The Blazed Trail

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Blazed Trail

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To Thorpe, who had walked on ahead with his foreman, it seemed that
he had never been away. There was the knoll; the rude camp with the
deer hides; the venison hanging suspended from the pole; the endless
broil and tumult of the clear north-country stream; the yellow glow
over the hill opposite. Yet he had gone a nearly penniless
adventurer;
he returned at the head of an enterprise.

Injin Charley looked up and grunted as Thorpe approached.

"How are you, Charley?" greeted Thorpe reticently.

"You gettum pine? Good!" replied Charley in the same tone.

That was all; for strong men never talk freely of what is in their
hearts. There is no need; they understand.

Chapter XXXI

Two months passed away. Winter set in. The camp was built and
inhabited. Routine had established itself, and all was going well.

The first move of the M. & D. Company had been one of conciliation.
Thorpe was approached by the walking-boss of the camps up-river. The
man made no reference to or excuse for what had occurred, nor did he
pretend to any hypocritical friendship for the younger firm. His
proposition was entirely one of mutual advantage. The Company had
gone to considerable expense in constructing the pier of stone cribs.
It would be impossible for the steamer to land at any other point.
Thorpe had undisputed possession of the shore, but the Company could
as indisputably remove the dock. Let it stay where it was. Both
companies could then use it for their mutual convenience.

To this Thorpe agreed. Baker, the walking-boss, tried to get him to
sign a contract to that effect. Thorpe refused.

"Leave your dock where it is and use it when you want to," said
he. "I'll agree not to interfere as long as you people behave
yourselves."

The actual logging was opening up well. Both Shearer and Thorpe
agreed that it would not do to be too ambitious the first year.
They set about clearing their banking ground about a half mile
below the first dam; and during the six weeks before snow-fall cut
three short roads of half a mile each. Approximately two million
feet would be put in from these--roads which could be extended in
years to come--while another million could be travoyed directly to
the landing from its immediate vicinity.

"We won't skid them," said Tim. "We'll haul from the stump to the
bank. And we'll tackle only a snowroad proposition:--we ain't got
time to monkey with buildin' sprinklers and plows this year. We'll
make a little stake ahead, and then next year we'll do it right and
get in twenty million. That railroad'll get along a ways by then,
and men'll be more plenty."

Through the lengthening evenings they sat crouched on wooden boxes
either side of the stove, conversing rarely, gazing at one spot
with a steady persistency which was only an outward indication of
the persistency with which their minds held to the work in hand.
Tim, the older at the business, showed this trait more strongly
than Thorpe. The old man thought of nothing but logging. From
the stump to the bank, from the bank to the camp, from the camp
to the stump again, his restless intelligence travelled tirelessly,
picking up, turning over, examining the littlest details with an
ever-fresh curiosity and interest. Nothing was too small to escape
this deliberate scrutiny. Nothing was in so perfect a state that it
did not bear one more inspection. He played the logging as a chess
player his game. One by one he adopted the various possibilities,
remote and otherwise, as hypotheses, and thought out to the uttermost
copper rivet what would be the best method of procedure in case that
possibility should confront him.

Occasionally Thorpe would introduce some other topic of conversation.
The old man would listen to his remark with the attention of courtesy;
would allow a decent period of silence to intervene; and then,
reverting to the old subject without comment on the new, would emit
one of his terse practical suggestions, result of a long spell of
figuring. That is how success is made.

In the men's camp the crew lounged, smoked, danced, or played cards.
In those days no one thought of forbidding gambling. One evening
Thorpe, who had been too busy to remember Phil's violin,--although
he noticed, as he did every other detail of the camp, the cripple's
industry, and the precision with which he performed his duties,--
strolled over and looked through the window. A dance was in progress.
The men were waltzing, whirling solemnly round and round, gripping
firmly each other's loose sleeves just above the elbow. At every
third step of the waltz they stamped one foot.

Perched on a cracker box sat Phil. His head was thrust forward
almost aggressively over his instrument, and his eyes glared at the
dancing men with the old wolf-like gleam. As he played, he drew the
bow across with a swift jerk, thrust it back with another, threw
his shoulders from one side to the other in abrupt time to the
music. And the music! Thorpe unconsciously shuddered; then sighed
in pity. It was atrocious. It was not even in tune. Two out of
three of the notes were either sharp or flat, not so flagrantly as
to produce absolute disharmony, but just enough to set the teeth on
edge. And the rendition was as colorless as that of a poor hand-
organ.

