The Blazed Trail

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Blazed Trail

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Daly, being what is termed a self-made man, entertained a prejudice
against youths of the leisure class. He did not believe in their
earnestness of purpose, their capacity for knowledge, nor their
perseverance in anything. That a man of twenty-six should be
looking for his first situation was incomprehensible to him. He
made no effort to conceal his prejudice, because the class to which
the young man had belonged enjoyed his hearty contempt.

The truth is, he had taken Thorpe's ignorance a little too much
for granted. Before leaving his home, and while the project of
emigration was still in the air, the young fellow had, with the
quiet enthusiasm of men of his habit of mind, applied himself
to the mastering of whatever the books could teach. That is not
much. The literature on lumbering seems to be singularly limited.
Still he knew the trees, and had sketched an outline into which to
paint experience. He said nothing of this to the man before him,
because of that strange streak in his nature which prompted him to
conceal what he felt most strongly; to leave to others the task of
guessing out his attitude; to stand on appearances without attempting
to justify them, no matter how simple the justification might be.
A moment's frank, straightforward talk might have caught Daly's
attention, for the lumberman was, after all, a shrewd reader of
character where his prejudices were not concerned. Then events
would have turned out very differently.

After his speech the business man had whirled back to his desk.

"Have you anything for me to do in the woods, then?" the other
asked quietly.

"No," said Daly over his shoulder.

Thorpe went out.

Before leaving Detroit he had, on the advice of friends, visited
the city office of Morrison & Daly. There he had been told
positively that the firm were hiring men. Now, without five dollars
in his pocket, he made the elementary discovery that even in
chopping wood skilled labor counts. He did not know where to turn
next, and he would not have had the money to go far in any case.
So, although Shearer's brusque greeting that morning had argued a
lack of cordiality, he resolved to remind the riverman of his
promised assistance.

That noon he carried out his resolve. To his surprise Shearer was
cordial--in his way. He came afterward to appreciate the subtle
nuances of manner and treatment by which a boss retains his moral
supremacy in a lumber country,--repels that too great familiarity
which breeds contempt, without imperiling the trust and comradeship
which breeds willingness. In the morning Thorpe had been a
prospective employee of the firm, and so a possible subordinate of
Shearer himself. Now he was Shearer's equal.

"Go up and tackle Radway. He's jobbing for us on the Cass Branch.
He needs men for roadin', I know, because he's behind. You'll get a
job there."

"Where is it?" asked Thorpe.

"Ten miles from here. She's blazed, but you better wait for th'
supply team, Friday. If you try to make her yourself, you'll get
lost on some of th' old loggin' roads."

Thorpe considered.

"I'm busted," he said at last frankly.

"Oh, that's all right," replied the walking-boss. "Marshall, come
here!"

The peg-legged boarding-house keeper stumped in.

"What is it?" he trumpeted snufflingly.

"This boy wants a job till Friday. Then he's going up to Radway's
with the supply team. Now quit your hollerin' for a chore-boy for a
few days."

"All right," snorted Marshall, "take that ax and split some dry
wood that you'll find behind the house."

"I'm very much obliged to you," began Thorpe to the walking-boss,
"and---"

"That's all right," interrupted the latter, "some day you can give
me a job."

Chapter V

For five days Thorpe cut wood, made fires, drew water, swept
floors, and ran errands. Sometimes he would look across the broad
stump-dotted plain to the distant forest. He had imagination. No
business man succeeds without it. With him the great struggle to
wrest from an impassive and aloof nature what she has so long held
securely as her own, took on the proportions of a battle. The
distant forest was the front. To it went the new bands of fighters.
From it came the caissons for food, that ammunition of the frontier;
messengers bringing tidings of defeat or victory; sometimes men
groaning on their litters from the twisting and crushing and
breaking inflicted on them by the calm, ruthless enemy; once a dead
man bearing still on his chest the mark of the tree that had killed
him. Here at headquarters sat the general, map in hand, issuing his
orders, directing his forces.

