrate trunk clear of all protuberances. It required fairly
skillful ax work. The branches had to be shaved close and clear,
and at the same time the trunk must not be gashed. And often a man
was forced to wield his instrument from a constrained position.
The chopped branches and limbs had now to be dragged clear and
piled. While this was being finished, Tom and Hank marked off and
sawed the log lengths, paying due attention to the necessity of
avoiding knots, forks, and rotten places. Thus some of the logs
were eighteen, some sixteen, or fourteen, and some only twelve feet
in length.
Next appeared the teamsters with their little wooden sledges, their
steel chains, and their tongs. They had been helping the skidders
to place the parallel and level beams, or skids, on which the logs
were to be piled by the side of the road. The tree which Tom and
Hank had just felled lay up a gentle slope from the new travoy
road, so little Fabian Laveque, the teamster, clamped the bite of
his tongs to the end of the largest, or butt, log.
"Allez, Molly!" he cried.
The horse, huge, elephantine, her head down, nose close to her
chest, intelligently spying her steps, moved. The log half rolled
over, slid three feet, and menaced a stump.
"Gee!" cried Laveque.
Molly stepped twice directly sideways, planted her fore foot on a
root she had seen, and pulled sharply. The end of the log slid
around the stump.
"Allez!" commanded Laveque.
And Molly started gingerly down the hill. She pulled the timber,
heavy as an iron safe, here and there through the brush, missing no
steps, making no false moves, backing, and finally getting out of
the way of an unexpected roll with the ease and intelligence of
Laveque himself. In five minutes the burden lay by the travoy road.
In two minutes more one end of it had been rolled on the little
flat wooden sledge and, the other end dragging, it was winding
majestically down through the ancient forest. The little Frenchman
stood high on the forward end. Molly stepped ahead carefully, with
the strange intelligence of the logger's horse. Through the tall,
straight, decorative trunks of trees the little convoy moved with
the massive pomp of a dead warrior's cortege. And little Fabian
Laveque, singing, a midget in the vastness, typified the indomitable
spirit of these conquerors of a wilderness.
When Molly and Fabian had travoyed the log to the skidway, they
drew it with a bump across the two parallel skids, and left it
there to be rolled to the top of the pile.
Then Mike McGovern and Bob Stratton and Jim Gladys took charge of
it. Mike and Bob were running the cant-hooks, while Jim stood on
top of the great pile of logs already decked. A slender, pliable
steel chain, like a gray snake, ran over the top of the pile and
disappeared through a pulley to an invisible horse,--Jenny, the
mate of Molly. Jim threw the end of this chain down. Bob passed
it over and under the log and returned it to Jim, who reached down
after it with the hook of his implement. Thus the stick of timber
rested in a long loop, one end of which led to the invisible horse,
and the other Jim made fast to the top of the pile. He did so by
jamming into another log the steel swamp-hook with which the chain
was armed. When all was made fast, the horse started.
"She's a bumper!" said Bob. "Look out, Mike!"
The log slid to the foot of the two parallel poles laid slanting up
the face of the pile. Then it trembled on the ascent. But one end
stuck for an instant, and at once the log took on a dangerous slant.
Quick as light Bob and Mike sprang forward, gripped the hooks of the
cant-hooks, like great thumbs and forefingers, and, while one held
with all his power, the other gave a sharp twist upward. The log
straightened. It was a master feat of power, and the knack of
applying strength justly.
At the top of the little incline, the timber hovered for a second.
"One more!" sang out Jim to the driver. He poised, stepped
lightly up and over, and avoided by the safe hair's breadth being
crushed when the log rolled. But it did not lie quite straight and
even. So Mike cut a short thick block, and all three stirred the
heavy timber sufficiently to admit of the billet's insertion.
Then the chain was thrown down for another.
Jenny, harnessed only to a straight short bar with a hook in it,
leaned to her collar and dug in her hoofs at the word of command.
The driver, close to her tail, held fast the slender steel chain
by an ingenious hitch about the ever-useful swamp-hook. When Jim
shouted "whoa!" from the top of the skidway, the driver did not
trouble to stop the horse,--he merely let go the hook. So the power
was shut off suddenly, as is meet and proper in such ticklish
business. He turned and walked back, and Jenny, like a dog, without
the necessity of command, followed him in slow patience.
Now came Dyer, the scaler, rapidly down the logging road, a small
slender man with a little, turned-up mustache. The men disliked
him because of his affectation of a city smartness, and because he
never ate with them, even when there was plenty of room. 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.
He approached the skidway swiftly, laid his flexible rule across the
face of each log, made a mark on his pine tablets in the column to
which the log belonged, thrust the tablet in the pocket of his coat,
seized a blue crayon, in a long holder, with which he made an 8 as
indication that the log had been scaled, and finally tapped several
times strongly with a sledge hammer. On the face of the hammer in
relief was an M inside of a delta. This was the Company's brand,
and so the log was branded as belonging to them. He swarmed all
over the skidway, rapid and absorbed, in strange contrast of
activity to the slower power of the actual skidding. In a moment
he moved on to the next scene of operations without having said a
word to any of the men.
"A fine t'ing!" said Mike, spitting.
So day after day the work went on. Radway spent his time tramping
through the woods, figuring on new work, showing the men how to do
things better or differently, discussing minute expedients with the
blacksmith, the carpenter, the cook.
He was not without his troubles. First he had not enough men; the
snow lacked, and then came too abundantly; horses fell sick of colic
or caulked themselves; supplies ran low unexpectedly; trees turned
out "punk"; a certain bit of ground proved soft for travoying, and
so on. At election-time, of course, a number of the men went out.
And one evening, two days after election-time, another and
important character entered the North woods and our story.
Chapter III
On the evening in question, some thirty or forty miles southeast of
Radway's camp, a train was crawling over a badly laid track which
led towards the Saginaw Valley. The whole affair was very crude.
To the edge of the right-of-way pushed the dense swamp, like a black
curtain shutting the virgin country from the view of civilization.
Even by daylight the sight could have penetrated but a few feet.
The right-of-way itself was rough with upturned stumps, blackened by
fire, and gouged by many and varied furrows. Across the snow were
tracks of animals.
The train consisted of a string of freight cars, one coach divided
half and half between baggage and smoker, and a day car occupied by
two silent, awkward women and a child. In the smoker lounged a dozen
men. They were of various sizes and descriptions, but they all wore
heavy blanket mackinaw coats, rubber shoes, and thick German socks
tied at the knee. This constituted, as it were, a sort of uniform.
The air was so thick with smoke that the men had difficulty in
distinguishing objects across the length of the car.
The passengers sprawled in various attitudes. Some hung their legs
over the arms of the seats; others perched their feet on the backs
of the seats in front; still others slouched in corners, half
reclining. Their occupations were as diverse. Three nearest the
baggage-room door attempted to sing, but without much success. A
man in the corner breathed softly through a mouth organ, to the
music of which his seat mate, leaning his head sideways, gave close
attention. One big fellow with a square beard swaggered back and
forth down the aisle offering to everyone refreshment from a quart
bottle. It was rarely refused. Of the dozen, probably three
quarters were more or less drunk.
After a time the smoke became too dense. A short, thick-set fellow
with an evil dark face coolly thrust his heel through a window. The
conductor, who, with the brakeman and baggage master, was seated in
the baggage van, heard the jingle of glass. He arose.
"Guess I'll take up tickets," he remarked. "Perhaps it will quiet
the boys down a little."
The conductor was a big man, raw-boned and broad, with a hawk face.
His every motion showed lean, quick, panther-like power.
"Let her went," replied the brakeman, rising as a matter of course
to follow his chief.
The brakeman was stocky, short, and long armed. In the old fighting
days Michigan railroads chose their train officials with an eye to
their superior deltoids. A conductor who could not throw an
undesirable fare through a car window lived a short official life.
The two men loomed on the noisy smoking compartment.
"Tickets, please!" clicked the conductor sharply.
Most of the men began to fumble about in their pockets, but the
three singers and the one who had been offering the quart bottle
did not stir.
"Ticket, Jack!" repeated the conductor, "come on, now."
The big bearded man leaned uncertainly against the seat.
"Now look here, Bud," he urged in wheedling tones, "I ain't got
no ticket. You know how it is, Bud. I blows my stake." He fished
uncertainly in his pocket and produced the quart bottle, nearly
empty, "Have a drink?"
"No," said the conductor sharply.
"A' right," replied Jack, amiably, "take one myself." He tipped
the bottle, emptied it, and hurled it through a window. The
conductor paid no apparent attention to the breaking of the glass.
