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The Blazed Trail

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Blazed Trail




The man twisted his shoulder uneasily and withdrew his hand.

"Harry," she said again, after a pause, "you must promise to leave
this woods until the very last. I suppose it must all be cut down
some day, but I do not want to be here to see after it is all over."

Thorpe remained silent.

"Men do not care much for keepsakes, do they, Harry?--they don't
save letters and flowers as we girls do--but even a man can feel the
value of a great beautiful keepsake such as this, can't he, dear?
Our meeting-place--do you remember how I found you down there by the
old pole trail, staring as though you had seen a ghost?--and that
beautiful, beautiful music! It must always be our most sacred
memory. Promise me you will save it until the very, very last."

Thorpe said nothing because he could not rally his faculties. The
sentimental association connected with the grove had actually never
occurred to him. His keepsakes were impressions which he carefully
guarded in his memory. To the natural masculine indifference toward
material bits of sentiment he had added the instinct of the strictly
portable early developed in the rover. He had never even possessed a
photograph of his sister. Now this sudden discovery that such things
might be part of the woof of another person's spiritual garment came
to him ready-grown to the proportions of a problem.

In selecting the districts for the season's cut, he had included in
his estimates this very grove. Since then he had seen no reason for
changing his decision. The operations would not commence until
winter. By that time the lovers would no longer care to use it as
at present. Now rapidly he passed in review a dozen expedients by
which his plan might be modified to permit of the grove's exclusion.
His practical mind discovered flaws in every one. Other bodies of
timber promising a return of ten thousand dollars were not to be
found near the river, and time now lacked for the cutting of roads
to more distant forties.

"Hilda," he broke in abruptly at last, "the men you hear are clearing
a road to this very timber."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"This timber is marked for cutting this very winter."

She had not a suspicion of the true state of affairs. "Isn't it
lucky I spoke of it!" she exclaimed. "How could you have forgotten
to countermand the order! You must see to it to-day; now!"

She sprang up impulsively and stood waiting for him. He arose more
slowly. Even before he spoke her eyes dilated with the shock from
her quick intuitions.

"Hilda, I cannot," he said.

She stood very still for some seconds.

"Why not?" she asked quietly.

"Because I have not time to cut a road through to another bunch of
pine. It is this or nothing."

"Why not nothing, then?"

"I want the money this will bring."

His choice of a verb was unfortunate. The employment of that one
little word opened the girl's mind to a flood of old suspicions
which the frank charm of the northland had thrust outside. Hilda
Farrand was an heiress and a beautiful girl. She had been constantly
reminded of the one fact by the attempts of men to use flattery of
the other as a key to her heart and her fortune. From early girlhood
she had been sought by the brilliant impecunious of two continents.
The continued experience had varnished her self-esteem with a glaze
of cynicism sufficiently consistent to protect it against any but
the strongest attack. She believed in no man's protestations. She
distrusted every man's motives as far as herself was concerned. This
attitude of mind was not unbecoming in her for the simple reason that
it destroyed none of her graciousness as regards other human relations
besides that of love. That men should seek her in matrimony from a
selfish motive was as much to be expected as that flies should seek
the sugar bowl. She accepted the fact as one of nature's laws,
annoying enough but inevitable; a thing to guard against, but not
one of sufficient moment to grieve over.

With Thorpe, however, her suspicions had been lulled. There is
something virile and genuine about the woods and the men who
inhabit them that strongly predisposes the mind to accept as proved
in their entirety all the other virtues. Hilda had fallen into this
state of mind. She endowed each of the men whom she encountered
with all the robust qualities she had no difficulty in recognizing
as part of nature's charm in the wilderness. Now at a word her eyes
were opened to what she had done. She saw that she had assumed
unquestioningly that her lover possessed the qualities of his
environment.

Not for a moment did she doubt the reality of her love. She had
conceived one of those deep, uplifting passions possible only to a
young girl. But her cynical experience warned her that the reality
of that passion's object was not proven by any test besides the
fallible one of her own poetizing imagination. The reality of the
ideal she had constructed might be a vanishable quantity even though
the love of it was not. So to the interview that ensued she brought,
not the partiality of a loving heart, nor even the impartiality of
one sitting in judgment, but rather the perverted prejudice of one
who actually fears the truth.