And out of the forest came mystery. Hunters brought deer on sledges.
Indians, observant and grave, swung silently across the reaches
on their snowshoes, and silently back again carrying their meager
purchases. In the daytime ravens wheeled and croaked about the
outskirts of the town, bearing the shadow of the woods on their
plumes and of the north-wind in the somber quality of their voices;
rare eagles wheeled gracefully to and fro; snow squalls coquetted
with the landscape. At night the many creatures of the forest
ventured out across the plains in search of food,--weasels; big
white hares; deer, planting daintily their little sharp hoofs where
the frozen turnips were most plentiful; porcupines in quest of
anything they could get their keen teeth into;--and often the big
timber wolves would send shivering across the waste a long whining
howl. And in the morning their tracks would embroider the snow with
many stories.

The talk about the great stove in the boarding-house office also
possessed the charm of balsam fragrance. One told the other occult
facts about the "Southeast of the southwest of eight." The second
in turn vouchsafed information about another point of the compass.
Thorpe heard of many curious practical expedients. He learned that
one can prevent awkward air-holes in lakes by "tapping" the ice
with an ax,--for the air must get out, naturally or artificially;
that the top log on a load should not be large because of the
probability, when one side has dumped with a rush, of its falling
straight down from its original height, so breaking the sleigh;
that a thin slice of salt pork well peppered is good when tied
about a sore throat; that choking a horse will cause him to swell
up and float on the top of the water, thus rendering it easy to
slide him out on the ice from a hole he may have broken into; that
a tree lodged against another may be brought to the ground by
felling a third against it; that snowshoes made of caribou hide do
not become baggy, because caribou shrinks when wet, whereas other
rawhide stretches. These, and many other things too complicated to
elaborate here, he heard discussed by expert opinion. Gradually
he acquired an enthusiasm for the woods, just as a boy conceives
a longing for the out-of-door life of which he hears in the
conversation of his elders about the winter fire. He became eager
to get away to the front, to stand among the pines, to grapple with
the difficulties of thicket, hill, snow, and cold that nature
silently interposes between the man and his task.

At the end of the week he received four dollars from his employer;
dumped his valise into a low bobsleigh driven by a man muffled in a
fur coat; assisted in loading the sleigh with a variety of things,
from Spearhead plug to raisins; and turned his face at last toward
the land of his hopes and desires.

The long drive to camp was at once a delight and a misery to him.
Its miles stretched longer and longer as time went on; and the
miles of a route new to a man are always one and a half at least.
The forest, so mysterious and inviting from afar, drew within
itself coldly when Thorpe entered it. He was as yet a stranger.
The snow became the prevailing note. The white was everywhere,
concealing jealously beneath rounded uniformity the secrets of the
woods. And it was cold. First Thorpe's feet became numb, then his
hands, then his nose was nipped, and finally his warm clothes were
lifted from him by invisible hands, and he was left naked to
shivers and tremblings. He found it torture to sit still on the top
of the bale of hay; and yet he could not bear to contemplate the
cold shock of jumping from the sleigh to the ground,--of touching
foot to the chilling snow. The driver pulled up to breathe his
horses at the top of a hill, and to fasten under one runner a heavy
chain, which, grinding into the snow, would act as a brake on the
descent.

"You're dressed pretty light," he advised; "better hoof it a ways
and get warm."

The words tipped the balance of Thorpe's decision. He descended
stiffly, conscious of a disagreeable shock from a six-inch jump.

In ten minutes, the wallowing, slipping, and leaping after the
tail of the sled had sent his blood tingling to the last of his
protesting members. Cold withdrew. He saw now that the pines were
beautiful and solemn and still; and that in the temple of their
columns dwelt winter enthroned. Across the carpet of the snow
wandered the trails of her creatures,--the stately regular prints
of the partridge; the series of pairs made by the squirrel; those
of the weasel and mink, just like the squirrels' except that the
prints were not quite side by side, and that between every other
pair stretched the mark of the animal's long, slender body; the
delicate tracery of the deer mouse; the fan of the rabbit; the print
of a baby's hand that the raccoon left; the broad pad of a lynx;
the dog-like trail of wolves;--these, and a dozen others, all equally
unknown, gave Thorpe the impression of a great mysterious multitude
of living things which moved about him invisible. In a thicket of
cedar and scrub willow near the bed of a stream, he encountered one
of those strangely assorted bands of woods-creatures which are
always cruising it through the country. He heard the cheerful little
chickadee; he saw the grave nuthatch with its appearance of a total
lack of humor; he glimpsed a black-and-white woodpecker or so, and
was reviled by a ribald blue jay. Already the wilderness was taking
its character to him.