"If you haven't any ticket, you'll have to get off," said he.
The big man straightened up.
"You go to hell!" he snorted, and with the sole of his spiked boot
delivered a mighty kick at the conductor's thigh.
The official, agile as a wild cat, leaped back, then forward, and
knocked the man half the length of the car. You see, he was used to
it. Before Jack could regain his feet the official stood over him.
The three men in the corner had also risen, and were staggering down
the aisle intent on battle. The conductor took in the chances with
professional rapidity.
"Get at 'em, Jimmy," said he.
And as the big man finally swayed to his feet, he was seized by the
collar and trousers in the grip known to "bouncers" everywhere,
hustled to the door, which someone obligingly opened, and hurled
from the moving train into the snow. The conductor did not care
a straw whether the obstreperous Jack lit on his head or his feet,
hit a snowbank or a pile of ties. Those were rough days, and the
preservation of authority demanded harsh measures.
Jimmy had got at 'em in a method of his own. He gathered himself
into a ball of potential trouble, and hurled himself bodily at the
legs of his opponents which he gathered in a mighty bear hug. It
would have been poor fighting had Jimmy to carry the affair to a
finish by himself, but considered as an expedient to gain time for
the ejectment proceedings, it was admirable. The conductor returned
to find a kicking, rolling, gouging mass of kinetic energy knocking
the varnish off all one end of the car. A head appearing, he coolly
batted it three times against a corner of the seat arm, after which
he pulled the contestant out by the hair and threw him into a seat
where he lay limp. Then it could be seen that Jimmy had clasped
tight in his embrace a leg each of the other two. He hugged them
close to his breast, and jammed his face down against them to
protect his features. They could pound the top of his head and
welcome. The only thing he really feared was a kick in the side,
and for that there was hardly room.
The conductor stood over the heap, at a manifest advantage.
"You lumber-jacks had enough, or do you want to catch it plenty?"
The men, drunk though they were, realized their helplessness. They
signified they had had enough. Jimmy thereupon released them and
stood up, brushing down his tousled hair with his stubby fingers.
"Now is it ticket or bounce?" inquired the conductor.
After some difficulty and grumbling, the two paid their fare and
that of the third, who was still dazed. In return the conductor
gave them slips. Then he picked his lantern from the overhead rack
whither he had tossed it, slung it on his left arm, and sauntered
on down the aisle punching tickets. Behind him followed Jimmy.
When he came to the door he swung across the platform with the
easy lurch of the trainman, and entered the other car, where he
took the tickets of the two women and the boy. One sitting in the
second car would have been unable to guess from the bearing or
manner of the two officials that anything had gone wrong.
The interested spectators of the little drama included two men near
the water-cooler who were perfectly sober. One of them was perhaps
a little past the best of life, but still straight and vigorous.
His lean face was leather-brown in contrast to a long mustache and
heavy eyebrows bleached nearly white, his eyes were a clear steady
blue, and his frame was slender but wiry. He wore the regulation
mackinaw blanket coat, a peaked cap with an extraordinarily high
crown, and buckskin moccasins over long stockings.
The other was younger, not more than twenty-six perhaps, with the
clean-cut, regular features we have come to consider typically
American. Eyebrows that curved far down along the temples, and
eyelashes of a darkness in contrast to the prevailing note of his
complexion combined to lend him a rather brooding, soft, and
melancholy air which a very cursory second examination showed to
be fictitious. His eyes, like the woodsman's, were steady, but
inquiring. His jaw was square and settled, his mouth straight. One
would be likely to sum him up as a man whose actions would be little
influenced by glamour or even by the sentiments. And yet, equally,
it was difficult to rid the mind of the impression produced by his
eyes. Unlike the other inmates of the car, he wore an ordinary
business suit, somewhat worn, but of good cut, and a style that
showed even over the soft flannel shirt. The trousers were,
however, bound inside the usual socks and rubbers.
The two seat mates had occupied their time each in his own fashion.
To the elder the journey was an evil to be endured with the patience
learned in watching deer runways, so he stared straight before him,
and spat with a certain periodicity into the centre of the aisle.
The younger stretched back lazily in an attitude of ease which spoke
of the habit of travelling. Sometimes he smoked a pipe. Thrice he
read over a letter. It was from his sister, and announced her
arrival at the little rural village in which he had made arrangements
for her to stay. "It is interesting,--now," she wrote, "though the
resources do not look as though they would wear well. I am learning
under Mrs. Renwick to sweep and dust and bake and stew and do a
multitude of other things which I always vaguely supposed came
ready-made. I like it; but after I have learned it all, I do not
believe the practise will appeal to me much. However, I can stand
it well enough for a year or two or three, for I am young; and then
you will have made your everlasting fortune, of course."
Harry Thorpe experienced a glow of pride each time he read this
part of the letter. He liked the frankness of the lack of pretence;
he admired the penetration and self-analysis which had taught her
the truth that, although learning a new thing is always interesting,
the practising of an old one is monotonous. And her pluck appealed
to him. It is not easy for a girl to step from the position of
mistress of servants to that of helping about the housework of a
small family in a small town for the sake of the home to be found
in it.
"She's a trump!" said Thorpe to himself, "and she shall have
her everlasting fortune, if there's such a thing in the country."
He jingled the three dollars and sixty cents in his pocket, and
smiled. That was the extent of his everlasting fortune at present.
The letter had been answered from Detroit.
"I am glad you are settled," he wrote. "At least I know you have
enough to eat and a roof over you. I hope sincerely that you will
do your best to fit yourself to your new conditions. I know it is
hard, but with my lack of experience and my ignorance as to where
to take hold, it may be a good many years before we can do any
better."
When Helen Thorpe read this, she cried. Things had gone wrong that
morning, and an encouraging word would have helped her. The somber
tone of her brother's communication threw her into a fit of the
blues from which, for the first time, she saw her surroundings in a
depressing and distasteful light. And yet he had written as he did
with the kindest possible motives.
Thorpe had the misfortune to be one of those individuals who, though
careless of what people in general may think of them, are in a
corresponding degree sensitive to the opinion of the few they
love. This feeling was further exaggerated by a constitutional
shrinking from any outward manifestation of the emotions. As a
natural result, he was often thought indifferent or discouraging
when in reality his natural affections were at their liveliest. A
failure to procure for a friend certain favors or pleasures
dejected him, not only because of that friend's disappointment, but
because, also, he imagined the failure earned him a certain blame.
Blame from his heart's intimates he shrank from. His life outside
the inner circles of his affections was apt to be so militant and
so divorced from considerations of amity, that as a matter of
natural reaction he became inclined to exaggerate the importance of
small objections, little reproaches, slight criticisms from his real
friends. Such criticisms seemed to bring into a sphere he would have
liked to keep solely for the mutual reliance of loving kindness,
something of the hard utilitarianism of the world at large. In
consequence he gradually came to choose the line of least resistance,
to avoid instinctively even the slightly disagreeable. Perhaps for
this reason he was never entirely sincere with those he loved. He
showed enthusiasm over any plan suggested by them, for the reason
that he never dared offer a merely problematical anticipation.
The affair had to be absolutely certain in his own mind before he
ventured to admit anyone to the pleasure of looking forward to
it,--and simply because he so feared the disappointment in case
anything should go wrong. He did not realize that not only is
the pleasure of anticipation often the best, but that even
disappointment, provided it happen through excusable causes,
strengthens the bonds of affection through sympathy. We do not
want merely results from a friend--merely finished products. We
like to be in at the making, even though the product spoil.
This unfortunate tendency, together with his reserve, lent him the
false attitude of a rather cold, self-centered man, discouraging
suggestions at first only to adopt them later in the most
inexplicable fashion, and conferring favors in a ready-made
impersonal manner which destroyed utterly their quality as favors.
In reality his heart hungered for the affection which this false
attitude generally repelled. He threw the wet blanket of doubt
over warm young enthusiasms because his mind worked with a certain
deliberateness which did not at once permit him to see the
practicability of the scheme. Later he would approve. But by that
time, probably, the wet blanket had effectually extinguished the
glow. You cannot always savor your pleasures cold.
So after the disgrace of his father, Harry Thorpe did a great deal
of thinking and planning which he kept carefully to himself. He
considered in turn the different occupations to which he could turn
his hand, and negatived them one by one. Few business firms would
care to employ the son of as shrewd an embezzler as Henry Thorpe.