"Will you tell me for what you want the money?" she asked.

The young man caught the note of distrust. At once, instinctively,
his own confidence vanished. He drew within himself, again beyond
the power of justifying himself with the needed word.

"The firm needs it in the business," said he.

Her next question countered instantaneously.

"Does the firm need the money more than you do me?"

They stared at each other in the silence of the situation that had
so suddenly developed. It had come into being without their volition,
as a dust cloud springs up on a plain.

"You do not mean that, Hilda," said Thorpe quietly. "It hardly
comes to that."

"Indeed it does," she replied, every nerve of her fine organization
strung to excitement. "I should be more to you than any firm."

"Sometimes it is necessary to look after the bread and butter,"
Thorpe reminded her gently, although he knew that was not the real
reason at all.

"If your firm can't supply it, I can," she answered. "It seems
strange that you won't grant my first request of you, merely
because of a little money."

"It isn't a little money," he objected, catching manlike at the
practical question. "You don't realize what an amount a clump of
pine like this stands for. Just in saw logs, before it is made into
lumber, it will be worth about thirty thousand dollars,--of course
there's the expense of logging to pay out of that," he added, out
of his accurate business conservatism, "but there's ten thousand
dollars' profit in it."

The girl, exasperated by cold details at such a time, blazed out.
"I never heard anything so ridiculous in my life!" she cried.
"Either you are not at all the man I thought you, or you have some
better reason than you have given. Tell me, Harry; tell me at once.
You don't know what you are doing."

"The firm needs it, Hilda," said Thorpe, "in order to succeed. If
we do not cut this pine, we may fail."

In that he stated his religion. The duty of success was to him one
of the loftiest of abstractions, for it measured the degree of a
man's efficiency in the station to which God had called him. The
money, as such, was nothing to him.

Unfortunately the girl had learned a different language. She knew
nothing of the hardships, the struggles, the delight of winning for
the sake of victory rather than the sake of spoils. To her, success
meant getting a lot of money. The name by which Thorpe labelled his
most sacred principle, to her represented something base and sordid.
She had more money herself than she knew. It hurt her to the soul
that the condition of a small money-making machine, as she considered
the lumber firm, should be weighed even for an instant against her
love. It was a great deal Thorpe's fault that she so saw the firm.
He might easily have shown her the great forces and principles for
which it stood.

"If I were a man," she said, and her voice was tense, "if I were
a man and loved a woman, I would be ready to give up everything for
her. My riches, my pride, my life, my honor, my soul even,--they
would be as nothing, as less than nothing to me,--if I loved. Harry,
don't let me think I am mistaken. Let this miserable firm of yours
fail, if fail it must for lack of my poor little temple of dreams,"
she held out her hands with a tender gesture of appeal. The affair
had gone beyond the preservation of a few trees. It had become the
question of an ideal. Gradually, in spite of herself, the conviction
was forcing itself upon her that the man she had loved was no
different from the rest; that the greed of the dollar had corrupted
him too. By the mere yielding to her wishes, she wanted to prove the
suspicion wrong.

Now the strange part of the whole situation was, that in two words
Thorpe could have cleared it. If he had explained that he needed
the ten thousand dollars to help pay a note given to save from ruin
a foolish friend, he would have supplied to the affair just the
higher motive the girl's clear spirituality demanded. Then she
would have shared enthusiastically in the sacrifice, and been the
more loving and repentant from her momentary doubt. All she needed
was that the man should prove himself actuated by a noble, instead
of a sordid, motive. The young man did not say the two words,
because in all honesty he thought them unimportant. It seemed to
him quite natural that he should go on Wallace Carpenter's note.
That fact altered not a bit the main necessity of success. It was
a man's duty to make the best of himself,--it was Thorpe's duty to
prove himself supremely efficient in his chosen calling; the mere
coincidence that his partner's troubles worked along the same lines
meant nothing to the logic of the situation. In stating baldly that
he needed the money to assure the firm's existence, he imagined he
had adduced the strongest possible reason for his attitude. If the
girl was not influenced by that, the case was hopeless.