After a little while, they arrived by way of a hill, over which
they plunged into the middle of the camp. Thorpe saw three large
buildings, backed end to end, and two smaller ones, all built of
heavy logs, roofed with plank, and lighted sparsely through one or
two windows apiece. The driver pulled up opposite the space between
two of the larger buildings, and began to unload his provisions.
Thorpe set about aiding him, and so found himself for the first
time in a "cook camp."

It was a commodious building,--Thorpe had no idea a log structure
ever contained so much room. One end furnished space for two
cooking ranges and two bunks placed one over the other. Along one
side ran a broad table-shelf, with other shelves over it and numerous
barrels underneath, all filled with cans, loaves of bread, cookies,
and pies. The center was occupied by four long bench-flanked tables,
down whose middle straggled utensils containing sugar, apple-butter,
condiments, and sauces, and whose edges were set with tin dishes for
about forty men. The cook, a rather thin-faced man with a mustache,
directed where the provisions were to be stowed; and the "cookee,"
a hulking youth, assisted Thorpe and the driver to carry them in.
During the course of the work Thorpe made a mistake.

"That stuff doesn't come here," objected the cookee, indicating a
box of tobacco the newcomer was carrying. "She goes to the 'van.'"

Thorpe did not know what the "van" might be, but he replaced the
tobacco on the sleigh. In a few moments the task was finished,
with the exception of a half dozen other cases, which the driver
designated as also for the "van." The horses were unhitched, and
stabled in the third of the big log buildings. The driver indicated
the second.

"Better go into the men's camp and sit down 'till th' boss gets
in," he advised.

Thorpe entered a dim, over-heated structure, lined on two sides
by a double tier of large bunks partitioned from one another like
cabins of boats, and centered by a huge stove over which hung
slender poles. The latter were to dry clothes on. Just outside
the bunks ran a straight hard bench. Thorpe stood at the entrance
trying to accustom his eyes to the dimness.

"Set down," said a voice, "on th' floor if you want to; but I'd
prefer th' deacon seat."

Thorpe obediently took position on the bench, or "deacon seat."
His eyes, more used to the light, could make out a thin, tall, bent
old man, with bare cranium, two visible teeth, and a three days'
stubble of white beard over his meager, twisted face.

He caught, perhaps, Thorpe's surprised expression.

"You think th' old man's no good, do you?" he cackled, without the
slightest malice, "looks is deceivin'!" He sprang up swiftly,
seized the toe of his right foot in his left hand, and jumped his
left foot through the loop thus formed. Then he sat down again,
and laughed at Thorpe's astonishment.

"Old Jackson's still purty smart," said he. "I'm barn-boss. They
ain't a man in th' country knows as much about hosses as I do. We
ain't had but two sick this fall, an' between you an' me, they's a
skate lot. You're a greenhorn, ain't you?"

"Yes," confessed Thorpe.

"Well," said Jackson, reflectively but rapidly, "Le Fabian, he's
quiet but bad; and O'Grady, he talks loud but you can bluff him;
and Perry, he's only bad when he gets full of red likker; and Norton
he's bad when he gets mad like, and will use axes."

Thorpe did not know he was getting valuable points on the camp
bullies. The old man hitched nearer and peered in his face.

"They don't bluff you a bit," he said, "unless you likes them,
and then they can back you way off the skidway."

Thorpe smiled at the old fellow's volubility. He did not know
how near to the truth the woodsman's shrewdness had hit; for to
himself, as to most strong characters, his peculiarities were the
normal, and therefore the unnoticed. His habit of thought in
respect to other people was rather objective than subjective. He
inquired so impersonally the significance of whatever was before
him, that it lost the human quality both as to itself and himself.
To him men were things. This attitude relieved him of self-
consciousness. He never bothered his head as to what the other
man thought of him, his ignorance, or his awkwardness, simply
because to him the other man was nothing but an element in his
problem. So in such circumstances he learned fast. Once introduce
the human element, however, and his absurdly sensitive self-
consciousness asserted itself. He was, as Jackson expressed it,
backed off the skidway.