Finally he came to a decision. He communicated this decision to his
sister. It would have commended itself more logically to her had
she been able to follow step by step the considerations that had
led her brother to it. As the event turned, she was forced to accept
it blindly. She knew that her brother intended going West, but as
to his hopes and plans she was in ignorance. A little sympathy, a
little mutual understanding would have meant a great deal to her,
for a girl whose mother she but dimly remembers, turns naturally to
her next of kin. Helen Thorpe had always admired her brother, but
had never before needed him. She had looked upon him as strong,
self-contained, a little moody. Now the tone of his letter caused
her to wonder whether he were not also a trifle hard and cold. So
she wept on receiving it, and the tears watered the ground for
discontent.
At the beginning of the row in the smoking car, Thorpe laid aside
his letter and watched with keen appreciation the direct practicality
of the trainmen's method. When the bearded man fell before the
conductor's blow, he turned to the individual at his side.
"He knows how to hit, doesn't he!" he observed. "That fellow was
knocked well off his feet."
"He does," agreed the other dryly.
They fell into a desultory conversation of fits and starts. Woodsmen
of the genuine sort are never talkative; and Thorpe, as has been
explained, was constitutionally reticent. In the course of their
disjointed remarks Thorpe explained that he was looking for work in
the woods, and intended, first of all, to try the Morrison & Daly
camps at Beeson Lake.
"Know anything about logging?" inquired the stranger.
"Nothing," Thorpe confessed.
"Ain't much show for anything but lumber-jacks. What did you think
of doing?"
"I don't know," said Thorpe, doubtfully. "I have driven horses a
good deal; I thought I might drive team."
The woodsman turned slowly and looked Thorpe over with a quizzical
eye. Then he faced to the front again and spat.
"Quite like," he replied still more dryly.
The boy's remark had amused him, and he had showed it, as much as
he ever showed anything. Excepting always the riverman, the driver
of a team commands the highest wages among out-of-door workers. He
has to be able to guide his horses by little steps over, through,
and around slippery and bristling difficulties. He must acquire
the knack of facing them square about in their tracks. He must hold
them under a control that will throw into their collars, at command,
from five pounds to their full power of pull, lasting from five
seconds to five minutes. And above all, he must be able to keep
them out of the way of tremendous loads of logs on a road which
constant sprinkling has rendered smooth and glassy, at the same
time preventing the long tongue from sweeping them bodily against
leg-breaking debris when a curve in the road is reached. It is
easier to drive a fire engine than a logging team.
But in spite of the naivete of the remark, the woodsman had seen
something in Thorpe he liked. Such men become rather expert in the
reading of character, and often in a log shanty you will hear
opinions of a shrewdness to surprise you. He revised his first
intention to let the conversation drop.
"I think M. & D. is rather full up just now," he remarked. "I'm
walkin'-boss there. The roads is about all made, and road-making is
what a greenhorn tackles first. They's more chance earlier in the
year. But if the OLD Fellow" (he strongly accented the first
word) "h'aint nothin' for you, just ask for Tim Shearer, an' I'll
try to put you on the trail for some jobber's camp."
The whistle of the locomotive blew, and the conductor appeared in
the doorway.
"Where's that fellow's turkey?" he inquired.
Several men looked toward Thorpe, who, not understanding this argot
of the camps, was a little bewildered. Shearer reached over his head
and took from the rack a heavy canvas bag, which he handed to the
conductor.
"That's the 'turkey'--" he explained, "his war bag. Bud'll throw
it off at Scott's, and Jack'll get it there."
"How far back is he?" asked Thorpe.
"About ten mile. He'll hoof it in all right."
A number of men descended at Scott's. The three who had come into
collision with Jimmy and Bud were getting noisier. They had
produced a stone jug, and had collected the remainder of the
passengers,--with the exception of Shearer and Thorpe,--and now were
passing the jug rapidly from hand to hand. Soon they became musical,
striking up one of the weird long-drawn-out chants so popular with
the shanty boy. Thorpe shrewdly guessed his companion to be a man
of weight, and did not hesitate to ascribe his immunity from
annoyance to the other's presence.
"It's a bad thing," said the walking-boss, "I used to be at it
myself, and I know. When I wanted whisky, I needed it worse than a
scalded pup does a snow bank. The first year I had a hundred and
fifty dollars, and I blew her all in six days. Next year I had a
little more, but she lasted me three weeks. That was better. Next
year, I says to myself, I'll just save fifty of that stake, and blow
the rest. So I did. After that I got to be scaler, and sort've
quit. I just made a deal with the Old Fellow to leave my stake with
headquarters no matter whether I call for it or not. I got quite a
lot coming, now."
"Bees'n Lake!" cried Jimmy fiercely through an aperture of the door.
"You'll find th' boardin'-house just across over the track," said
the woodsman, holding out his hand, "so long. See you again if you
don't find a job with the Old Fellow. My name's Shearer."
"Mine is Thorpe," replied the other. "Thank you."
The woodsman stepped forward past the carousers to the baggage
compartment, where he disappeared. The revellers stumbled out the
other door.
Thorpe followed and found himself on the frozen platform of a
little dark railway station. As he walked, the boards shrieked
under his feet and the sharp air nipped at his face and caught his
lungs. Beyond the fence-rail protection to the side of the platform
he thought he saw the suggestion of a broad reach of snow, a
distant lurking forest, a few shadowy buildings looming mysterious
in the night. The air was twinkling with frost and the brilliant
stars of the north country.
Directly across the track from the railway station, a single
building was picked from the dark by a solitary lamp in a lower-
story room. The four who had descended before Thorpe made over
toward this light, stumbling and laughing uncertainly, so he knew
it was probably in the boarding-house, and prepared to follow them.
Shearer and the station agent,--an individual much muffled,--turned
to the disposition of some light freight that had been dropped from
the baggage car.
The five were met at the steps by the proprietor of the boarding-
house. This man was short and stout, with a harelip and cleft
palate, which at once gave him the well-known slurring speech of
persons so afflicted, and imparted also to the timbre of his voice
a peculiarly hollow, resonant, trumpet-like note. He stumped about
energetically on a wooden leg of home manufacture. It was a
cumbersome instrument, heavy, with deep pine socket for the stump,
and a projecting brace which passed under a leather belt around the
man's waist. This instrument he used with the dexterity of a third
hand. As Thorpe watched him, he drove in a projecting nail, kicked
two "turkeys" dexterously inside the open door, and stuck the
armed end of his peg-leg through the top and bottom of the whisky
jug that one of the new arrivals had set down near the door. The
whisky promptly ran out. At this the cripple flirted the impaled
jug from the wooden leg far out over the rail of the verandah into
the snow.
A growl went up.
"What'n hell's that for I!" snarled one of the owners of the
whisky threateningly.
"Don't allow no whisky here," snuffed the harelip.
The men were very angry. They advanced toward the cripple, who
retreated with astonishing agility to the lighted room. There he
bent the wooden leg behind him, slipped the end of the brace from
beneath the leather belt, seized the other, peg end in his right
hand, and so became possessed of a murderous bludgeon. This he
brandished, hopping at the same time back and forth in such perfect
poise and yet with so ludicrous an effect of popping corn, that the
men were surprised into laughing.
"Bully for you, peg-leg!" they cried.
"Rules 'n regerlations, boys," replied the latter, without,
however, a shade of compromising in his tones. "Had supper?"
On receiving a reply in the affirmative, he caught up the lamp,
and, having resumed his artificial leg in one deft motion, led the
way to narrow little rooms.
Chapter IV
Thorpe was awakened a long time before daylight by the ringing
of a noisy bell. He dressed, shivering, and stumbled down stairs
to a round stove, big as a boiler, into which the cripple dumped
huge logs of wood from time to time. After breakfast Thorpe returned
to this stove and sat half dozing for what seemed to him untold
ages. The cold of the north country was initiating him.
Men came in, smoked a brief pipe, and went out. Shearer was one of
them. The woodsman nodded curtly to the young man, his cordiality
quite gone. Thorpe vaguely wondered why. After a time he himself
put on his overcoat and ventured out into the town. It seemed to
Thorpe a meager affair, built of lumber, mostly unpainted, with
always the dark, menacing fringe of the forest behind. The great
saw mill, with its tall stacks and its row of water-barrels--
protection against fire--on top, was the dominant note. Near the
mill crouched a little red-painted structure from whose stovepipe a
column of white smoke rose, attesting the cold, a clear hundred feet
straight upward, and to whose door a number of men were directing
their steps through the snow. Over the door Thorpe could distinguish
the word "Office." He followed and entered.