The performer seemed to grind out his fearful stuff with a fierce
delight, in which appeared little of the esthetic pleasure of the
artist. Thorpe was at a loss to define it.

"Poor Phil," he said to himself. "He has the musical soul without
even the musical ear!"

Next day, while passing out of the cook camp he addressed one of
the men:

"Well, Billy," he inquired, "how do you like your fiddler?"

"All RIGHT!" replied Billy with emphasis. "She's got some go to her."

In the woods the work proceeded finely. From the travoy sledges and
the short roads a constant stream of logs emptied itself on the
bank. There long parallel skidways had been laid the whole width
of the river valley. Each log as it came was dragged across those
monster andirons and rolled to the bank of the river. The cant-hook
men dug their implements into the rough bark, leaned, lifted, or
clung to the projecting stocks until slowly the log moved, rolling
with gradually increasing momentum. Then they attacked it with fury
lest the momentum be lost. Whenever it began to deviate from the
straight rolling necessary to keep it on the center of the skids,
one of the workers thrust the shoe of his cant-hook under one end
of the log. That end promptly stopped; the other, still rolling,
soon caught up; and the log moved on evenly, as was fitting.

At the end of the rollway the log collided with other logs and
stopped with the impact of one bowling ball against another. The
men knew that being caught between the two meant death or crippling
for life. Nevertheless they escaped from the narrowing interval at
the latest possible moment, for it is easier to keep a log rolling
than to start it.

Then other men piled them by means of long steel chains and horses,
just as they would have skidded them in the woods. Only now the logs
mounted up and up until the skidways were thirty or forty feet high.
Eventually the pile of logs would fill the banking ground utterly,
burying the landing under a nearly continuous carpet of timber as
thick as a two-story house is tall. The work is dangerous. A saw
log containing six hundred board feet weighs about one ton. This is
the weight of an ordinary iron safe. When one of them rolls or falls
from even a moderate height, its force is irresistible. But when
twenty or thirty cascade down the bold front of a skidway, carrying
a man or so with them, the affair becomes a catastrophe.

Thorpe's men, however, were all old-timers, and nothing of the sort
occurred. At first it made him catch his breath to see the apparent
chances they took; but after a little he perceived that seeming
luck was in reality a coolness of judgment and a long experience in
the peculiar ways of that most erratic of inanimate cussedness--the
pine log. The banks grew daily. Everybody was safe and sound.

The young lumberman had sense enough to know that, while a crew
such as his is supremely effective, it requires careful handling to
keep it good-humored and willing. He knew every man by his first
name, and each day made it a point to talk with him for a moment
or so. The subject was invariably some phase of the work. Thorpe
never permitted himself the familiarity of introducing any other
topic. By this course he preserved the nice balance between too
great reserve, which chills the lumber-jack's rather independent
enthusiasm, and the too great familiarity, which loses his respect.
He never replied directly to an objection or a request, but listened
to it non-committally; and later, without explanation or reasoning,
acted as his judgment dictated. Even Shearer, with whom he was in
most intimate contact, respected this trait in him. Gradually he
came to feel that he was making a way with his men. It was a
status, not assured as yet nor even very firm, but a status for
all that.

Then one day one of the best men, a teamster, came in to make some
objection to the cooking. As a matter of fact, the cooking was
perfectly good. It generally is, in a well-conducted camp, but
the lumber-jack is a great hand to growl, and he usually begins
with his food.

Thorpe listened to his vague objections in silence.

"All right," he remarked simply.

Next day he touched the man on the shoulder just as he was starting
to work.

"Step into the office and get your time," said he.

"What's the matter?" asked the man.

"I don't need you any longer."

The two entered the little office. Thorpe looked through the ledger
and van book, and finally handed the man his slip.

"Where do I get this?" asked the teamster, looking at it uncertainly.

"At the bank in Marquette," replied Thorpe without glancing around.

"Have I got to go 'way up to Marquette?"

"Certainly," replied Thorpe briefly.

"Who's going to pay my fare south?"

"You are. You can get work at Marquette."

"That ain't a fair shake," cried the man excitedly.

