The Blazed Trail

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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.

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