In a narrow aisle railed off from the main part of the room waited
Thorpe's companions of the night before. The remainder of the
office gave accommodation to three clerks. One of these glanced up
inquiringly as Thorpe came in.
"I am looking for work," said Thorpe.
"Wait there," briefly commanded the clerk.
In a few moments the door of the inner room opened, and Shearer
came out. A man's head peered from within.
"Come on, boys," said he.
The five applicants shuffled through. Thorpe found himself in the
presence of a man whom he felt to be the natural leader of these
wild, independent spirits. He was already a little past middle
life, and his form had lost the elastic vigor of youth. But his eye
was keen, clear, and wrinkled to a certain dry facetiousness; and
his figure was of that bulk which gives an impression of a subtler
weight and power than the merely physical. This peculiarity
impresses us in the portraits of such men as Daniel Webster and
others of the old jurists. The manner of the man was easy, good-
natured, perhaps a little facetious, but these qualities were
worn rather as garments than exhibited as characteristics. He could
afford them, not because he had fewer difficulties to overcome or
battles to fight than another, but because his strength was so
sufficient to them that mere battles or difficulties could not
affect the deliberateness of his humor. You felt his superiority
even when he was most comradely with you. This man Thorpe was to
meet under other conditions, wherein the steel hand would more
plainly clink the metal.
He was now seated in a worn office chair before a littered desk. In
the close air hung the smell of stale cigars and the clear fragrance
of pine.
"What is it, Dennis?" he asked the first of the men.
"I've been out," replied the lumberman. "Have you got anything for
me, Mr. Daly?"
The mill-owner laughed.
"I guess so. Report to Shearer. Did you vote for the right man,
Denny?"
The lumberman grinned sheepishly. "I don't know, sir. I didn't get
that far."
"Better let it alone. I suppose you and Bill want to come back,
too?" he added, turning to the next two in the line. "All right,
report to Tim. Do you want work?" he inquired of the last of the
quartette, a big bashful man with the shoulders of a Hercules.
"Yes, sir," answered the latter uncomfortably.
"What do you do?"
"I'm a cant-hook man, sir."
"Where have you worked?"
"I had a job with Morgan & Stebbins on the Clear River last winter."
"All right, we need cant-hook men. Report at 'seven,' and if they
don't want you there, go to 'thirteen.'"
Daly looked directly at the man with an air of finality. The
lumberman still lingered uneasily, twisting his cap in his hands.
"Anything you want?" asked Daly at last.
"Yes, sir," blurted the big man. "If I come down here and tell
you I want three days off and fifty dollars to bury my mother, I
wish you'd tell me to go to hell! I buried her three times last
winter!"
Daly chuckled a little.
"All right, Bub," said he, "to hell it is."
The man went out. Daly turned to Thorpe with the last flickers of
amusement in his eyes.
"What can I do for you?" he inquired in a little crisper tones.
Thorpe felt that he was not treated with the same careless
familiarity, because, potentially, he might be more of a force to
deal with. He underwent, too, the man's keen scrutiny, and knew
that every detail of his appearance had found its comment in the
other's experienced brain.
"I am looking for work," Thorpe replied.
"What kind of work?"
"Any kind, so I can learn something about the lumber business."
The older man studied him keenly for a few moments.
"Have you had any other business experience?"
"None."
"What have you been doing?"
"Nothing."
The lumberman's eyes hardened.
"We are a very busy firm here," he said with a certain deliberation;
"we do not carry a big force of men in any one department, and each
of those men has to fill his place and slop some over the sides.
We do not pretend or attempt to teach here. If you want to be a
lumberman, you must learn the lumber business more directly than
through the windows of a bookkeeper's office. Go into the woods.
Learn a few first principles. Find out the difference between
Norway and white pine, anyway."
Daly, being what is termed a self-made man, entertained a prejudice
against youths of the leisure class. He did not believe in their
earnestness of purpose, their capacity for knowledge, nor their
perseverance in anything. That a man of twenty-six should be
looking for his first situation was incomprehensible to him. He
made no effort to conceal his prejudice, because the class to which
the young man had belonged enjoyed his hearty contempt.
The truth is, he had taken Thorpe's ignorance a little too much
for granted. Before leaving his home, and while the project of
emigration was still in the air, the young fellow had, with the
quiet enthusiasm of men of his habit of mind, applied himself
to the mastering of whatever the books could teach. That is not
much. The literature on lumbering seems to be singularly limited.
Still he knew the trees, and had sketched an outline into which to
paint experience. He said nothing of this to the man before him,
because of that strange streak in his nature which prompted him to
conceal what he felt most strongly; to leave to others the task of
guessing out his attitude; to stand on appearances without attempting
to justify them, no matter how simple the justification might be.
A moment's frank, straightforward talk might have caught Daly's
attention, for the lumberman was, after all, a shrewd reader of
character where his prejudices were not concerned. Then events
would have turned out very differently.
After his speech the business man had whirled back to his desk.
"Have you anything for me to do in the woods, then?" the other
asked quietly.
"No," said Daly over his shoulder.
Thorpe went out.
Before leaving Detroit he had, on the advice of friends, visited
the city office of Morrison & Daly. There he had been told
positively that the firm were hiring men. Now, without five dollars
in his pocket, he made the elementary discovery that even in
chopping wood skilled labor counts. He did not know where to turn
next, and he would not have had the money to go far in any case.
So, although Shearer's brusque greeting that morning had argued a
lack of cordiality, he resolved to remind the riverman of his
promised assistance.
That noon he carried out his resolve. To his surprise Shearer was
cordial--in his way. He came afterward to appreciate the subtle
nuances of manner and treatment by which a boss retains his moral
supremacy in a lumber country,--repels that too great familiarity
which breeds contempt, without imperiling the trust and comradeship
which breeds willingness. In the morning Thorpe had been a
prospective employee of the firm, and so a possible subordinate of
Shearer himself. Now he was Shearer's equal.
"Go up and tackle Radway. He's jobbing for us on the Cass Branch.
He needs men for roadin', I know, because he's behind. You'll get a
job there."
"Where is it?" asked Thorpe.
"Ten miles from here. She's blazed, but you better wait for th'
supply team, Friday. If you try to make her yourself, you'll get
lost on some of th' old loggin' roads."
Thorpe considered.
"I'm busted," he said at last frankly.
"Oh, that's all right," replied the walking-boss. "Marshall, come
here!"
The peg-legged boarding-house keeper stumped in.
"What is it?" he trumpeted snufflingly.
"This boy wants a job till Friday. Then he's going up to Radway's
with the supply team. Now quit your hollerin' for a chore-boy for a
few days."
"All right," snorted Marshall, "take that ax and split some dry
wood that you'll find behind the house."
"I'm very much obliged to you," began Thorpe to the walking-boss,
"and---"
"That's all right," interrupted the latter, "some day you can give
me a job."
Chapter V
For five days Thorpe cut wood, made fires, drew water, swept
floors, and ran errands. Sometimes he would look across the broad
stump-dotted plain to the distant forest. He had imagination. No
business man succeeds without it. With him the great struggle to
wrest from an impassive and aloof nature what she has so long held
securely as her own, took on the proportions of a battle. The
distant forest was the front. To it went the new bands of fighters.
From it came the caissons for food, that ammunition of the frontier;
messengers bringing tidings of defeat or victory; sometimes men
groaning on their litters from the twisting and crushing and
breaking inflicted on them by the calm, ruthless enemy; once a dead
man bearing still on his chest the mark of the tree that had killed
him. Here at headquarters sat the general, map in hand, issuing his
orders, directing his forces.
And out of the forest came mystery. Hunters brought deer on sledges.
Indians, observant and grave, swung silently across the reaches
on their snowshoes, and silently back again carrying their meager
purchases. In the daytime ravens wheeled and croaked about the
outskirts of the town, bearing the shadow of the woods on their
plumes and of the north-wind in the somber quality of their voices;
rare eagles wheeled gracefully to and fro; snow squalls coquetted
with the landscape. At night the many creatures of the forest
ventured out across the plains in search of food,--weasels; big
white hares; deer, planting daintily their little sharp hoofs where
the frozen turnips were most plentiful; porcupines in quest of
anything they could get their keen teeth into;--and often the big
timber wolves would send shivering across the waste a long whining
howl. And in the morning their tracks would embroider the snow with
many stories.
