The Blazed Trail

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Blazed Trail

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At length, however, it gave signs of breaking. The sky, which
had been of a steel blue, harbored great piled thunder-heads.
Occasionally athwart the heat shot a streak of cold air. Towards
evening the thunder-heads shifted and finally dissipated, to be
sure, but the portent was there.

Hamilton's papers began to tell of disturbances in the South and
West. A washout in Arkansas derailed a train; a cloud-burst in
Texas wiped out a camp; the cities along the Ohio River were
enjoying their annual flood with the usual concomitants of floating
houses and boats in the streets. The men wished they had some of
that water here.

So finally the drive approached its end and all concerned began in
anticipation to taste the weariness that awaited them. They had
hurried their powers. The few remaining tasks still confronting
them, all at once seemed more formidable than what they had
accomplished. They could not contemplate further exertion. The
work for the first time became dogged, distasteful. Even Thorpe
was infected. He, too, wanted more than anything else to drop on
the bed in Mrs. Hathaway's boarding house, there to sponge from his
mind all colors but the dead gray of rest. There remained but a few
things to do. A mile of sacking would carry the drive beyond the
influence of freshet water. After that there would be no hurry.

He looked around at the hard, fatigue-worn faces of the men about
him, and in the obsession of his wearied mood he suddenly felt a
great rush of affection for these comrades who had so unreservedly
spent themselves for his affair. Their features showed exhaustion,
it is true, but their eyes gleamed still with the steady half-
humorous purpose of the pioneer. When they caught his glance they
grinned good-humoredly.

All at once Thorpe turned and started for the bank.

"That'll do, boys," he said quietly to the nearest group. "She's
down!"

It was noon. The sackers looked up in surprise. Behind them, to
their very feet, rushed the soft smooth slope of Hemlock Rapids.
Below them flowed a broad, peaceful river. The drive had passed
its last obstruction. To all intents and purposes it was over.

Calmly, with matter-of-fact directness, as though they had not
achieved the impossible; as though they, a handful, had not cheated
nature and powerful enemies, they shouldered their peaveys and
struck into the broad wagon road. In the middle distance loomed the
tall stacks of the mill with the little board town about it. Across
the eye spun the thread of the railroad. Far away gleamed the broad
expanses of Lake Superior.

The cook had, early that morning, moored the wanigan to the bank.
One of the teamsters from town had loaded the men's "turkeys" on
his heavy wagon. The wanigan's crew had thereupon trudged into
town.

The men paired off naturally and fell into a dragging, dogged walk.
Thorpe found himself unexpectedly with Big Junko. For a time they
plodded on without conversation. Then the big man ventured a remark.

"I'm glad she's over," said he. "I got a good stake comin'."

"Yes," replied Thorpe indifferently.

"I got most six hundred dollars comin'," persisted Junko.

"Might as well be six hundred cents," commented Thorpe, "it'd
make you just as drunk."

Big Junko laughed self-consciously but without the slightest
resentment.

"That's all right," said he, "but you betcher life I don't blow
this stake."

"I've heard that talk before," shrugged Thorpe.

"Yes, but this is different. I'm goin' to git married on this.
How's THAT?"

Thorpe, his attention struck at last, stared at his companion. He
noted the man's little twinkling animal eyes, his high cheek bones,
his flat nose, his thick and slobbery lips, his straggling, fierce
mustache and eyebrows, his grotesque long-tailed cutaway coat. So
to him, too, this primitive man reaching dully from primordial chaos,
the great moment had yielded its vision.

"Who is she?" he asked abruptly.

"She used to wash at Camp Four."

Thorpe dimly remembered the woman now--an overweighted creature
with a certain attraction of elfishly blowing hair, with a certain
pleasing full-cheeked, full-bosomed health.

The two walked on in re-established silence. Finally the giant,
unable to contain himself longer, broke out again.

"I do like that woman," said he with a quaintly deliberate
seriousness.
"That's the finest woman in this district."

Thorpe felt the quick moisture rush to his eyes. There was something
inexpressibly touching in those simple words as Big Junko uttered
them.

"And when you are married," he asked, "what are you going to do? Are
you going to stay on the river?"

"No, I'm goin' to clear a farm. The woman she says that's the thing
to do. I like the river, too. But you bet when Carrie says a thing,
that's plenty good enough for Big Junko."

"Suppose," suggested Thorpe, irresistibly impelled towards the
attempt, "suppose I should offer you two hundred dollars a month
to stay on the river. Would you stay?"