It was the difference of training rather than the difference of
ideas. Both clung to unselfishness as the highest reason for human
action; but each expressed the thought in a manner incomprehensible
to the other.

"I cannot, Hilda," he answered steadily.

"You sell me for ten thousand dollars! I cannot believe it! Harry!
Harry! Must I put it to you as a choice? Don't you love me enough
to spare me that?"

He did not reply. As long as it remained a dilemma, he would not
reply. He was in the right.

"Do you need the money more than you do me? more than you do love?"
she begged, her soul in her eyes; for she was begging also for
herself. "Think, Harry; it is the last chance!"

Once more he was face to face with a vital decision. To his
surprise he discovered in his mind no doubt as to what the answer
should be. He experienced no conflict of mind; no hesitation;
for the moment, no regret. During all his woods life he had been
following diligently the trail he had blazed for his conduct. Now
his feet carried him unconsciously to the same end. There was no
other way out. In the winter of his trouble the clipped trees alone
guided him, and at the end of them he found his decision. It is
in crises of this sort, when a little reflection or consideration
would do wonders to prevent a catastrophe, that all the forgotten
deeds, decisions, principles, and thoughts of a man's past life
combine solidly into the walls of fatality, so that in spite of
himself he finds he must act in accordance with them. In answer
to Hilda's question he merely inclined his head.

"I have seen a vision," said she simply, and lowered her head to
conceal her eyes. Then she looked at him again. "There can be
nothing better than love," she said.

"Yes, one thing," said Thorpe, "the duty of success."

The man had stated his creed; the woman hers. The one is born
perfect enough for love; the other must work, must attain the
completeness of a fulfilled function, must succeed, to deserve it.

She left him then, and did not see him again. Four days later the
camping party left. Thorpe sent Tim Shearer over, as his most
efficient man, to see that they got off without difficulty, but
himself retired on some excuse to Camp Four. Three weeks gone in
October he received a marked newspaper announcing the engagement
of Miss Hilda Farrand to Mr. Hildreth Morton of Chicago.

He had burned his ships, and stood now on an unfriendly shore. The
first sacrifice to his jealous god had been consummated, and now,
live or die, he stood pledged to win his fight.



Chapter XLV


Winter set in early and continued late; which in the end was
a good thing for the year's cut. The season was capricious,
hanging for days at a time at the brink of a thaw, only to stiffen
again into severe weather. This was trying on the nerves. For at
each of these false alarms the six camps fell into a feverish haste
to get the job finished before the break-up. It was really quite
extraordinary how much was accomplished under the nagging spur of
weather conditions and the cruel rowelling of Thorpe.

The latter had now no thought beyond his work, and that was the
thought of a madman. He had been stern and unyielding enough
before, goodness knows, but now he was terrible. His restless
energy permeated every molecule in the economic structure over
which he presided, roused it to intense vibration. Not for an
instant was there a resting spell. The veriest chore-boy talked,
thought, dreamed of nothing but saw logs. Men whispered vaguely
of a record cut. Teamsters looked upon their success or failure
to keep near the top on the day's haul as a signal victory or a
disgraceful defeat. The difficulties of snow, accident, topography
which an ever-watchful nature threw down before the rolling car of
this industry, were swept aside like straws. Little time was wasted
and no opportunities. It did not matter how smoothly affairs
happened to be running for the moment, every advantage, even the
smallest, was eagerly seized to advance the work. A drop of five
degrees during the frequent warm spells brought out the sprinklers,
even in dead of night; an accident was white-hot in the forge
almost before the crack of the iron had ceased to echo. At night
the men fell into their bunks like sandbags, and their last conscious
thought, if indeed they had any at all, was of eagerness for the
morrow in order that they might push the grand total up another
notch. It was madness; but it was the madness these men loved.

For now to his old religion Thorpe had added a fanaticism, and over
the fanaticism was gradually creeping a film of doubt. To the
conscientious energy which a sense of duty supplied, was added the
tremendous kinetic force of a love turned into other channels. And
in the wild nights while the other men slept, Thorpe's half-crazed
brain was revolving over and over again the words of the sentence
he had heard from Hilda's lips: "There can be nothing better than
love."

