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T.S. Arthur - "The Good Time Coming"

Hesba Stretton - "Brought Home"

Archbishop Wake - "Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Volume 3, Infancy of Jesus Christ"

P. G. Wodehouse - "The Gold Bat"

The Blazed Trail

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Blazed Trail




"Look here, Shearer, if you take this job, we may as well understand
each other at the start. This is going to be my camp, and I'm going
to be boss. I don't know much about logging, and I shall want you
to take charge of all that, but I shall want to know just why you do
each thing, and if my judgment advises otherwise, my judgment goes.
If I want to discharge a man, he WALKS without any question. I know
about what I shall expect of each man; and I intend to get it out of
him. And in questions of policy mine is the say-so every trip. Now
I know you're a good man, one of the best there is,and I presume I
shall find your judgment the best, but I don't want any mistakes to
start with. If you want to be my foreman on those terms, just say
so, and I'll be tickled to death to have you."

For the first time the lumberman's face lost, during a single
instant, its mask of immobility. His steel-blue eyes flashed, his
mouth twitched with some strong emotion. For the first time, too,
he spoke without his contemplative pause of preparation.

"That's th' way to talk!" he cried. "Go with you? Well I should
rise to remark! You're the boss; and I always said it. I'll get
you a gang of bully boys that will roll logs till there's skating
in hell!"

Thorpe left, after making an appointment at his own hotel for the
following day, more than pleased with his luck. Although he had by
now fairly good and practical ideas in regard to the logging of a
bunch of pine, he felt himself to be very deficient in the details.
In fact, he anticipated his next step with shaky confidence. He
would now be called upon to buy four or five teams of horses, and
enough feed to last them the entire winter; he would have to arrange
for provisions in abundance and variety for his men; he would have to
figure on blankets, harness, cook-camp utensils, stoves, blacksmith
tools, iron, axes, chains, cant-hooks, van-goods, pails, lamps, oil,
matches, all sorts of hardware,--in short, all the thousand and one
things, from needles to court-plaster, of which a self-sufficing
community might come in need. And he would have to figure out his
requirements for the entire winter. After navigation closed, he
could import nothing more.

How could he know what to buy,--how many barrels of flour, how much
coffee, raisins, baking powder, soda, pork, beans, dried apples,
sugar, nutmeg, pepper, salt, crackers, molasses, ginger, lard, tea,
corned beef, catsup, mustard,--to last twenty men five or six months?
How could he be expected to think of each item of a list of two
hundred, the lack of which meant measureless bother, and the
desirability of which suggested itself only when the necessity
arose? It is easy, when the mind is occupied with multitudinous
detail, to forget simple things, like brooms or iron shovels. With
Tim Shearer to help his inexperience, he felt easy. He knew he
could attend to advantageous buying, and to making arrangements
with the steamship line to Marquette for the landing of his goods
at the mouth of the Ossawinamakee.

Deep in these thoughts, he wandered on at random. He suddenly came
to himself in the toughest quarter of Bay City.

Through the summer night shrilled the sound of cachinations painted
to the colors of mirth. A cheap piano rattled and thumped through
an open window. Men's and women's voices mingled in rising and
falling gradations of harshness. Lights streamed irregularly across
the dark.

Thorpe became aware of a figure crouched in the door-way almost at
his feet. The sill lay in shadow so the bulk was lost, but the
flickering rays of a distant street lamp threw into relief the
high-lights of a violin, and a head. The face upturned to him was
thin and white and wolfish under a broad white brow. Dark eyes
gleamed at him with the expression of a fierce animal. Across the
forehead ran a long but shallow cut from which blood dripped. The
creature clasped both arms around a violin. He crouched there and
stared up at Thorpe, who stared down at him.

"What's the matter?" asked the latter finally.

The creature made no reply, but drew his arms closer about his
instrument, and blinked his wolf eyes.

Moved by some strange, half-tolerant whim of compassion, Thorpe
made a sign to the unknown to rise.

"Come with me," said he, "and I'll have your forehead attended to."

The wolf eyes gleamed into his with a sudden savage concentration.
Then their owner obediently arose.

Thorpe now saw that the body before him was of a cripple, short-
legged, hunch-backed, long-armed, pigeon-breasted. The large
head sat strangely top-heavy between even the broad shoulders.
It confirmed the hopeless but sullen despair that brooded on the
white countenance.

At the hotel Thorpe, examining the cut, found it more serious in
appearance than in reality. With a few pieces of sticking plaster
he drew its edges together.