"Carrie don't like it," replied Junko.

"Two hundred dollars is big wages," persisted Thorpe. "It's twice
what I give Radway."

"I'd like to ask Carrie."

"No, take it or leave it now."

"Well, Carrie says she don't like it," answered the riverman with
a sigh.

Thorpe looked at his companion fixedly. Somehow the bestial
countenance had taken on an attraction of its own. He remembered
Big Junko as a wild beast when his passions were aroused, as a man
whose honesty had been doubted.

"You've changed, Junko," said he.

"I know," said the big man. "I been a scalawag all right. I quit
it. I don't know much, but Carrie she's smart, and I'm goin' to do
what she says. When you get stuck on a good woman like Carrie, Mr.
Thorpe, you don't give much of a damn for anything else. Sure!
That's right! It's the biggest thing top o' earth!"

Here it was again, the opposing creed. And from such a source.
Thorpe's iron will contracted again.

"A woman is no excuse for a man's neglecting his work," he snapped.

"Shorely not," agreed Junko serenely. "I aim to finish out my time
all right, Mr. Thorpe. Don't you worry none about that. I done my
best for you. And," went on the riverman in the expansion of this
unwonted confidence with his employer, "I'd like to rise to remark
that you're the best boss I ever had, and we boys wants to stay with
her till there's skating in hell!"

"All right," murmured Thorpe indifferently.

His momentary interest had left him. Again the reactionary weariness
dragged at his feet. Suddenly the remaining half mile to town seemed
very long indeed.

Chapter LIII

Wallace Carpenter and Hamilton, the journalist, seated against
the sun-warmed bench of Mrs. Hathaway's boarding-house, commented
on the band as it stumbled in to the wash-room.

"Those men don't know how big they are," remarked the journalist.
That's the way with most big men. And that man Thorpe belongs to
another age. I'd like to get him to telling his experiences; he'd
be a gold mine to me."

"And would require about as much trouble to 'work,'" laughed
Wallace. "He won't talk."

"That's generally the trouble, confound 'em," sighed Hamilton.
"The fellows who CAN talk haven't anything to say; and those who
have something to tell are dumb as oysters. I've got him in though."
He spread one of a roll of papers on his knees. "I got a set of
duplicates for you. Thought you might like to keep them. The
office tells me," he concluded modestly, "that they are attracting
lots of attention, but are looked upon as being a rather clever
sort of fiction."

Wallace picked up the sheet. His eye was at once met by the heading,
"'So long, boys,'" in letters a half inch in height, and immediately
underneath in smaller type, "said Jimmy Powers, and threw his hat in
the face of death."

"It's all there," explained the journalist, "--the jam and the break,
and all this magnificent struggle afterwards. It makes a great yarn.
I feel tempted sometimes to help it out a little--artistically, you
know--but of course that wouldn't do. She'd make a ripping yarn,
though, if I could get up some motive outside mere trade rivalry
for the blowing up of those dams. That would just round it off."

Wallace Carpenter was about to reply that such a motive actually
existed, when the conversation was interrupted by the approach of
Thorpe and Big Junko. The former looked twenty years older after
his winter. His eye was dull, his shoulders drooped, his gait was
inelastic. The whole bearing of the man was that of one weary to
the bone.

"I've got something here to show you, Harry," cried Wallace Carpenter,
waving one of the papers. "It was a great drive and here's something
to remember it by."

"All right, Wallace, by and by," replied Thorpe dully. "I'm dead.
I'm going to turn in for a while. I need sleep more than anything
else. I can't think now."

He passed through the little passage into the "parlor bed-room,"
which Mrs. Hathaway always kept in readiness for members of the
firm. There he fell heavily asleep almost before his body had
met the bed.

In the long dining room the rivermen consumed a belated dinner.
They had no comments to make. It was over.

The two on the veranda smoked. To the right, at the end of the
sawdust street, the mill sang its varying and lulling keys. The
odor of fresh-sawed pine perfumed the air. Not a hundred yards away
the river slipped silently to the distant blue Superior, escaping
between the slanting stone-filled cribs which held back the logs.
Down the south and west the huge thunderheads gathered and flashed
and grumbled, as they had done every afternoon for days previous.

"Queer thing," commented Hamilton finally, "these cold streaks in
the air. They are just as distinct as though they had partitions
around them."

"Queer climate anyway," agreed Carpenter.