The talk about the great stove in the boarding-house office also
possessed the charm of balsam fragrance. One told the other occult
facts about the "Southeast of the southwest of eight." The second
in turn vouchsafed information about another point of the compass.
Thorpe heard of many curious practical expedients. He learned that
one can prevent awkward air-holes in lakes by "tapping" the ice
with an ax,--for the air must get out, naturally or artificially;
that the top log on a load should not be large because of the
probability, when one side has dumped with a rush, of its falling
straight down from its original height, so breaking the sleigh;
that a thin slice of salt pork well peppered is good when tied
about a sore throat; that choking a horse will cause him to swell
up and float on the top of the water, thus rendering it easy to
slide him out on the ice from a hole he may have broken into; that
a tree lodged against another may be brought to the ground by
felling a third against it; that snowshoes made of caribou hide do
not become baggy, because caribou shrinks when wet, whereas other
rawhide stretches. These, and many other things too complicated to
elaborate here, he heard discussed by expert opinion. Gradually
he acquired an enthusiasm for the woods, just as a boy conceives
a longing for the out-of-door life of which he hears in the
conversation of his elders about the winter fire. He became eager
to get away to the front, to stand among the pines, to grapple with
the difficulties of thicket, hill, snow, and cold that nature
silently interposes between the man and his task.
At the end of the week he received four dollars from his employer;
dumped his valise into a low bobsleigh driven by a man muffled in a
fur coat; assisted in loading the sleigh with a variety of things,
from Spearhead plug to raisins; and turned his face at last toward
the land of his hopes and desires.
The long drive to camp was at once a delight and a misery to him.
Its miles stretched longer and longer as time went on; and the
miles of a route new to a man are always one and a half at least.
The forest, so mysterious and inviting from afar, drew within
itself coldly when Thorpe entered it. He was as yet a stranger.
The snow became the prevailing note. The white was everywhere,
concealing jealously beneath rounded uniformity the secrets of the
woods. And it was cold. First Thorpe's feet became numb, then his
hands, then his nose was nipped, and finally his warm clothes were
lifted from him by invisible hands, and he was left naked to
shivers and tremblings. He found it torture to sit still on the top
of the bale of hay; and yet he could not bear to contemplate the
cold shock of jumping from the sleigh to the ground,--of touching
foot to the chilling snow. The driver pulled up to breathe his
horses at the top of a hill, and to fasten under one runner a heavy
chain, which, grinding into the snow, would act as a brake on the
descent.
"You're dressed pretty light," he advised; "better hoof it a ways
and get warm."
The words tipped the balance of Thorpe's decision. He descended
stiffly, conscious of a disagreeable shock from a six-inch jump.
In ten minutes, the wallowing, slipping, and leaping after the
tail of the sled had sent his blood tingling to the last of his
protesting members. Cold withdrew. He saw now that the pines were
beautiful and solemn and still; and that in the temple of their
columns dwelt winter enthroned. Across the carpet of the snow
wandered the trails of her creatures,--the stately regular prints
of the partridge; the series of pairs made by the squirrel; those
of the weasel and mink, just like the squirrels' except that the
prints were not quite side by side, and that between every other
pair stretched the mark of the animal's long, slender body; the
delicate tracery of the deer mouse; the fan of the rabbit; the print
of a baby's hand that the raccoon left; the broad pad of a lynx;
the dog-like trail of wolves;--these, and a dozen others, all equally
unknown, gave Thorpe the impression of a great mysterious multitude
of living things which moved about him invisible. In a thicket of
cedar and scrub willow near the bed of a stream, he encountered one
of those strangely assorted bands of woods-creatures which are
always cruising it through the country. He heard the cheerful little
chickadee; he saw the grave nuthatch with its appearance of a total
lack of humor; he glimpsed a black-and-white woodpecker or so, and
was reviled by a ribald blue jay. Already the wilderness was taking
its character to him.
After a little while, they arrived by way of a hill, over which
they plunged into the middle of the camp. Thorpe saw three large
buildings, backed end to end, and two smaller ones, all built of
heavy logs, roofed with plank, and lighted sparsely through one or
two windows apiece. The driver pulled up opposite the space between
two of the larger buildings, and began to unload his provisions.
Thorpe set about aiding him, and so found himself for the first
time in a "cook camp."
It was a commodious building,--Thorpe had no idea a log structure
ever contained so much room. One end furnished space for two
cooking ranges and two bunks placed one over the other. Along one
side ran a broad table-shelf, with other shelves over it and numerous
barrels underneath, all filled with cans, loaves of bread, cookies,
and pies. The center was occupied by four long bench-flanked tables,
down whose middle straggled utensils containing sugar, apple-butter,
condiments, and sauces, and whose edges were set with tin dishes for
about forty men. The cook, a rather thin-faced man with a mustache,
directed where the provisions were to be stowed; and the "cookee,"
a hulking youth, assisted Thorpe and the driver to carry them in.
During the course of the work Thorpe made a mistake.
"That stuff doesn't come here," objected the cookee, indicating a
box of tobacco the newcomer was carrying. "She goes to the 'van.'"
Thorpe did not know what the "van" might be, but he replaced the
tobacco on the sleigh. In a few moments the task was finished,
with the exception of a half dozen other cases, which the driver
designated as also for the "van." The horses were unhitched, and
stabled in the third of the big log buildings. The driver indicated
the second.
"Better go into the men's camp and sit down 'till th' boss gets
in," he advised.
Thorpe entered a dim, over-heated structure, lined on two sides
by a double tier of large bunks partitioned from one another like
cabins of boats, and centered by a huge stove over which hung
slender poles. The latter were to dry clothes on. Just outside
the bunks ran a straight hard bench. Thorpe stood at the entrance
trying to accustom his eyes to the dimness.
"Set down," said a voice, "on th' floor if you want to; but I'd
prefer th' deacon seat."
Thorpe obediently took position on the bench, or "deacon seat."
His eyes, more used to the light, could make out a thin, tall, bent
old man, with bare cranium, two visible teeth, and a three days'
stubble of white beard over his meager, twisted face.
He caught, perhaps, Thorpe's surprised expression.
"You think th' old man's no good, do you?" he cackled, without the
slightest malice, "looks is deceivin'!" He sprang up swiftly,
seized the toe of his right foot in his left hand, and jumped his
left foot through the loop thus formed. Then he sat down again,
and laughed at Thorpe's astonishment.
"Old Jackson's still purty smart," said he. "I'm barn-boss. They
ain't a man in th' country knows as much about hosses as I do. We
ain't had but two sick this fall, an' between you an' me, they's a
skate lot. You're a greenhorn, ain't you?"
"Yes," confessed Thorpe.
"Well," said Jackson, reflectively but rapidly, "Le Fabian, he's
quiet but bad; and O'Grady, he talks loud but you can bluff him;
and Perry, he's only bad when he gets full of red likker; and Norton
he's bad when he gets mad like, and will use axes."
Thorpe did not know he was getting valuable points on the camp
bullies. The old man hitched nearer and peered in his face.
"They don't bluff you a bit," he said, "unless you likes them,
and then they can back you way off the skidway."
Thorpe smiled at the old fellow's volubility. He did not know
how near to the truth the woodsman's shrewdness had hit; for to
himself, as to most strong characters, his peculiarities were the
normal, and therefore the unnoticed. His habit of thought in
respect to other people was rather objective than subjective. He
inquired so impersonally the significance of whatever was before
him, that it lost the human quality both as to itself and himself.
To him men were things. This attitude relieved him of self-
consciousness. He never bothered his head as to what the other
man thought of him, his ignorance, or his awkwardness, simply
because to him the other man was nothing but an element in his
problem. So in such circumstances he learned fast. Once introduce
the human element, however, and his absurdly sensitive self-
consciousness asserted itself. He was, as Jackson expressed it,
backed off the skidway.
At dark the old man lit two lamps, which served dimly to gloze the
shadows, and thrust logs of wood into the cast-iron stove. Soon
after, the men came in. They were a queer, mixed lot. Some carried
the indisputable stamp of the frontiersman in their bearing and
glance; others looked to be mere day-laborers, capable of performing
whatever task they were set to, and of finding the trail home again.
There were active, clean-built, precise Frenchmen, with small hands
and feet, and a peculiarly trim way of wearing their rough garments;
typical native-born American lumber-jacks powerful in frame, rakish
in air, reckless in manner; big blonde Scandinavians and Swedes,
strong men at the sawing; an Indian or so, strangely in contrast to
the rest; and a variety of Irishmen, Englishmen, and Canadians.