At dark the old man lit two lamps, which served dimly to gloze the
shadows, and thrust logs of wood into the cast-iron stove. Soon
after, the men came in. They were a queer, mixed lot. Some carried
the indisputable stamp of the frontiersman in their bearing and
glance; others looked to be mere day-laborers, capable of performing
whatever task they were set to, and of finding the trail home again.
There were active, clean-built, precise Frenchmen, with small hands
and feet, and a peculiarly trim way of wearing their rough garments;
typical native-born American lumber-jacks powerful in frame, rakish
in air, reckless in manner; big blonde Scandinavians and Swedes,
strong men at the sawing; an Indian or so, strangely in contrast to
the rest; and a variety of Irishmen, Englishmen, and Canadians.
These men tramped in without a word, and set busily to work at
various tasks. Some sat on the "deacon seat" and began to take
off their socks and rubbers; others washed at a little wooden sink;
still others selected and lit lanterns from a pendant row near the
window, and followed old Jackson out of doors. They were the
teamsters.

"You'll find the old man in the office," said Jackson.

Thorpe made his way across to the small log cabin indicated as the
office, and pushed open the door. He found himself in a little room
containing two bunks, a stove, a counter and desk, and a number of
shelves full of supplies. About the walls hung firearms, snowshoes,
and a variety of clothes.

A man sat at the desk placing figures on a sheet of paper. He
obtained the figures from statistics pencilled on three thin leaves
of beech-wood riveted together. In a chair by the stove lounged a
bulkier figure, which Thorpe concluded to be that of the "old man."

"I was sent here by Shearer," said Thorpe directly; "he said you
might give me some work."

So long a silence fell that the applicant began to wonder if his
question had been heard.

"I might," replied the man drily at last.

"Well, will you?" Thorpe inquired, the humor of the situation
overcoming him.

"Have you ever worked in the woods?"

"No."

The man smoked silently.

"I'll put you on the road in the morning," he concluded, as though
this were the deciding qualification.

One of the men entered abruptly and approached the counter. The
writer at the desk laid aside his tablets.

"What is it, Albert?" he added.

"Jot of chewin'," was the reply.

The scaler took from the shelf a long plug of tobacco and cut off
two inches.

"Ain't hitting the van much, are you, Albert?" he commented, putting
the man's name and the amount in a little book. Thorpe went out,
after leaving his name for the time book, enlightened as to the
method of obtaining supplies. He promised himself some warm clothing
from the van, when he should have worked out the necessary credit.

At supper he learned something else,--that he must not talk at
table. A moment's reflection taught him the common-sense of the
rule. For one thing, supper was a much briefer affair than it
would have been had every man felt privileged to take his will in
conversation; not to speak of the absence of noise and the presence
of peace. Each man asked for what he wanted.

"Please pass the beans," he said with the deliberate intonation
of a man who does not expect that his request will be granted.

Besides the beans were fried salt pork, boiled potatoes, canned
corn, mince pie, a variety of cookies and doughnuts, and strong
green tea. Thorpe found himself eating ravenously of the crude fare.

That evening he underwent a catechism, a few practical jokes, which
he took good-naturedly, and a vast deal of chaffing. At nine the
lights were all out. By daylight he and a dozen other men were at
work, hewing a road that had to be as smooth and level as a New
York boulevard.

Chapter VI

Thorpe and four others were set to work on this road, which was
to be cut through a creek bottom leading, he was told, to "seventeen."
The figures meant nothing to him. Later, each number came to possess
an individuality of its own. He learned to use a double-bitted ax.

Thorpe's intelligence was of the practical sort that wonderfully
helps experience. He watched closely one of the older men, and
analyzed the relation borne by each one of his movements to the
object in view. In a short time he perceived that one hand and arm
are mere continuations of the helve, attaching the blade of the ax
to the shoulder of the wielder; and that the other hand directs the
stroke. He acquired the knack thus of throwing the bit of steel into
the gash as though it were a baseball on the end of a string; and so
accomplished power. By experiment he learned just when to slide the
guiding hand down the helve; and so gained accuracy. He suffered
none of those accidents so common to new choppers. His ax did not
twist itself from his hands, nor glance to cut his foot. He
attained the method of the double bit, and how to knock roots by
alternate employment of the edge and flat. In a few days his hands
became hard and used to the cold.

From shortly after daylight he worked. Four other men bore him
company, and twice Radway himself came by, watched their operations
for a moment, and moved on without comment. After Thorpe had caught
his second wind, he enjoyed his task, proving a certain pleasure in
the ease with which he handled his tool.