Excepting always for the mill, the little settlement appeared asleep.
The main booms were quite deserted. Not a single figure, armed with
its picturesque pike-pole, loomed athwart the distance. After awhile
Hamilton noticed something.

"Look here, Carpenter," said he, "what's happening out there? Have
some of your confounded logs SUNK, or what? There don't seem to be
near so many of them somehow."

"No, it isn't that," proffered Carpenter after a moment's scrutiny,
"there are just as many logs, but they are getting separated a
little so you can see the open water between them."

"Guess you're right. Say, look here, I believe that the river is
rising!"

"Nonsense, we haven't had any rain."

"She's rising just the same. I'll tell you how I know; you see
that spile over there near the left-hand crib? Well, I sat on the
boom this morning watching the crew, and I whittled the spile with
my knife--you can see the marks from here. I cut the thing about
two feet above the water. Look at it now."

"She's pretty near the water line, that's right," admitted
Carpenter.

"I should think that might make the boys hot," commented Hamilton.
"If they'd known this was coming, they needn't have hustled so to
get the drive down.

"That's so," Wallace agreed.

About an hour later the younger man in his turn made a discovery.

"She's been rising right along," he submitted. "Your marks are
nearer the water, and, do you know, I believe the logs are beginning
to feel it. See, they've closed up the little openings between them,
and they are beginning to crowd down to the lower end of the pond."

"I don't know anything about this business," hazarded the journalist,
"but by the mere look of the thing I should think there was a good
deal of pressure on that same lower end. By Jove, look there! See
those logs up-end? I believe you're going to have a jam right here
in your own booms!"

"I don't know," hesitated Wallace, "I never heard of its happening."

"You'd better let someone know."

"I hate to bother Harry or any of the rivermen. I'll just step down
to the mill. Mason--he's our mill foreman--he'll know."

Mason came to the edge of the high trestle and took one look.

"Jumping fish-hooks!" he cried. "Why, the river's up six inches
and still a comin'! Here you, Tom!" he called to one of the yard
hands, "you tell Solly to get steam on that tug double quick, and
have Dave hustle together his driver crew."

"What you going to do?" asked Wallace.

"I got to strengthen the booms," explained the mill foreman. "We'll
drive some piles across between the cribs."

"Is there any danger?"

"Oh, no, the river would have to rise a good deal higher than she
is now to make current enough to hurt. They've had a hard rain up
above. This will go down in a few hours."

After a time the tug puffed up to the booms, escorting the pile
driver. The latter towed a little raft of long sharpened piles,
which it at once began to drive in such positions as would most
effectually strengthen the booms. In the meantime the thunder-
heads had slyly climbed the heavens, so that a sudden deluge of
rain surprised the workmen. For an hour it poured down in torrents;
then settled to a steady gray beat. Immediately the aspect had
changed. The distant rise of land was veiled; the brown expanse
of logs became slippery and glistening; the river below the booms
was picked into staccato points by the drops; distant Superior
turned lead color and seemed to tumble strangely athwart the horizon.

Solly, the tug captain, looked at his mooring hawsers and then at
the nearest crib.

"She's riz two inches in th' las' two hours," he announced, "and
she's runnin' like a mill race." Solly was a typical north-country
tug captain, short and broad, with a brown, clear face, and the
steadiest and calmest of steel-blue eyes. "When she begins to feel
th' pressure behind," he went on, "there's goin' to be trouble."

Towards dusk she began to feel that pressure. Through the rainy
twilight the logs could be seen raising their ghostly arms of
protest. Slowly, without tumult, the jam formed. In the van the
logs crossed silently; in the rear they pressed in, were sucked
under in the swift water, and came to rest at the bottom of the
river. The current of the river began to protest, pressing its
hydraulics through the narrowing crevices. The situation demanded
attention.

A breeze began to pull off shore in the body of rain. Little by
little it increased, sending the water by in gusts, ruffling the
already hurrying river into greater haste, raising far from the
shore dimly perceived white-caps. Between the roaring of the wind,
the dash of rain, and the rush of the stream, men had to shout to
make themselves heard.

"Guess you'd better rout out the boss," screamed Solly to Wallace
Carpenter; "this damn water's comin' up an inch an hour right
along. When she backs up once, she'll push this jam out sure."

Wallace ran to the boarding house and roused his partner from a
heavy sleep. The latter understood the situation at a word. While
dressing, he explained to the younger man wherein lay the danger.