These men tramped in without a word, and set busily to work at
various tasks. Some sat on the "deacon seat" and began to take
off their socks and rubbers; others washed at a little wooden sink;
still others selected and lit lanterns from a pendant row near the
window, and followed old Jackson out of doors. They were the
teamsters.
"You'll find the old man in the office," said Jackson.
Thorpe made his way across to the small log cabin indicated as the
office, and pushed open the door. He found himself in a little room
containing two bunks, a stove, a counter and desk, and a number of
shelves full of supplies. About the walls hung firearms, snowshoes,
and a variety of clothes.
A man sat at the desk placing figures on a sheet of paper. He
obtained the figures from statistics pencilled on three thin leaves
of beech-wood riveted together. In a chair by the stove lounged a
bulkier figure, which Thorpe concluded to be that of the "old man."
"I was sent here by Shearer," said Thorpe directly; "he said you
might give me some work."
So long a silence fell that the applicant began to wonder if his
question had been heard.
"I might," replied the man drily at last.
"Well, will you?" Thorpe inquired, the humor of the situation
overcoming him.
"Have you ever worked in the woods?"
"No."
The man smoked silently.
"I'll put you on the road in the morning," he concluded, as though
this were the deciding qualification.
One of the men entered abruptly and approached the counter. The
writer at the desk laid aside his tablets.
"What is it, Albert?" he added.
"Jot of chewin'," was the reply.
The scaler took from the shelf a long plug of tobacco and cut off
two inches.
"Ain't hitting the van much, are you, Albert?" he commented, putting
the man's name and the amount in a little book. Thorpe went out,
after leaving his name for the time book, enlightened as to the
method of obtaining supplies. He promised himself some warm clothing
from the van, when he should have worked out the necessary credit.
At supper he learned something else,--that he must not talk at
table. A moment's reflection taught him the common-sense of the
rule. For one thing, supper was a much briefer affair than it
would have been had every man felt privileged to take his will in
conversation; not to speak of the absence of noise and the presence
of peace. Each man asked for what he wanted.
"Please pass the beans," he said with the deliberate intonation
of a man who does not expect that his request will be granted.
Besides the beans were fried salt pork, boiled potatoes, canned
corn, mince pie, a variety of cookies and doughnuts, and strong
green tea. Thorpe found himself eating ravenously of the crude fare.
That evening he underwent a catechism, a few practical jokes, which
he took good-naturedly, and a vast deal of chaffing. At nine the
lights were all out. By daylight he and a dozen other men were at
work, hewing a road that had to be as smooth and level as a New
York boulevard.
Chapter VI
Thorpe and four others were set to work on this road, which was
to be cut through a creek bottom leading, he was told, to "seventeen."
The figures meant nothing to him. Later, each number came to possess
an individuality of its own. He learned to use a double-bitted ax.
Thorpe's intelligence was of the practical sort that wonderfully
helps experience. He watched closely one of the older men, and
analyzed the relation borne by each one of his movements to the
object in view. In a short time he perceived that one hand and arm
are mere continuations of the helve, attaching the blade of the ax
to the shoulder of the wielder; and that the other hand directs the
stroke. He acquired the knack thus of throwing the bit of steel into
the gash as though it were a baseball on the end of a string; and so
accomplished power. By experiment he learned just when to slide the
guiding hand down the helve; and so gained accuracy. He suffered
none of those accidents so common to new choppers. His ax did not
twist itself from his hands, nor glance to cut his foot. He
attained the method of the double bit, and how to knock roots by
alternate employment of the edge and flat. In a few days his hands
became hard and used to the cold.
From shortly after daylight he worked. Four other men bore him
company, and twice Radway himself came by, watched their operations
for a moment, and moved on without comment. After Thorpe had caught
his second wind, he enjoyed his task, proving a certain pleasure in
the ease with which he handled his tool.
At the end of an interminable period, a faint, musical halloo
swelled, echoed, and died through the forest, beautiful as a
spirit. It was taken up by another voice and repeated. Then by
another. Now near at hand, now far away it rang as hollow as a
bell. The sawyers, the swampers, the skidders, and the team men
turned and put on their heavy blanket coats.
Down on the road Thorpe heard it too, and wondered what it might be.
"Come on, Bub! she means chew!" explained old man Heath kindly.
Old man Heath was a veteran woodsman who had come to swamping in
his old age. He knew the game thoroughly, but could never save
his "stake" when Pat McGinnis, the saloon man, enticed him in.
Throughout the morning he had kept an eye on the newcomer, and was
secretly pleased in his heart of the professional at the readiness
with which the young fellow learned.
Thorpe resumed his coat, and fell in behind the little procession.
After a short time he came upon a horse and sledge. Beyond it the
cookee had built a little camp fire, around and over which he had
grouped big fifty-pound lard-tins, half full of hot things to eat.
Each man, as he approached, picked up a tin plate and cup from a
pile near at hand.
The cookee was plainly master of the situation. He issued peremptory
orders. When Erickson, the blonde Swede, attempted surreptitiously
to appropriate a doughnut, the youth turned on him savagely.
"Get out of that, you big tow-head!" he cried with an oath.
A dozen Canada jays, fluffy, impatient, perched near by or made
little short circles over and back. They awaited the remains of
the dinner. Bob Stratton and a devil-may-care giant by the name of
Nolan constructed a joke wherewith to amuse the interim. They cut a
long pole, and placed it across a log and through a bush, so that
one extremity projected beyond the bush. Then diplomacy won a piece
of meat from the cookee. This they nailed to the end of the pole by
means of a pine sliver. The Canada jays gazed on the morsel with
covetous eyes. When the men had retired, they swooped. One big
fellow arrived first, and lit in defiance of the rest.
"Give it to 'im!" whispered Nolan, who had been watching.
Bob hit the other end of the pole a mighty whack with his ax. The
astonished jay, projected straight upward by the shock, gave a
startled squawk and cut a hole through the air for the tall timber.
Stratton and Nolan went into convulsions of laughter.
"Get at it!" cried the cookee, as though setting a pack of dogs on
their prey.
The men ate, perched in various attitudes and places. Thorpe found
it difficult to keep warm. The violent exercise had heated him
through, and now the north country cold penetrated to his bones.
He huddled close to the fire, and drank hot tea, but it did not do
him very much good. In his secret mind he resolved to buy one of
the blanket mackinaws that very evening. He began to see that the
costumes of each country have their origin in practicality.
That evening he picked out one of the best. As he was about to
inquire the price, Radway drew the van book toward him, inquiring,
"Let's see; what's the name?"
In an instant Thorpe was charged on the book with three dollars and
a half, although his work that day had earned him less than a
dollar. On his way back to the men's shanty he could not help
thinking how easy it would be for him to leave the next morning two
dollars and a half ahead. He wondered if this method of procedure
obtained in all the camps.
The newcomer's first day of hard work had tired him completely. He
was ready for nothing so much as his bunk. But he had forgotten
that it was Saturday night. His status was still to assure.
They began with a few mild tricks. Shuffle the Brogan followed
Hot Back. Thorpe took all of it good-naturedly. Finally a tall
individual with a thin white face, a reptilian forehead, reddish
hair, and long baboon arms, suggested tossing in a blanket. Thorpe
looked at the low ceiling, and declined.
"I'm with the game as long as you say, boys," said he, "and I'll
have as much fun as anybody, but that's going too far for a tired
man."
The reptilian gentleman let out a string of oaths whose meaning
might be translated, "We'll see about that!"
Thorpe was a good boxer, but he knew by now the lumber-jack's
method of fighting,--anything to hurt the other fellow. And in a
genuine old-fashioned knock-down-and-drag-out rough-and-tumble your
woodsman is about the toughest customer to handle you will be likely
to meet. He is brought up on fighting. Nothing pleases him better
than to get drunk and, with a few companions, to embark on an
earnest effort to "clean out" a rival town. And he will accept
cheerfully punishment enough to kill three ordinary men. It takes
one of his kind really to hurt him.
Thorpe, at the first hostile movement, sprang back to the door,
seized one of the three-foot billets of hardwood intended for the
stove, and faced his opponents.
"I don't know which of you boys is coming first," said he quietly,
"but he's going to get it good and plenty."
If the affair had been serious, these men would never have recoiled
before the mere danger of a stick of hardwood. The American woodsman
is afraid of nothing human. But this was a good-natured bit of
foolery, a test of nerve, and there was no object in getting a
broken head for that. The reptilian gentleman alone grumbled at
the abandonment of the attack, mumbling something profane.