Then he attempted to interrogate his find.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Phil."

"Phil what?"

Silence.

"How did you get hurt?"

No reply.

"Were you playing your fiddle in one of those houses?"

The cripple nodded slowly.

"Are you hungry?" asked Thorpe, with a sudden thoughtfulness.

"Yes," replied the cripple, with a lightning gleam in his wolf eyes.

Thorpe rang the bell. To the boy who answered it he said:

"Bring me half a dozen beef sandwiches and a glass of milk, and be
quick about it."

"Do you play the fiddle much?" continued Thorpe.

The cripple nodded again.

"Let's hear what you can do."

"They cut my strings!" cried Phil with a passionate wail.

The cry came from the heart, and Thorpe was touched by it. The price
of strings was evidently a big sum.

"I'll get you more in the morning," said he. "Would you like to
leave Bay City?"

"Yes" cried the boy with passion.

"You would have to work. You would have to be chore-boy in a lumber
camp, and play fiddle for the men when they wanted you to."

"I'll do it," said the cripple.

"Are you sure you could? You will have to split all the wood for
the men, the cook, and the office; you will have to draw the water,
and fill the lamps, and keep the camps clean. You will be paid for
it, but it is quite a job. And you would have to do it well. If
you did not do it well, I would discharge you."

"I will do it!" repeated the cripple with a shade more earnestness.

"All right, then I'll take you," replied Thorpe.

The cripple said nothing, nor moved a muscle of his face, but the
gleam of the wolf faded to give place to the soft, affectionate glow
seen in the eyes of a setter dog. Thorpe was startled at the change.

A knock announced the sandwiches and milk. The cripple fell upon
them with both hands in a sudden ecstacy of hunger. When he had
finished, he looked again at Thorpe, and this time there were tears
in his eyes.

A little later Thorpe interviewed the proprietor of the hotel.

"I wish you'd give this boy a good cheap room and charge his keep
to me," said he. "He's going north with me."

Phil was led away by the irreverent porter, hugging tightly his
unstrung violin to his bosom.

Thorpe lay awake for some time after retiring. Phil claimed a
share of his thoughts.

Thorpe's winter in the woods had impressed upon him that a good
cook and a fiddler will do more to keep men contented than high
wages and easy work. So his protection of the cripple was not
entirely disinterested. But his imagination persisted in occupying
itself with the boy. What terrible life of want and vicious
associates had he led in this terrible town? What treatment could
have lit that wolf-gleam in his eyes? What hell had he inhabited
that he was so eager to get away? In an hour or so he dozed. He
dreamed that the cripple had grown to enormous proportions and was
overshadowing his life. A slight noise outside his bed-room door
brought him to his feet.

He opened the door and found that in the stillness of the night the
poor deformed creature had taken the blankets from his bed and had
spread them across the door-sill of the man who had befriended him.



Chapter XXIX


Three weeks later the steam barge Pole Star sailed down the reach
of Saginaw Bay.

Thorpe had received letters from Carpenter advising him of a credit
to him at a Marquette bank, and inclosing a draft sufficient for
current expenses. Tim Shearer had helped make out the list of
necessaries. In time everything was loaded, the gang-plank hauled
in, and the little band of Argonauts set their faces toward the
point where the Big Dipper swings.

The weather was beautiful. Each morning the sun rose out of the
frosty blue lake water, and set in a sea of deep purple. The moon,
once again at the full, drew broad paths across the pathless waste.
From the southeast blew daily the lake trades, to die at sunset,
and then to return in the soft still nights from the west. A more
propitious beginning for the adventure could not be imagined.

The ten horses in the hold munched their hay and oats as peaceably
as though at home in their own stables. Jackson Hines had helped
select them from the stock of firms changing locality or going out
of business. His judgment in such matters was infallible, but he
had resolutely refused to take the position of barn-boss which
Thorpe offered him.

"No," said he, "she's too far north. I'm gettin' old, and the
rheumatics ain't what you might call abandonin' of me. Up there
it's colder than hell on a stoker's holiday."

So Shearer had picked out a barn-boss of his own. This man was
important, for the horses are the mainstay of logging operations.
He had selected also, a blacksmith, a cook, four teamsters, half
a dozen cant-hook men, and as many handy with ax or saw.

"The blacksmith is also a good wood-butcher (carpenter)," explained
Shearer. "Four teams is all we ought to keep going at a clip. If
we need a few axmen, we can pick 'em up at Marquette. I think this
gang'll stick. I picked 'em."