"I'll have no growlers in this camp," said Thorpe with decision.

"By God!" cried the man, "you damned---"

"You get out of here!" cried Thorpe with a concentrated blaze of
energetic passion that made the fellow step back.

"I ain't goin' to get on the wrong side of the law by foolin' with
this office," cried the other at the door, "but if I had you
outside for a minute---"

"Leave this office!" shouted Thorpe.

"S'pose you make me!" challenged the man insolently.

In a moment the defiance had come, endangering the careful structure
Thorpe had reared with such pains. The young man was suddenly angry
in exactly the same blind, unreasoning manner as when he had leaped
single-handed to tackle Dyer's crew.

Without a word he sprang across the shack, seized a two-bladed ax
from the pile behind the door, swung it around his head and cast
it full at the now frightened teamster. The latter dodged, and the
swirling steel buried itself in the snowbank beyond. Without an
instant's hesitation Thorpe reached back for another. The man took
to his heels.

"I don't want to see you around here again!" shouted Thorpe after
him.

Then in a moment he returned to the office and sat down overcome
with contrition.

"It might have been murder!" he told himself, awe-stricken.

But, as it happened, nothing could have turned out better.

Thorpe had instinctively seized the only method by which these
strong men could be impressed. A rough-and-tumble attempt at
ejectment would have been useless. Now the entire crew looked with
vast admiration on their boss as a man who intended to have his own
way no matter what difficulties or consequences might tend to deter
him. And that is the kind of man they liked. This one deed was
more effective in cementing their loyalty than any increase of
wages would have been.

Thorpe knew that their restless spirits would soon tire of the
monotony of work without ultimate interest. Ordinarily the hope of
a big cut is sufficient to keep men of the right sort working for a
record. But these men had no such hope--the camp was too small, and
they were too few. Thorpe adopted the expedient, now quite common,
of posting the results of each day's work in the men's shanty.

Three teams were engaged in travoying, and two in skidding the logs,
either on the banking ground, or along the road. Thorpe divided his
camp into four sections, which he distinguished by the names of the
teamsters. Roughly speaking, each of the three hauling teams had its
own gang of sawyers and skidders to supply it with logs and to take
them from it, for of the skidding teams, one was split;--the horses
were big enough so that one of them to a skidway sufficed. Thus
three gangs of men were performing each day practically the same
work. Thorpe scaled the results, and placed them conspicuously for
comparison.

Red Jacket, the teamster of the sorrels, one day was credited with
11,OOO feet; while Long Pine Jim and Rollway Charley had put in
but 1O,500 and 1O,250 respectively. That evening all the sawyers,
swampers, and skidders belonging to Red Jacket's outfit were
considerably elated; while the others said little and prepared
for business on the morrow.

Once Long Pine Jim lurked at the bottom for three days. Thorpe
happened by the skidway just as Long Pine arrived with a log. The
young fellow glanced solicitously at the splendid buckskins, the
best horses in camp.

"I'm afraid I didn't give you a very good team, Jimmy," said he,
and passed on.

That was all; but men of the rival gangs had heard. In camp Long
Pine Jim and his crew received chaffing with balefully red glares.
Next day they stood at the top by a good margin, and always after
were competitors to be feared.

Injin Charley, silent and enigmatical as ever, had constructed a
log shack near a little creek over in the hardwood. There he
attended diligently to the business of trapping. Thorpe had brought
him a deer knife from Detroit; a beautiful instrument made of the
best tool steel, in one long piece extending through the buck-horn
handle. One could even break bones with it. He had also lent the
Indian the assistance of two of his Marquette men in erecting the
shanty; and had given him a barrel of flour for the winter. From
time to time Injin Charley brought in fresh meat, for which he was
paid. This with his trapping, and his manufacture of moccasins,
snowshoes and birch canoes, made him a very prosperous Indian indeed.
Thorpe rarely found time to visit him, but he often glided into the
office, smoked a pipeful of the white man's tobacco in friendly
fashion by the stove, and glided out again without having spoken a
dozen words.

Wallace made one visit before the big snows came, and was charmed.
He ate with gusto of the "salt-horse," baked beans, stewed prunes,
mince pie, and cakes. He tramped around gaily in his moccasins or
on the fancy snowshoes he promptly purchased of Injin Chariey.
There was nothing new to report in regard to financial matters.
The loan had been negotiated easily on the basis of a mortgage
guaranteed by Carpenter's personal signature. Nothing had been
heard from Morrison & Daly.

