The Blazed Trail

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"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."

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