There was not a young man in the lot. They were most of them in the
prime of middle life, between thirty and forty, rugged in appearance,
"cocky" in manner, with the swagger and the oath of so many
buccaneers,
hard as nails. Altogether Thorpe thought them about as rough a set
of customers as he had ever seen. Throughout the day they played
cards on deck, and spat tobacco juice abroad, and swore incessantly.
Toward himself and Shearer their manner was an odd mixture of
independent equality and a slight deference. It was as much as
to say, "You're the boss, but I'm as good a man as you any day."
They would be a rough, turbulent, unruly mob to handle, but under
a strong man they might accomplish wonders.

Constituting the elite of the profession, as it were,--whose swagger
every lad new to the woods and river tried to emulate, to whom
lesser lights looked up as heroes and models, and whose lofty, half-
contemptuous scorn of everything and everybody outside their circle
of "bully boys" was truly the aristocracy of class,--Thorpe might
have wondered at their consenting to work for an obscure little camp
belonging to a greenhorn. Loyalty to and pride in the firm for
which he works is a strong characteristic of the lumber-jack. He
will fight at the drop of a hat on behalf of his "Old Fellows"; brag
loud and long of the season's cut, the big loads, the smart methods
of his camps; and even after he has been discharged for some flagrant
debauch, he cherishes no rancor, but speaks with a soft reminiscence
to the end of his days concerning "that winter in '8I when the Old
Fellows put in sixty million on Flat River."

For this reason he feels that he owes it to his reputation to ally
himself only with firms of creditable size and efficiency. The small
camps are for the youngsters. Occasionally you will see two or three
of the veterans in such a camp, but it is generally a case of lacking
something better.

The truth is, Shearer had managed to inspire in the minds of his
cronies an idea that they were about to participate in a fight. He
re-told Thorpe's story artistically, shading the yellows and the
reds. He detailed the situation as it existed. The men agreed that
the "young fellow had sand enough for a lake front." After that
there needed but a little skillful maneuvering to inspire them with
the idea that it would be a great thing to take a hand, to "make a
camp" in spite of the big concern up-river.

Shearer knew that this attitude was tentative. Everything depended
on how well Thorpe lived up to his reputation at the outset,--how
good a first impression of force and virility he would manage to
convey,--for the first impression possessed the power of transmuting
the present rather ill-defined enthusiasm into loyalty or
dissatisfaction. But Tim himself believed in Thorpe blindly. So he
had no fears.

A little incident at the beginning of the voyage did much to reassure
him. It was on the old question of whisky.

Thorpe had given orders that no whisky was to be brought aboard,
as he intended to tolerate no high-sea orgies. Soon after leaving
dock he saw one of the teamsters drinking from a pint flask. Without
a word he stepped briskly forward, snatched the bottle from the man's
lips, and threw it overboard. Then he turned sharp on his heel and
walked away, without troubling himself as to how the fellow was going
to take it.

The occurrence pleased the men, for it showed them they had made no
mistake. But it meant little else. The chief danger really was
lest they become too settled in the protective attitude. As they
took it, they were about, good-naturedly, to help along a worthy
greenhorn. This they considered exceedingly generous on their part,
and in their own minds they were inclined to look on Thorpe much as
a grown man would look on a child. There needed an occasion for him
to prove himself bigger than they.

Fine weather followed them up the long blue reach of Lake Huron;
into the noble breadth of the Detour Passage, past the opening
through the Thousand Islands of the Georgian Bay; into the St.
Mary's River. They were locked through after some delay on
account of the grain barges from Duluth, and at last turned their
prow westward in the Big Sea Water, beyond which lay Hiawatha's
Po-ne-mah, the Land of the Hereafter.

Thorpe was about late that night, drinking in the mystic beauty of
the scene. Northern lights, pale and dim, stretched their arc
across beneath the Dipper. The air, soft as the dead leaves of
spring, fanned his cheek. By and by the moon, like a red fire
at sea, lifted itself from the waves. Thorpe made his way to the
stern, beyond the square deck house, where he intended to lean on
the rail in silent contemplation of the moon-path.

He found another before him. Phil, the little cripple, was peering
into the wonderful east, its light in his eyes. He did not look at
Thorpe when the latter approached, but seemed aware of his presence,
for he moved swiftly to give room.

"It is very beautiful; isn't it, Phil?" said Thorpe after a moment.

"It is the Heart Song of the Sea," replied the cripple in a hushed
voice.

Thorpe looked down surprised.

"Who told you that?" he asked.

