The Blazed Trail

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Blazed Trail

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"I don't know which of you boys is coming first," said he quietly,
"but he's going to get it good and plenty."

If the affair had been serious, these men would never have recoiled
before the mere danger of a stick of hardwood. The American woodsman
is afraid of nothing human. But this was a good-natured bit of
foolery, a test of nerve, and there was no object in getting a
broken head for that. The reptilian gentleman alone grumbled at
the abandonment of the attack, mumbling something profane.

"If you hanker for trouble so much," drawled the unexpected voice
of old Jackson from the corner, "mebbe you could put on th' gloves."

The idea was acclaimed. Somebody tossed out a dirty torn old set of
buckskin boxing gloves.

The rest was farce. Thorpe was built on the true athletic lines,
broad, straight shoulders, narrow flanks, long, clean, smooth
muscles. He possessed, besides, that hereditary toughness and bulk
which no gymnasium training will ever quite supply. The other man,
while powerful and ugly in his rushes, was clumsy and did not use
his head. Thorpe planted his hard straight blows at will. In this
game he was as manifestly superior as his opponent would probably
have been had the rules permitted kicking, gouging, and wrestling.
Finally he saw his opening and let out with a swinging pivot blow.
The other picked himself out of a corner, and drew off the gloves.
Thorpe's status was assured.

A Frenchman took down his fiddle and began to squeak. In the course
of the dance old Jackson and old Heath found themselves together,
smoking their pipes of Peerless.

"The young feller's all right," observed Heath; "he cuffed Ben up
to a peak all right."

"Went down like a peck of wet fish-nets," replied Jackson tranquilly.

Chapter VII

In the office shanty one evening about a week later, Radway and
his scaler happened to be talking over the situation. The scaler,
whose name was Dyer, slouched back in the shadow, watching his great
honest superior as a crafty, dainty cat might watch the blunderings
of a St. Bernard. When he spoke, it was with a mockery so subtle as
quite to escape the perceptions of the lumberman. Dyer had a precise
little black mustache whose ends he was constantly twisting into
points, black eyebrows, and long effeminate black lashes. You would
have expected his dress in the city to be just a trifle flashy, not
enough so to be loud, but sinning as to the trifles of good taste.
The two men conversed in short elliptical sentences, using many
technical terms.

"That 'seventeen' white pine is going to underrun," said Dyer. "It
won't skid over three hundred thousand."

"It's small stuff," agreed Radway, "and so much the worse for us;
but the Company'll stand in on it because small stuff like that
always over-runs on the mill-cut."

The scaler nodded comprehension.

"When you going to dray-haul that Norway across Pike Lake?"

"To-morrow. She's springy, but the books say five inches of ice
will hold a team, and there's more than that. How much are we
putting in a day, now?"

"About forty thousand."

Radway fell silent.

"That's mighty little for such a crew," he observed at last,
doubtfully.

"I always said you were too easy with them. You got to drive them
more."

"Well, it's a rough country," apologized Radway, trying, as was
his custom, to find excuses for the other party as soon as he was
agreed with in his blame, "there's any amount of potholes; and, then,
we've had so much snow the ground ain't really froze underneath. It
gets pretty soft in some of them swamps. Can't figure on putting up
as much in this country as we used to down on the Muskegon."

The scaler smiled a thin smile all to himself behind the stove. Big
John Radway depended so much on the moral effect of approval or
disapproval by those with whom he lived. It amused Dyer to withhold
the timely word, so leaving the jobber to flounder between his easy
nature and his sense of what should be done.

Dyer knew perfectly well that the work was behind, and he knew the
reason. For some time the men had been relaxing their efforts.
They had worked honestly enough, but a certain snap and vim had
lacked. This was because Radway had been too easy on them.

Your true lumber-jack adores of all things in creation a man whom he
feels to be stronger than himself. If his employer is big enough to
drive him, then he is willing to be driven to the last ounce of his
strength. But once he gets the notion that his "boss" is afraid
of, or for, him or his feelings or his health, he loses interest in
working for that man. So a little effort to lighten or expedite his
work, a little leniency in excusing the dilatory finishing of a
job, a little easing-up under stress of weather, are taken as so
many indications of a desire to conciliate. And conciliation means
weakness every time. Your lumber-jack likes to be met front to
front, one strong man to another. As you value your authority, the
love of your men, and the completion of your work, keep a bluff
brow and an unbending singleness of purpose.

Radway's peculiar temperament rendered him liable to just this
mistake. It was so much easier for him to do the thing himself
than to be harsh to the point of forcing another to it, that he was
inclined to take the line of least resistance when it came to a
question of even ordinary diligence. He sought often in his own
mind excuses for dereliction in favor of a man who would not have
dreamed of seeking them for himself. A good many people would call
this kindness of heart. Perhaps it was; the question is a little
puzzling. But the facts were as stated.

Thorpe had already commented on the feeling among the men, though,
owing to his inexperience, he was not able to estimate its full
value. The men were inclined to a semi-apologetic air when they
spoke of their connection with the camp. Instead of being honored
as one of a series of jobs, this seemed to be considered as merely
a temporary halting-place in which they took no pride, and from
which they looked forward in anticipation or back in memory to
better things.

"Old Shearer, he's the bully boy," said Bob Stratton. "I remember
when he was foremap for M. & D. at Camp 0. Say, we did hustle them
saw-logs in! I should rise to remark! Out in th' woods by first
streak o' day. I recall one mornin' she was pretty cold, an' the
boys grumbled some about turnin' out. 'Cold,' says Tim, 'you sons
of guns! You got your ch'ice. It may be too cold for you in the
woods, but it's a damm sight too hot fer you in hell, an' you're
going to one or the other!' And he meant it too. Them was great
days! Forty million a year, and not a hitch."