"If the jam breaks once," said he, "nothing top of earth can prevent
it from going out into the Lake, and there it'll scatter, Heaven
knows where. Once scattered, it is practically a total loss. The
salvage wouldn't pay the price of the lumber."

They felt blindly through the rain in the direction of the lights
on the tug and pile-driver. Shearer, the water dripping from his
flaxen mustache, joined them like a shadow.

"I heard you come in," he explained to Carpenter. At the river he
announced his opinion. "We can hold her all right," he assured
them. "It'll take a few more piles, but by morning the storm'll
be over, and she'll begin to go down again."

The three picked their way over the creaking, swaying timber. But
when they reached the pile-driver, they found trouble afoot. The
crew had mutinied, and refused longer to drive piles under the face
of the jam.

"If she breaks loose, she's going to bury us," said they.

"She won't break," snapped Shearer, "get to work."

"It's dangerous," they objected sullenly.

"By God, you get off this driver," shouted Solly. "Go over and lie
down in a ten-acre lot, and see if you feel safe there!"

He drove them ashore with a storm of profanity and a multitude of
kicks, his steel-blue eyes blazing.

"There's nothing for it but to get the boys out again," said Tim;
"I kinder hate to do it."

But when the Fighting Forty, half asleep but dauntless, took charge
of the driver, a catastrophe made itself known. One of the ejected
men had tripped the lifting chain of the hammer after another had
knocked away the heavy preventing block, and so the hammer had fallen
into the river and was lost. None other was to be had. The pile
driver was useless.

A dozen men were at once despatched for cables, chains, and wire
ropes from the supply at the warehouse.

"I'd like to have those whelps here," cried Shearer, "I'd throw
them under the jam."

"It's part of the same trick," said Thorpe grimly; "those fellows
have their men everywhere among us. I don't know whom to trust."

"You think it's Morrison & Daly?" queried Carpenter astonished.

"Think? I know it. They know as well as you or I that if we save
these logs, we'll win out in the stock exchange; and they're not
such fools as to let us save them if it can be helped. I have a
score to settle with those fellows; and when I get through with
this thing I'll settle it all right."

"What are you going to do now?"

"The only thing there is to be done. We'll string heavy booms,
chained together, between the cribs, and then trust to heaven
they'll hold. I think we can hold the jam. The water will begin
to flow over the bank before long, so there won't be much increase
of pressure over what we have now; and as there won't be any shock
to withstand, I think our heavy booms will do the business."

He turned to direct the boring of some long boom logs in preparation
for the chains. Suddenly he whirled again to Wallace with so strange
an expression in his face that the young man almost cried out. The
uncertain light of the lanterns showed dimly the streaks of rain
across his countenance, and, his eye flared with a look almost of
panic.

"I never thought of it!" he said in a low voice. "Fool that I
am! I don't see how I missed it. Wallace, don't you see what those
devils will do next?"

"No, what do you mean?" gasped the younger man.

"There are twelve million feet of logs up river in Sadler & Smith's
drive. Don't you see what they'll do?"

"No, I don't believe---"

"Just as soon as they find out that the river is booming, and that
we are going to have a hard time to hold our jam, they'll let loose
those twelve million on us. They'll break the jam, or dynamite it,
or something. And let me tell you, that a very few logs hitting the
tail of our jam will start the whole shooting match so that no power
on earth can stop it."

"I don't imagine they'd think of doing that---" began Wallace by way
of assurance.

"Think of it! You don't know them. They've thought of everything.
You don't know that man Daly. Ask Tim, he'll tell you."

"Well, the---"

"I've got to send a man up there right away. Perhaps we can get
there in time to head them off. They have to send their man over--
By the way," he queried, struck with a new idea, "how long have you
been driving piles?"

"Since about three o'clock."

"Six hours," computed Thorpe. "I wish you'd come for me sooner."

He cast his eye rapidly over the men.

"I don't know just who to send. There isn't a good enough woodsman
in the lot to make Siscoe Falls through the woods a night like this.
The river trail is too long; and a cut through the woods is blind.
Andrews is the only man I know of who could do it, but I think Billy
Mason said Andrews had gone up on the Gunther track to run lines.
Come on; we'll see."

With infinite difficulty and caution, they reached the shore.
Across the gleaming logs shone dimly the lanterns at the scene
of work, ghostly through the rain. Beyond, on either side, lay
impenetrable drenched darkness, racked by the wind.