When he departed, he left behind him four little long-eared,
short-legged beagle hounds. They were solemn animals, who took
life seriously. Never a smile appeared in their questioning eyes.
Wherever one went, the others followed, pattering gravely along in
serried ranks. Soon they discovered that the swamp over the knoll
contained big white hares. Their mission in life was evident.
Thereafter from the earliest peep of daylight until the men quit
work at night they chased rabbits. The quest was hopeless, but they
kept obstinately at it, wallowing with contained excitement over a
hundred paces of snow before they would get near enough to scare
their quarry to another jump. It used to amuse the hares. All day
long the mellow bell-tones echoed over the knoll. It came in time
to be part of the color of the camp, just as were the pines and
birches, or the cold northern sky. At the fall of night, exhausted,
trailing their long ears almost to the ground, they returned to the
cook, who fed them and made much of them. Next morning they were
at it as hard as ever. To them it was the quest for the Grail,--
hopeless, but glorious.

Little Phil, entrusted with the alarm clock, was the first up in
the morning In the fearful biting cold of an extinct camp, he
lighted his lantern and with numb hands raked the ashes from the
stove. A few sticks of dried pine topped by split wood of birch or
maple, all well dashed with kerosene, took the flame eagerly. Then
he awakened the cook, and stole silently into the office, where
Thorpe and Shearer and Andrews, the surveyor, lay asleep. There
quietly he built another fire, and filled the water-pail afresh.
By the time this task was finished, the cook sounded many times
a conch, and the sleeping camp awoke.

Later Phil drew water for the other shanties, swept out all three,
split wood and carried it in to the cook and to the living-camps,
filled and trimmed the lamps, perhaps helped the cook. About half
the remainder of the day he wielded an ax, saw and wedge in the
hardwood, collecting painfully--for his strength was not great--
material for the constant fires it was his duty to maintain. Often
he would stand motionless in the vast frozen, creaking forest,
listening with awe to the voices which spoke to him alone. There
was something uncanny in the misshapen dwarf with the fixed marble
white face and the expressive changing eyes,--something uncanny,
and something indefinably beautiful.

He seemed to possess an instinct which warned him of the approach
of wild animals. Long before a white man, or even an Indian, would
have suspected the presence of game, little Phil would lift his
head with a peculiar listening toss. Soon, stepping daintily
through the snow near the swamp edge, would come a deer; or pat-
apat-patting on his broad hairy paws, a lynx would steal by.
Except Injin Charley, Phil was the only man in that country who
ever saw a beaver in the open daylight.

At camp sometimes when all the men were away and his own work was
done, he would crouch like a raccoon in the far corner of his deep
square bunk with the board ends that made of it a sort of little
cabin, and play to himself softly on his violin. No one ever heard
him. After supper he was docilely ready to fiddle to the men's
dancing. Always then he gradually worked himself to a certain pitch
of excitement. His eyes glared with the wolf-gleam, and the music
was vulgarly atrocious and out of tune.

As Christmas drew near, the weather increased in severity. Blinding
snow-squalls swept whirling from the northeast, accompanied by a
high wind. The air was full of it,--fine, dry, powdery, like the
dust of glass. The men worked covered with it as a tree is covered
after a sleet. Sometimes it was impossible to work at all for hours
at a time, but Thorpe did not allow a bad morning to spoil a good
afternoon. The instant a lull fell on the storm, he was out with
his scaling rule, and he expected the men to give him something to
scale. He grappled the fierce winter by the throat, and shook from
it the price of success.

Then came a succession of bright cold days and clear cold nights.
The aurora gleamed so brilliantly that the forest was as bright as
by moonlight. In the strange weird shadow cast by its waverings the
wolves stole silently, or broke into wild ululations as they struck
the trail of game. Except for these weird invaders, the silence of
death fell on the wilderness. Deer left the country. Partridges
crouched trailing under the snow. All the weak and timid creatures
of the woods shrank into concealment and silence before these fierce
woods-marauders with the glaring famine-struck eyes.