His actions, his mind, his very soul vehemently denied the
proposition.
He clung as ever to his high Puritanic idea of man's purpose. But
down deep in a very tiny, sacred corner of his heart a very small
voice sometimes made itself heard when other, more militant voices
were still: "It may be; it may be!"

The influence of this voice was practically nothing. It made
itself heard occasionally. Perhaps even, for the time being, its
weight counted on the other side of the scale; for Thorpe took
pains to deny it fiercely, both directly and indirectly by increased
exertions. But it persisted; and once in a moon or so, when the
conditions were quite favorable, it attained for an instant a shred
of belief.

Probably never since the Puritan days of New England has a community
lived as sternly as did that winter of 1888 the six camps under
Thorpe's management. There was something a little inspiring about
it. The men fronted their daily work with the same grim-faced,
clear-eyed steadiness of veterans going into battle;--with the
same confidence, the same sure patience that disposes effectively
of one thing before going on to the next. There was little merely
excitable bustle; there was no rest. Nothing could stand against
such a spirit. Nothing did. The skirmishers which the wilderness
threw out, were brushed away. Even the inevitable delays seemed
not so much stoppages as the instant's pause of a heavy vehicle in
a snow drift, succeeded by the momentary acceleration as the plunge
carried it through. In the main, and by large, the machine moved
steadily and inexorably.

And yet one possessed of the finer spiritual intuitions could not
have shaken off the belief in an impending struggle. The feel of it
was in the air. Nature's forces were too mighty to be so slightly
overcome; the splendid energy developed in these camps too vast to
be wasted on facile success. Over against each other were two great
powers, alike in their calm confidence, animated with the loftiest
and most dignified spirit of enmity. Slowly they were moving toward
each other. The air was surcharged with the electricity of their
opposition. Just how the struggle would begin was uncertain; but its
inevitability was as assured as its magnitude. Thorpe knew it, and
shut his teeth, looking keenly about him. The Fighting Forty knew
it, and longed for the grapple to come. The other camps knew it,
and followed their leader with perfect trust. The affair was an
epitome of the historic combats begun with David and Goliath. It
was an affair of Titans. The little courageous men watched their
enemy with cat's eyes.

The last month of hauling was also one of snow. In this condition
were few severe storms, but each day a little fell. By and by the
accumulation amounted to much. In the woods where the wind could
not get at it, it lay deep and soft above the tops of bushes. The
grouse ate browse from the slender hardwood tips like a lot of
goldfinches, or precipitated themselves headlong down through five
feet of snow to reach the ground. Often Thorpe would come across
the irregular holes of their entrance. Then if he took the trouble
to stamp about a little in the vicinity with his snowshoes, the
bird would spring unexpectedly from the clear snow, scattering a
cloud with its strong wings. The deer, herded together, tramped
"yards" where the feed was good. Between the yards ran narrow
trails. When the animals went from one yard to another in these
trails, their ears and antlers alone were visible. On either side
of the logging roads the snow piled so high as to form a kind of
rampart. When all this water in suspense should begin to flow,
and to seek its level in the water-courses of the district, the
logs would have plenty to float them, at least.

So late did the cold weather last that, even with the added plowing
to do, the six camps beat all records. On the banks at Camp One
were nine million feet; the totals of all five amounted to thirty-
three million. About ten million of this was on French Creek; the
remainder on the main banks of the Ossawinamakee. Besides this the
firm up-river, Sadler & Smith, had put up some twelve million more.
The drive promised to be quite an affair.

About the fifteenth of April attention became strained. Every day
the mounting sun made heavy attacks on the snow: every night the
temperature dropped below the freezing point. The river began to
show more air holes, occasional open places. About the center the
ice looked worn and soggy. Someone saw a flock of geese high in
the air. Then came rain.

One morning early, Long Pine Jim came into the men's camp bearing a
huge chunk of tallow. This he held against the hot stove until its
surface had softened, when he began to swab liberal quantities of
grease on his spiked river shoes, which he fished out from under
his bunk.

"She's comin', boys," said he.