At the end of an interminable period, a faint, musical halloo
swelled, echoed, and died through the forest, beautiful as a
spirit. It was taken up by another voice and repeated. Then by
another. Now near at hand, now far away it rang as hollow as a
bell. The sawyers, the swampers, the skidders, and the team men
turned and put on their heavy blanket coats.

Down on the road Thorpe heard it too, and wondered what it might be.

"Come on, Bub! she means chew!" explained old man Heath kindly.
Old man Heath was a veteran woodsman who had come to swamping in
his old age. He knew the game thoroughly, but could never save
his "stake" when Pat McGinnis, the saloon man, enticed him in.
Throughout the morning he had kept an eye on the newcomer, and was
secretly pleased in his heart of the professional at the readiness
with which the young fellow learned.

Thorpe resumed his coat, and fell in behind the little procession.
After a short time he came upon a horse and sledge. Beyond it the
cookee had built a little camp fire, around and over which he had
grouped big fifty-pound lard-tins, half full of hot things to eat.
Each man, as he approached, picked up a tin plate and cup from a
pile near at hand.

The cookee was plainly master of the situation. He issued peremptory
orders. When Erickson, the blonde Swede, attempted surreptitiously
to appropriate a doughnut, the youth turned on him savagely.

"Get out of that, you big tow-head!" he cried with an oath.

A dozen Canada jays, fluffy, impatient, perched near by or made
little short circles over and back. They awaited the remains of
the dinner. Bob Stratton and a devil-may-care giant by the name of
Nolan constructed a joke wherewith to amuse the interim. They cut a
long pole, and placed it across a log and through a bush, so that
one extremity projected beyond the bush. Then diplomacy won a piece
of meat from the cookee. This they nailed to the end of the pole by
means of a pine sliver. The Canada jays gazed on the morsel with
covetous eyes. When the men had retired, they swooped. One big
fellow arrived first, and lit in defiance of the rest.

"Give it to 'im!" whispered Nolan, who had been watching.

Bob hit the other end of the pole a mighty whack with his ax. The
astonished jay, projected straight upward by the shock, gave a
startled squawk and cut a hole through the air for the tall timber.
Stratton and Nolan went into convulsions of laughter.

"Get at it!" cried the cookee, as though setting a pack of dogs on
their prey.

The men ate, perched in various attitudes and places. Thorpe found
it difficult to keep warm. The violent exercise had heated him
through, and now the north country cold penetrated to his bones.
He huddled close to the fire, and drank hot tea, but it did not do
him very much good. In his secret mind he resolved to buy one of
the blanket mackinaws that very evening. He began to see that the
costumes of each country have their origin in practicality.

That evening he picked out one of the best. As he was about to
inquire the price, Radway drew the van book toward him, inquiring,

"Let's see; what's the name?"

In an instant Thorpe was charged on the book with three dollars and
a half, although his work that day had earned him less than a
dollar. On his way back to the men's shanty he could not help
thinking how easy it would be for him to leave the next morning two
dollars and a half ahead. He wondered if this method of procedure
obtained in all the camps.

The newcomer's first day of hard work had tired him completely. He
was ready for nothing so much as his bunk. But he had forgotten
that it was Saturday night. His status was still to assure.

They began with a few mild tricks. Shuffle the Brogan followed
Hot Back. Thorpe took all of it good-naturedly. Finally a tall
individual with a thin white face, a reptilian forehead, reddish
hair, and long baboon arms, suggested tossing in a blanket. Thorpe
looked at the low ceiling, and declined.

"I'm with the game as long as you say, boys," said he, "and I'll
have as much fun as anybody, but that's going too far for a tired
man."

The reptilian gentleman let out a string of oaths whose meaning
might be translated, "We'll see about that!"

Thorpe was a good boxer, but he knew by now the lumber-jack's
method of fighting,--anything to hurt the other fellow. And in a
genuine old-fashioned knock-down-and-drag-out rough-and-tumble your
woodsman is about the toughest customer to handle you will be likely
to meet. He is brought up on fighting. Nothing pleases him better
than to get drunk and, with a few companions, to embark on an
earnest effort to "clean out" a rival town. And he will accept
cheerfully punishment enough to kill three ordinary men. It takes
one of his kind really to hurt him.

Thorpe, at the first hostile movement, sprang back to the door,
seized one of the three-foot billets of hardwood intended for the
stove, and faced his opponents.

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