Injin Charley found his traps robbed. In return he constructed
deadfalls, and dried several scalps. When spring came, he would
send them out for the bounty In the night, from time to time, the
horses would awake trembling at an unknown terror. Then the long
weird howl would shiver across the starlight near at hand, and the
chattering man who rose hastily to quiet the horses' frantic
kicking, would catch a glimpse of gaunt forms skirting the edge
of the forest.

And the little beagles were disconsolate, for their quarry had
fled. In place of the fan-shaped triangular trail for which they
sought, they came upon dog-like prints. These they sniffed at
curiously, and then departed growling, the hair on their backbones
erect and stiff.

Chapter XXXII

By the end of the winter some four million feet of logs were piled
in the bed or upon the banks of the stream. To understand what that
means, you must imagine a pile of solid timber a mile in length.
This tremendous mass lay directly in the course of the stream. When
the winter broke up, it had to be separated and floated piecemeal
down the current. The process is an interesting and dangerous one,
and one of great delicacy. It requires for its successful completion
picked men of skill, and demands as toll its yearly quota of crippled
and dead. While on the drive, men work fourteen hours a day, up to
their waists in water filled with floating ice.

On the Ossawinamakee, as has been stated, three dams had been
erected to simplify the process of driving. When the logs were in
right distribution, the gates were raised, and the proper head of
water floated them down.

Now the river being navigable, Thorpe was possessed of certain
rights on it. Technically he was entitled to a normal head of
water, whenever he needed it; or a special head, according to
agreement with the parties owning the dam. Early in the drive, he
found that Morrison & Daly intended to cause him trouble. It began
in a narrows of the river between high, rocky banks. Thorpe's drive
was floating through close-packed. The situation was ticklish.
Men with spiked boots ran here and there from one bobbing log to
another, pushing with their peaveys, hurrying one log, retarding
another, working like beavers to keep the whole mass straight.
The entire surface of the water was practically covered with the
floating timbers. A moment's reflection will show the importance
of preserving a full head of water. The moment the stream should
drop an inch or so, its surface would contract, the logs would then
be drawn close together in the narrow space; and, unless an immediate
rise should lift them up and apart from each other, a jam would form,
behind which the water, rapidly damming, would press to entangle it
the more.

This is exactly what happened. In a moment, as though by magic, the
loose wooden carpet ground together. A log in the advance up-ended;
another thrust under it. The whole mass ground together, stopped,
and began rapidly to pile up. The men escaped to the shore in a
marvellous manner of their own.

Tim Shearer found that the gate at the dam above had been closed.
The man in charge had simply obeyed orders. He supposed M. & D.
wished to back up the water for their own logs.

Tim indulged in some picturesque language.

"You ain't got no right to close off more'n enough to leave us th'
nat'ral flow unless by agreement," he concluded, and opened the gates.

Then it was a question of breaking the jam. This had to be done
by pulling out or chopping through certain "key" logs which locked
the whole mass. Men stood under the face of imminent ruin--over
them a frowning sheer wall of bristling logs, behind which pressed
the weight of the rising waters--and hacked and tugged calmly until
the mass began to stir. Then they escaped. A moment later, with a
roar, the jam vomited down on the spot where they had stood. It was
dangerous work. Just one half day later it had to be done again,
and for the same reason.

This time Thorpe went back with Shearer. No one was at the dam, but
the gates were closed. The two opened them again.

That very evening a man rode up on horseback inquiring for Mr. Thorpe.

"I'm he," said the young fellow.

The man thereupon dismounted and served a paper. It proved to be
an injunction issued by Judge Sherman enjoining Thorpe against
interfering with the property of Morrison & Daly,--to wit, certain
dams erected at designated points on the Ossawinamakee. There had
not elapsed sufficient time since the commission of the offense for
the other firm to secure the issuance of this interesting document,
so it was at once evident that the whole affair had been pre-arranged
by the up-river firm for the purpose of blocking off Thorpe's drive.
After serving the injunction, the official rode away.

Thorpe called his foreman. The latter read the injunction attentively
through a pair of steel-bowed spectacles.

"Well, what you going to do?" he asked.

"Of all the consummate gall!" exploded Thorpe. "Trying to enjoin me
from touching a dam when they're refusing me the natural flow! They
must have bribed that fool judge. Why, his injunction isn't worth
the powder to blow it up!"

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