But the cripple, repeating the words of a chance preacher, could
explain himself no farther. In a dim way the ready-made phrase had
expressed the smothered poetic craving of his heart,--the belief
that the sea, the sky, the woods, the men and women, you, I, all
have our Heart Songs, the Song which is most beautiful.

"The Heart Song of the Sea," he repeated gropingly. "I don't know
. . .I play it," and he made the motion of drawing a bow across
strings, "very still and low." And this was all Thorpe's question
could elicit.

Thorpe fell silent in the spell of the night, and pondered over
the chances of life which had cast on the shores of the deep as
driftwood the soul of a poet.

"Your Song," said the cripple timidly, "some day I will hear it.
Not yet. That night in Bay City, when you took me in, I heard it
very dim. But I cannot play it yet on my violin."

"Has your violin a song of its own?" queried the man.

"I cannot hear it. It tries to sing, but there is something in the
way. I cannot. Some day I will hear it and play it, but--" and he
drew nearer Thorpe and touched his arm--"that day will be very bad
for me. I lose something." His eyes of the wistful dog were big
and wondering.

"Queer little Phil!" cried Thorpe laughing whimsically. "Who tells
you these things?"

"Nobody," said the cripple dreamily, "they come when it is like to-
night. In Bay City they do not come."

At this moment a third voice broke in on them.

"Oh, it's you, Mr. Thorpe," said the captain of the vessel. "Thought
it was some of them lumber-jacks, and I was going to fire 'em below.
Fine night."

"It is that," answered Thorpe, again the cold, unresponsive man of
reticence. "When do you expect to get in, Captain?"

"About to-morrow noon," replied the captain, moving away. Thorpe
followed him a short distance, discussing the landing. The cripple
stood all night, his bright, luminous eyes gazing clear and unwinking
at the moonlight, listening to his Heart Song of the Sea.



Chapter XXX


Next morning continued the traditions of its calm predecessors.
Therefore by daybreak every man was at work. The hatches were
opened, and soon between-decks was cumbered with boxes, packing
cases, barrels, and crates. In their improvised stalls, the patient
horses seemed to catch a hint of shore-going and whinnied. By ten
o'clock there loomed against the strange coast line of the Pictured
Rocks, a shallow bay and what looked to be a dock distorted by the
northern mirage.

"That's her," said the captain.

Two hours later the steamboat swept a wide curve, slid between the
yellow waters of two outlying reefs, and, with slackened speed,
moved slowly toward the wharf of log cribs filled with stone.

The bay or the dock Thorpe had never seen. He took them on the
captain's say-so. He knew very well that the structure had been
erected by and belonged to Morrison & Daly, but the young man had
had the foresight to purchase the land lying on the deep water side
of the bay. He therefore anticipated no trouble in unloading; for
while Morrison & Daly owned the pier itself, the land on which it
abutted belonged to him.

From the arms of the bay he could make out a dozen figures standing
near the end of the wharf. When, with propeller reversed, the Pole
Star bore slowly down towards her moorings, Thorpe recognized Dyer
at the head of eight or ten woodsmen. The sight of Radway's old
scaler somehow filled him with a quiet but dangerous anger, especially
since that official, on whom rested a portion at least of the
responsibility of the jobber's failure, was now found in the employ
of the very company which had attempted that failure. It looked
suspicious.

"Catch this line!" sung out the mate, hurling the coil of a handline
on the wharf.

No one moved, and the little rope, after a moment, slid overboard
with a splash.

The captain, with a curse, signalled full speed astern.

"Captain Morse!" cried Dyer, stepping forward. "My orders are that
you are to land here nothing but M. & D. merchandise."

"I have a right to land," answered Thorpe. "The shore belongs to
me."

"This dock doesn't," retorted the other sharply, "and you can't
set foot on her."

"You have no legal status. You had no business building in the
first place---" began Thorpe, and then stopped with a choke of
anger at the futility of arguing legality in such a case.

The men had gathered interestedly in the waist of the ship, cool,
impartial, severely critical. The vessel, gathering speed astern,
but not yet obeying her reversed helm, swung her bow in towards the
dock. Thorpe ran swiftly forward, and during the instant of rubbing
contact, leaped.

He alighted squarely upon his feet. Without an instant's hesitation,
hot with angry energy at finding his enemy within reach of his hand,
he rushed on Dyer, and with one full, clean in-blow stretched him
stunned on the dock. For a moment there was a pause of astonishment.
Then the woodsmen closed upon him.