"If you hanker for trouble so much," drawled the unexpected voice
of old Jackson from the corner, "mebbe you could put on th' gloves."
The idea was acclaimed. Somebody tossed out a dirty torn old set of
buckskin boxing gloves.
The rest was farce. Thorpe was built on the true athletic lines,
broad, straight shoulders, narrow flanks, long, clean, smooth
muscles. He possessed, besides, that hereditary toughness and bulk
which no gymnasium training will ever quite supply. The other man,
while powerful and ugly in his rushes, was clumsy and did not use
his head. Thorpe planted his hard straight blows at will. In this
game he was as manifestly superior as his opponent would probably
have been had the rules permitted kicking, gouging, and wrestling.
Finally he saw his opening and let out with a swinging pivot blow.
The other picked himself out of a corner, and drew off the gloves.
Thorpe's status was assured.
A Frenchman took down his fiddle and began to squeak. In the course
of the dance old Jackson and old Heath found themselves together,
smoking their pipes of Peerless.
"The young feller's all right," observed Heath; "he cuffed Ben up
to a peak all right."
"Went down like a peck of wet fish-nets," replied Jackson tranquilly.
Chapter VII
In the office shanty one evening about a week later, Radway and
his scaler happened to be talking over the situation. The scaler,
whose name was Dyer, slouched back in the shadow, watching his great
honest superior as a crafty, dainty cat might watch the blunderings
of a St. Bernard. When he spoke, it was with a mockery so subtle as
quite to escape the perceptions of the lumberman. Dyer had a precise
little black mustache whose ends he was constantly twisting into
points, black eyebrows, and long effeminate black lashes. You would
have expected his dress in the city to be just a trifle flashy, not
enough so to be loud, but sinning as to the trifles of good taste.
The two men conversed in short elliptical sentences, using many
technical terms.
"That 'seventeen' white pine is going to underrun," said Dyer. "It
won't skid over three hundred thousand."
"It's small stuff," agreed Radway, "and so much the worse for us;
but the Company'll stand in on it because small stuff like that
always over-runs on the mill-cut."
The scaler nodded comprehension.
"When you going to dray-haul that Norway across Pike Lake?"
"To-morrow. She's springy, but the books say five inches of ice
will hold a team, and there's more than that. How much are we
putting in a day, now?"
"About forty thousand."
Radway fell silent.
"That's mighty little for such a crew," he observed at last,
doubtfully.
"I always said you were too easy with them. You got to drive them
more."
"Well, it's a rough country," apologized Radway, trying, as was
his custom, to find excuses for the other party as soon as he was
agreed with in his blame, "there's any amount of potholes; and, then,
we've had so much snow the ground ain't really froze underneath. It
gets pretty soft in some of them swamps. Can't figure on putting up
as much in this country as we used to down on the Muskegon."
The scaler smiled a thin smile all to himself behind the stove. Big
John Radway depended so much on the moral effect of approval or
disapproval by those with whom he lived. It amused Dyer to withhold
the timely word, so leaving the jobber to flounder between his easy
nature and his sense of what should be done.
Dyer knew perfectly well that the work was behind, and he knew the
reason. For some time the men had been relaxing their efforts.
They had worked honestly enough, but a certain snap and vim had
lacked. This was because Radway had been too easy on them.
Your true lumber-jack adores of all things in creation a man whom he
feels to be stronger than himself. If his employer is big enough to
drive him, then he is willing to be driven to the last ounce of his
strength. But once he gets the notion that his "boss" is afraid
of, or for, him or his feelings or his health, he loses interest in
working for that man. So a little effort to lighten or expedite his
work, a little leniency in excusing the dilatory finishing of a
job, a little easing-up under stress of weather, are taken as so
many indications of a desire to conciliate. And conciliation means
weakness every time. Your lumber-jack likes to be met front to
front, one strong man to another. As you value your authority, the
love of your men, and the completion of your work, keep a bluff
brow and an unbending singleness of purpose.
Radway's peculiar temperament rendered him liable to just this
mistake. It was so much easier for him to do the thing himself
than to be harsh to the point of forcing another to it, that he was
inclined to take the line of least resistance when it came to a
question of even ordinary diligence. He sought often in his own
mind excuses for dereliction in favor of a man who would not have
dreamed of seeking them for himself. A good many people would call
this kindness of heart. Perhaps it was; the question is a little
puzzling. But the facts were as stated.
Thorpe had already commented on the feeling among the men, though,
owing to his inexperience, he was not able to estimate its full
value. The men were inclined to a semi-apologetic air when they
spoke of their connection with the camp. Instead of being honored
as one of a series of jobs, this seemed to be considered as merely
a temporary halting-place in which they took no pride, and from
which they looked forward in anticipation or back in memory to
better things.
"Old Shearer, he's the bully boy," said Bob Stratton. "I remember
when he was foremap for M. & D. at Camp 0. Say, we did hustle them
saw-logs in! I should rise to remark! Out in th' woods by first
streak o' day. I recall one mornin' she was pretty cold, an' the
boys grumbled some about turnin' out. 'Cold,' says Tim, 'you sons
of guns! You got your ch'ice. It may be too cold for you in the
woods, but it's a damm sight too hot fer you in hell, an' you're
going to one or the other!' And he meant it too. Them was great
days! Forty million a year, and not a hitch."
One man said nothing in the general discussion. It was his first
winter in the woods, and plainly in the eyes of the veterans this
experience did not count. It was a "faute de mieux," in which one
would give an honest day's work, and no more.
As has been hinted, even the inexperienced newcomer noticed the
lack of enthusiasm, of unity. Had he known the loyalty, devotion,
and adoration that a thoroughly competent man wins from his "hands,"
the state of affairs would have seemed even more surprising. The
lumber-jack will work sixteen, eighteen hours a day, sometimes up
to the waist in water full of floating ice; sleep wet on the ground
by a little fire; and then next morning will spring to work at
daylight with an "Oh, no, not tired; just a little stiff, sir!" in
cheerful reply to his master's inquiry,--for the right man! Only it
must be a strong man,--with the strength of the wilderness in his eye.
The next morning Radway transferred Molly and Jenny, with little
Fabian Laveque and two of the younger men, to Pike Lake. There,
earlier in the season, a number of pines had been felled out on the
ice, cut in logs, and left in expectation of ice thick enough to
bear the travoy "dray." Owing to the fact that the shores of Pike
Lake were extremely precipitous, it had been impossible to travoy
the logs up over the hill.
Radway had sounded carefully the thickness of the ice with an ax.
Although the weather had of late been sufficiently cold for the
time of year, the snow, as often happens, had fallen before the
temperature. Under the warm white blanket, the actual freezing
had been slight. However, there seemed to be at least eight inches
of clear ice, which would suffice.
Some of the logs in question were found to be half imbedded in the
ice. It became necessary first of all to free them. Young Henrys
cut a strong bar six or eight feet long, while Pat McGuire chopped
a hole alongside the log. Then one end of the bar was thrust into
the hole, the logging chain fastened to the other; and, behold, a
monster lever, whose fulcrum was the ice and whose power was applied
by Molly, hitched to the end of the chain. In this simple manner a
task was accomplished in five minutes which would have taken a dozen
men an hour. When the log had been cat-a-cornered from its bed, the
chain was fastened around one end by means of the ever-useful steel
swamp-hook, and it was yanked across the dray. Then the travoy took
its careful way across the ice to where a dip in the shore gave
access to a skidway.
Four logs had thus been safely hauled. The fifth was on its journey
across the lake. Suddenly without warning, and with scarcely a
sound, both horses sank through the ice, which bubbled up around
them and over their backs in irregular rotted pieces. Little Fabian
Laveque shouted, and jumped down from his log. Pat McGuire and
young Henrys came running.
The horses had broken through an air-hole, about which the ice was
strong. Fabian had already seized Molly by the bit, and was holding
her head easily above water.
"Kitch Jenny by dat he't!" he cried to Pat.
Thus the two men, without exertion, sustained the noses of the team
above the surface. The position demanded absolutely no haste, for it
could have been maintained for a good half hour. Molly and Jenny,
their soft eyes full of the intelligence of the situation, rested
easily in full confidence. But Pat and Henrys, new to this sort of
emergency, were badly frightened and excited. To them the affair
had come to a deadlock.
"Oh, Lord!" cried Pat, clinging desperately to Jenny's headpiece.
"What will we'z be doin'? We can't niver haul them two horses on
the ice."
"Tak' de log-chain," said Fabian to Henrys, "an' tie him around
de nec' of Jenny."