He donned a pair of woolen trousers that had been chopped off at
the knee, thick woolen stockings, and the river shoes. Then he
tightened his broad leather belt about his heavy shirt, cocked his
little hat over his ear, and walked over in the corner to select a
peavey from the lot the blacksmith had just put in shape. A peavey
is like a cant-hook except that it is pointed at the end. Thus it
can be used either as a hook or a pike. At the same moment Shearer,
similarly attired and equipped, appeared in the doorway. The opening
of the portal admitted a roar of sound. The river was rising.

"Come on, boys, she's on!" said he sharply.

Outside, the cook and cookee were stowing articles in the already
loaded wanigan. The scow contained tents, blankets, provisions, and
a portable stove. It followed the drive, and made a camp wherever
expediency demanded.

"Lively, boys, lively!" shouted Thorpe. "She'll be down on us
before we know it!"

Above the soft creaking of dead branches in the wind sounded a
steady roar, like the bellowing of a wild beast lashing itself to
fury. The freshet was abroad, forceful with the strength of a
whole winter's accumulated energy.

The men heard it and their eyes brightened with the lust of battle.
They cheered.



Chapter XLVI


At the banks of the river, Thorpe rapidly issued his directions.
The affair had been all prearranged. During the week previous he
and his foremen had reviewed the situation, examining the state of
the ice, the heads of water in the three dams. Immediately above
the first rollways was Dam Three with its two wide sluices through
which a veritable flood could be loosened at will; then four miles
farther lay the rollways of Sadler & Smith, the up-river firm; and
above them tumbled over a forty-five foot ledge the beautiful Siscoe
Falls; these first rollways of Thorpe's--spread in the broad marsh
flat below the dam--contained about eight millions; the rest of
the season's cut was scattered for thirty miles along the bed of
the river.

Already the ice cementing the logs together had begun to weaken.
The ice had wrenched and tugged savagely at the locked timbers
until they had, with a mighty effort, snapped asunder the bonds of
their hibernation. Now a narrow lane of black rushing water pierced
the rollways, to boil and eddy in the consequent jam three miles
below.

To the foremen Thorpe assigned their tasks, calling them to him one
by one, as a general calls his aids.

"Moloney," said he to the big Irishman, "take your crew and break
that jam. Then scatter your men down to within a mile of the pond
at Dam Two, and see that the river runs clear. You can tent for a
day or so at West Bend or some other point about half way down; and
after that you had better camp at the dam. Just as soon as you get
logs enough in the pond, start to sluicing them through the dam.
You won't need more than four men there, if you keep a good head.
You can keep your gates open five or six hours. And Moloney."

"Yes, sir."

"I want you to be careful not to sluice too long. There is a bar
just below the dam, and if you try to sluice with the water too
low, you'll center and jam there, as sure as shooting."

Bryan Moloney turned on his heel and began to pick his way down
stream over the solidly banked logs. Without waiting the command,
a dozen men followed him. The little group bobbed away irregularly
into the distance, springing lightly from one timber to the other,
holding their quaintly-fashioned peaveys in the manner of a rope
dancer's balancing pole. At the lowermost limit of the rollways,
each man pried a log into the water, and, standing gracefully erect
on this unstable craft, floated out down the current to the scene
of his dangerous labor.

"Kerlie," went on Thorpe, "your crew can break rollways with the
rest until we get the river fairly filled, and then you can move
on down stream as fast as you are needed. Scotty, you will have
the rear. Tim and I will boss the river."

At once the signal was given to Ellis, the dam watcher. Ellis and
his assistants thereupon began to pry with long iron bars at the
ratchets of the heavy gates. The chore-boy bent attentively over
the ratchet-pin, lifting it delicately to permit another inch of
raise, dropping it accurately to enable the men at the bars to
seize a fresh purchase. The river's roar deepened. Through the
wide sluice-ways a torrent foamed and tumbled. Immediately it spread
through the brush on either side to the limits of the freshet banks,
and then gathered for its leap against the uneasy rollways. Along
the edge of the dark channel the face of the logs seemed to crumble
away. Farther in towards the banks where the weight of timber still
outbalanced the weight of the flood, the tiers grumbled and stirred,
restless with the stream's calling. Far down the river, where Bryan
Moloney and his crew were picking at the jam, the water in eager
streamlets sought the interstices between the logs, gurgling
excitedly like a mountain brook.

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