"I wouldn't want to tackle it," panted Thorpe. "If it wasn't for
that cursed tote road between Sadler's and Daly's, I wouldn't
worry. It's just too EASY for them."

Behind them the jam cracked and shrieked and groaned. Occasionally
was heard, beneath the sharper noises, a dull BOOM, as one of the
heavy timbers forced by the pressure from its resting place, shot
into the air, and fell back on the bristling surface.

Andrews had left that morning.

"Tim Shearer might do it," suggested Thorpe, "but I hate to spare
him."

He picked his rifle from its rack and thrust the magazine full of
cartridges.

"Come on, Wallace," said he, "we'll hunt him up."

They stepped again into the shriek and roar of the storm, bending
their heads to its power, but indifferent in the already drenched
condition of their clothing, to the rain. The saw-dust street was
saturated like a sponge. They could feel the quick water rise about
the pressure at their feet. From the invisible houses they heard
a steady monotone of flowing from the roofs. Far ahead, dim in the
mist, sprayed the light of lanterns.

Suddenly Thorpe felt a touch on his arm. Faintly he perceived at
his elbow the high lights of a face from which the water streamed.

"Injin Charley!" he cried, "the very man!"

Chapter LIV

Rapidly Thorpe explained what was to be done, and thrust his rifle
into the Indian's hands. The latter listened in silence and
stolidity, then turned, and without a word departed swiftly in the
darkness. The two white men stood a minute attentive. Nothing was
to be heard but the steady beat of rain and the roaring of the wind.

Near the bank of the river they encountered a man, visible only as
an uncertain black outline against the glow of the lanterns beyond.
Thorpe, stopping him, found Big Junko.

"This is no time to quit," said Thorpe, sharply.

"I ain't quittin'," replied Big Junko.

"Where are you going, then?"

Junko was partially and stammeringly unresponsive.

"Looks bad," commented Thorpe. "You'd better get back to your
job."

"Yes," agreed Junko helplessly. In the momentary slack tide of
work, the giant had conceived the idea of searching out the driver
crew for purposes of pugilistic vengeance. Thorpe's suspicions
stung him, but his simple mind could see no direct way to
explanation.

All night long in the chill of a spring rain and windstorm the
Fighting Forty and certain of the mill crew gave themselves to the
labor of connecting the slanting stone cribs so strongly, by means
of heavy timbers chained end to end, that the pressure of a break
in the jam might not sweep aside the defenses. Wallace Carpenter,
Shorty, the chore-boy, and Anderson, the barn-boss, picked a
dangerous passage back and forth carrying pails of red-hot coffee
which Mrs. Hathaway constantly prepared. The cold water numbed
the men's hands. With difficulty could they manipulate the heavy
chains through the auger holes; with pain they twisted knots, bored
holes. They did not complain. Behind them the jam quivered,
perilously near the bursting point. From it shrieked aloud the
demons of pressure. Steadily the river rose, an inch an hour.
The key might snap at any given moment,they could not tell,--and
with the rush they knew very well that themselves, the tug, and the
disabled piledriver would be swept from existence. The worst of it
was that the blackness shrouded their experience into uselessness;
they were utterly unable to tell by the ordinary visual symptoms
how near the jam might be to collapse.

However, they persisted, as the old-time riverman always does, so
that when dawn appeared the barrier was continuous and assured.
Although the pressure of the river had already forced the logs
against the defenses, the latter held the strain well.

The storm had settled into its gait. Overhead the sky was filled
with gray, beneath which darker scuds flew across the zenith before
a howling southwest wind. Out in the clear river one could hardly
stand upright against the gusts. In the fan of many directions
furious squalls swept over the open water below the booms, and an
eager boiling current rushed to the lake.

Thorpe now gave orders that the tug and driver should take shelter.
A few moments later he expressed himself as satisfied. The dripping
crew, their harsh faces gray in the half-light, picked their way to
the shore.

In the darkness of that long night's work no man knew his neighbor.
Men from the river, men from the mill, men from the yard all worked
side by side. Thus no one noticed especially a tall, slender, but
well-knit individual dressed in a faded mackinaw and a limp slouch
hat which he wore pulled over his eyes. This young fellow occupied
himself with the chains. Against the racing current the crew held
the ends of the heavy booms, while he fastened them together. He
worked well, but seemed slow. Three times Shearer hustled him on
after the others had finished, examining closely the work that had
been done. On the third occasion he shrugged his shoulder somewhat
impatiently.

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