During that instant Thorpe had become possessed of a weapon It came
hurling through the air from above to fall at his feet. Shearer,
with the cool calculation of the pioneer whom no excitement can
distract from the main issue, had seen that it would be impossible
to follow his chief, and so had done the next best thing,--thrown
him a heavy iron belaying pin.

Thorpe was active, alert, and strong. The men could come at him
only in front. As offset, he could not give ground, even for one
step. Still, in the hands of a powerful man, the belaying pin is by
no means a despicable weapon. Thorpe hit with all his strength and
quickness. He was conscious once of being on the point of defeat.
Then he had cleared a little space for himself. Then the men were
on him again more savagely than ever. One fellow even succeeded in
hitting him a glancing blow on the shoulder.

Then came a sudden crash. Thorpe was nearly thrown from his feet.
The next instant a score of yelling men leaped behind and all
around him. There ensued a moment's scuffle, the sound of dull
blows; and the dock was clear of all but Dyer and three others
who were, like himself, unconscious. The captain, yielding to
the excitement, had run his prow plump against the wharf.

Some of the crew received the mooring lines. All was ready for
disembarkation.

Bryan Moloney, a strapping Irish-American of the big-boned, red-
cheeked type, threw some water over the four stunned combatants.
Slowly they came to life. They were promptly yanked to their feet
by the irate rivermen, who commenced at once to bestow sundry
vigorous kicks and shakings by way of punishment. Thorpe interposed.

"Quit it!" he commanded. "Let them go!"

The men grumbled. One or two were inclined to be openly rebellious.

"If I hear another peep out of you," said Thorpe to these latter,
"you can climb right aboard and take the return trip." He looked
them in the eye until they muttered, and then went on: "Now, we've
got to get unloaded and our goods ashore before those fellows report
to camp. Get right moving, and hustle!"

If the men expected any comment, approval, or familiarity from their
leader on account of their little fracas, they were disappointed.
This was a good thing. The lumber-jack demands in his boss a
certain fundamental unapproachability, whatever surface bonhomie
he may evince.

So Dyer and his men picked themselves out of the trouble sullenly
and departed. The ex-scaler had nothing to say as long as he was
within reach, but when he had gained the shore, he turned.

"You won't think this is so funny when you get in the law-courts!"
he shouted.

Thorpe made no reply. "I guess we'll keep even," he muttered.

"By the jumping Moses," snarled Scotty Parsons turning in threat.

"Scotty!" said Thorpe sharply.

Scotty turned back to his task, which was to help the blacksmith
put together the wagon, the component parts of which the others had
trundled out.

With thirty men at the job it does not take a great while to move
a small cargo thirty or forty feet. By three o'clock the Pole Star
was ready to continue her journey. Thorpe climbed aboard, leaving
Shearer in charge.

Keep the men at it, Tim," said he. "Put up the walls of the warehouse
good and strong, and move the stuff in. If it rains, you can spread
the tent over the roof, and camp in with the provisions. If you get
through before I return, you might take a scout up the river and fix
on a camp site. I'll bring back the lumber for roofs, floors, and
trimmings with me, and will try to pick up a few axmen for swamping.
Above all things, have a good man or so always in charge. Those
fellows won't bother us any more for the present, I think; but it
pays to be on deck. So long."

In Marquette, Thorpe arranged for the cashing of his time checks
and orders; bought lumber at the mills; talked contract with old
Harvey, the mill-owner and prospective buyer of the young man's
cut; and engaged four axmen whom he found loafing about, waiting
for the season to open.

When he returned to the bay he found the warehouse complete except
for the roofs and gables. These, with their reinforcement of tar-
paper, were nailed on in short order. Shearer and Andrews, the
surveyor, were scouting up the river.

"No trouble from above, boys?" asked Thorpe.

"Nary trouble," they replied.

The warehouse was secured by padlocks, the wagon loaded with the
tent and the necessaries of life and work. Early in the morning
the little procession laughing, joking, skylarking with the high
spirits of men in the woods took its way up the river-trail. Late
that evening, tired, but still inclined to mischief, they came to
the first dam, where Shearer and Andrews met them.

"How do you like it, Tim?" asked Thorpe that evening.

"She's all right," replied the riverman with emphasis; which, for
him, was putting it strong.

At noon of the following day the party arrived at the second dam.
Here Shearer had decided to build the permanent camp. Injin Charley
was constructing one of his endless series of birch-bark canoes.
Later he would paddle the whole string to Marquette, where he would
sell them to a hardware dealer for two dollars and a half apiece.

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