Henrys, after much difficulty and nervous fumbling, managed to
loosen the swamp-hook; and after much more difficulty and nervous
fumbling succeeded in making it fast about the gray mare's neck.
Fabian intended with this to choke the animal to that peculiar
state when she would float like a balloon on the water, and two
men could with ease draw her over the edge of the ice. Then the
unexpected happened.
The instant Henrys had passed the end of the chain through the
knot, Pat, possessed by some Hibernian notion that now all was
fast, let go of the bit. Jenny's head at once went under, and
the end of the logging chain glided over the ice and fell plump
in the hole.
Immediately all was confusion. Jenny kicked and struggled, churning
the water, throwing it about, kicking out in every direction. Once a
horse's head dips strongly, the game is over. No animal drowns more
quickly. The two young boys scrambled away, and French oaths could
not induce them to approach. Molly, still upheld by Fabian, looked
at him piteously with her strange intelligent eyes, holding herself
motionless and rigid with complete confidence in this master who had
never failed her before. Fabian dug his heels into the ice, but
could not hang on. The drowning horse was more than a dead weight.
Presently it became a question of letting go or being dragged into
the lake on top of the animals. With a sob the little Frenchman
relinquished his hold. The water seemed slowly to rise and over-
film the troubled look of pleading in Molly's eyes.
"Assassins!" hissed Laveque at the two unfortunate youths. That
was all.
When the surface of the waters had again mirrored the clouds, they
hauled the carcasses out on the ice and stripped the harness. Then
they rolled the log from the dray, piled the tools on it, and took
their way to camp. In the blue of the winter's sky was a single
speck.
The speck grew. Soon it swooped. With a hoarse croak it lit on
the snow at a wary distance, and began to strut back and forth.
Presently, its suspicions at rest, the raven advanced, and with
eager beak began its dreadful meal. By this time another, which
had seen the first one's swoop, was in view through the ether; then
another; then another. In an hour the brotherhood of ravens, thus
telegraphically notified, was at feast.
Chapter VIII
Fabian Laveque elaborated the details of the catastrophe with
volubility.
"Hee's not fonny dat she bre'ks t'rough," he said. "I 'ave see
dem bre'k t'rough two, t'ree tam in de day, but nevaire dat she
get drown! W'en dose dam-fool can't t'ink wit' hees haid--sacre
Dieu! eet is so easy, to chok' dat cheval--she make me cry wit'
de eye!"
"I suppose it was a good deal my fault," commented Radway, doubtfully
shaking his head, after Laveque had left the office. "I ought to
have been surer about the ice."
"Eight inches is a little light, with so much snow atop," remarked
the scaler carelessly.
By virtue of that same careless remark, however, Radway was so
confirmed in his belief as to his own culpability that he quite
overlooked Fabian's just contention--that the mere thinness of the
ice was in reality no excuse for the losing of the horses. So Pat
and Henrys were not discharged--were not instructed to "get their
time." Fabian Laveque promptly demanded his.
"Sacre bleu!" said he to old Jackson. "I no work wid dat dam-fool
dat no t'ink wit' hees haid."
This deprived the camp at once of a teamster and a team. When you
reflect that one pair of horses takes care of the exertions of a
crew of sawyers, several swampers, and three or four cant-hook men,
you will readily see what a serious derangement their loss would
cause. And besides, the animals themselves are difficult to replace.
They are big strong beasts, selected for their power, staying
qualities, and intelligence, worth anywhere from three to six
hundred dollars a pair. They must be shipped in from a distance.
And, finally, they require a very careful and patient training
before they are of value in co-operating with the nicely adjusted
efforts necessary to place the sawlog where it belongs. Ready-
trained horses are never for sale during the season.
Radway did his best. He took three days to search out a big team
of farm horses. Then it became necessary to find a driver. After
some deliberation he decided to advance Bob Stratton to the post,
that "decker" having had more or less experience the year before.
Erickson, the Swede, while not a star cant-hook man, was nevertheless
sure and reliable. Radway placed him in Stratton's place. But now
he must find a swamper. He remembered Thorpe.
So the young man received his first promotion toward the ranks of
skilled labor. He gained at last a field of application for the
accuracy he had so intelligently acquired while road-making, for
now a false stroke marred a saw-log; and besides, what was more to
his taste, he found himself near the actual scene of operation, at
the front, as it were. He had under his very eyes the process as
far as it had been carried.
In his experience here he made use of the same searching analytical
observation that had so quickly taught him the secret of the ax-
swing. He knew that each of the things he saw, no matter how
trivial, was either premeditated or the product of chance. If
premeditated, he tried to find out its reason for being. If
fortuitous, he wished to know the fact, and always attempted to
figure out the possibility of its elimination.
So he learned why and when the sawyers threw a tree up or down
hill; how much small standing timber they tried to fell it through;
what consideration held for the cutting of different lengths of log;
how the timber was skilfully decked on the skids in such a manner
that the pile should not bulge and fall, and so that the scaler
could easily determine the opposite ends of the same log;--in short,
a thousand and one little details which ordinarily a man learns only
as the exigencies arise to call in experience. Here, too, he first
realized he was in the firing line.
Thorpe had assigned him as bunk mate the young fellow who assisted
Tom Broadhead in the felling. Henry Paul was a fresh-complexioned,
clear-eyed, quick-mannered young fellow with an air of steady
responsibility about him. He came from the southern part of the
State, where, during the summer, he worked on a little homestead
farm of his own. After a few days he told Thorpe that he was
married, and after a few days more he showed his bunk mate the
photograph of a sweet-faced young woman who looked trustingly out
of the picture.
"She's waitin' down there for me, and it ain't so very long till
spring," said Paul wistfully. "She's the best little woman a man
ever had, and there ain't nothin' too good for her, chummy!"
Thorpe, soul-sick after his recent experiences with the charity of
the world, discovered a real pleasure in this fresh, clear passion.
As he contemplated the abounding health, the upright carriage, the
sparkling, bubbling spirits of the young woodsman, he could easily
imagine the young girl and the young happiness, too big for a
little backwoods farm.
Three days after the newcomer had started in at the swamping, Paul,
during their early morning walk from camp to the scene of their
operations, confided in him further.
"Got another letter, chummy," said he, "come in yesterday. She
tells me," he hesitated with a blush, and then a happy laugh, "that
they ain't going to be only two of us at the farm next year."
"You mean!" queried Thorpe.
"Yes," laughed Paul, "and if it's a girl she gets named after her
mother, you bet."
The men separated. In a moment Thorpe found himself waist-deep in
the pitchy aromatic top of an old bull-sap, clipping away at the
projecting branches. After a time he heard Paul's gay halloo.
"TimBER!" came the cry, and then the swish-sh-sh,--CRASH of the
tree's fall.
Thorpe knew that now either Hank or Tom must be climbing with the
long measuring pole along the prostrate trunk, marking by means of
shallow ax-clips where the saw was to divide the logs. Then Tom
shouted something unintelligible. The other men seemed to understand,
however, for they dropped their work and ran hastily in the direction
of the voice. Thorpe, after a moment's indecision, did the same.
He arrived to find a group about a prostrate man. The man was Paul.
Two of the older woodsmen, kneeling, were conducting coolly a hasty
examination. At the front every man is more or less of a surgeon.
"Is he hurt badly?" asked Thorpe; "what is it?"
"He's dead," answered one of the other men soberly.
With the skill of ghastly practice some of them wove a litter on
which the body was placed. The pathetic little procession moved in
the solemn, inscrutable forest.
When the tree had fallen it had crashed through the top of another,
leaving suspended in the branches of the latter a long heavy limb.
A slight breeze dislodged it. Henry Paul was impaled as by a javelin.
This is the chief of the many perils of the woods. Like crouching
pumas the instruments of a man's destruction poise on the spring,
sometimes for days. Then swiftly, silently, the leap is made. It
is a danger unavoidable, terrible, ever-present. Thorpe was destined
in time to see men crushed and mangled in a hundred ingenious ways
by the saw log, knocked into space and a violent death by the butts
of trees, ground to powder in the mill of a jam, but never would he
be more deeply impressed than by this ruthless silent taking of a
life. The forces of nature are so tame, so simple, so obedient;
and in the next instant so absolutely beyond human control or
direction, so whirlingly contemptuous of puny human effort, that
in time the wilderness shrouds itself to our eyes in the same
impenetrable mystery as the sea.
That evening the camp was unusually quiet. Tellier let his
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