One man said nothing in the general discussion. It was his first
winter in the woods, and plainly in the eyes of the veterans this
experience did not count. It was a "faute de mieux," in which one
would give an honest day's work, and no more.

As has been hinted, even the inexperienced newcomer noticed the
lack of enthusiasm, of unity. Had he known the loyalty, devotion,
and adoration that a thoroughly competent man wins from his "hands,"
the state of affairs would have seemed even more surprising. The
lumber-jack will work sixteen, eighteen hours a day, sometimes up
to the waist in water full of floating ice; sleep wet on the ground
by a little fire; and then next morning will spring to work at
daylight with an "Oh, no, not tired; just a little stiff, sir!" in
cheerful reply to his master's inquiry,--for the right man! Only it
must be a strong man,--with the strength of the wilderness in his eye.

The next morning Radway transferred Molly and Jenny, with little
Fabian Laveque and two of the younger men, to Pike Lake. There,
earlier in the season, a number of pines had been felled out on the
ice, cut in logs, and left in expectation of ice thick enough to
bear the travoy "dray." Owing to the fact that the shores of Pike
Lake were extremely precipitous, it had been impossible to travoy
the logs up over the hill.

Radway had sounded carefully the thickness of the ice with an ax.
Although the weather had of late been sufficiently cold for the
time of year, the snow, as often happens, had fallen before the
temperature. Under the warm white blanket, the actual freezing
had been slight. However, there seemed to be at least eight inches
of clear ice, which would suffice.

Some of the logs in question were found to be half imbedded in the
ice. It became necessary first of all to free them. Young Henrys
cut a strong bar six or eight feet long, while Pat McGuire chopped
a hole alongside the log. Then one end of the bar was thrust into
the hole, the logging chain fastened to the other; and, behold, a
monster lever, whose fulcrum was the ice and whose power was applied
by Molly, hitched to the end of the chain. In this simple manner a
task was accomplished in five minutes which would have taken a dozen
men an hour. When the log had been cat-a-cornered from its bed, the
chain was fastened around one end by means of the ever-useful steel
swamp-hook, and it was yanked across the dray. Then the travoy took
its careful way across the ice to where a dip in the shore gave
access to a skidway.

Four logs had thus been safely hauled. The fifth was on its journey
across the lake. Suddenly without warning, and with scarcely a
sound, both horses sank through the ice, which bubbled up around
them and over their backs in irregular rotted pieces. Little Fabian
Laveque shouted, and jumped down from his log. Pat McGuire and
young Henrys came running.

The horses had broken through an air-hole, about which the ice was
strong. Fabian had already seized Molly by the bit, and was holding
her head easily above water.

"Kitch Jenny by dat he't!" he cried to Pat.

Thus the two men, without exertion, sustained the noses of the team
above the surface. The position demanded absolutely no haste, for it
could have been maintained for a good half hour. Molly and Jenny,
their soft eyes full of the intelligence of the situation, rested
easily in full confidence. But Pat and Henrys, new to this sort of
emergency, were badly frightened and excited. To them the affair
had come to a deadlock.

"Oh, Lord!" cried Pat, clinging desperately to Jenny's headpiece.
"What will we'z be doin'? We can't niver haul them two horses on
the ice."

"Tak' de log-chain," said Fabian to Henrys, "an' tie him around
de nec' of Jenny."

Henrys, after much difficulty and nervous fumbling, managed to
loosen the swamp-hook; and after much more difficulty and nervous
fumbling succeeded in making it fast about the gray mare's neck.
Fabian intended with this to choke the animal to that peculiar
state when she would float like a balloon on the water, and two
men could with ease draw her over the edge of the ice. Then the
unexpected happened.

The instant Henrys had passed the end of the chain through the
knot, Pat, possessed by some Hibernian notion that now all was
fast, let go of the bit. Jenny's head at once went under, and
the end of the logging chain glided over the ice and fell plump
in the hole.

Immediately all was confusion. Jenny kicked and struggled, churning
the water, throwing it about, kicking out in every direction. Once a
horse's head dips strongly, the game is over. No animal drowns more
quickly. The two young boys scrambled away, and French oaths could
not induce them to approach. Molly, still upheld by Fabian, looked
at him piteously with her strange intelligent eyes, holding herself
motionless and rigid with complete confidence in this master who had
never failed her before. Fabian dug his heels into the ice, but
could not hang on. The drowning horse was more than a dead weight.
Presently it became a question of letting go or being dragged into
the lake on top of the animals. With a sob the little Frenchman
relinquished his hold. The water seemed slowly to rise and over-
film the troubled look of pleading in Molly's eyes.

"Assassins!" hissed Laveque at the two unfortunate youths. That
was all.

When the surface of the waters had again mirrored the clouds, they
hauled the carcasses out on the ice and stripped the harness. Then
they rolled the log from the dray, piled the tools on it, and took
their way to camp. In the blue of the winter's sky was a single
speck.

The speck grew. Soon it swooped. With a hoarse croak it lit on
the snow at a wary distance, and began to strut back and forth.
Presently, its suspicions at rest, the raven advanced, and with
eager beak began its dreadful meal. By this time another, which
had seen the first one's swoop, was in view through the ether; then
another; then another. In an hour the brotherhood of ravens, thus
telegraphically notified, was at feast.

Chapter VIII

Fabian Laveque elaborated the details of the catastrophe with
volubility.

"Hee's not fonny dat she bre'ks t'rough," he said. "I 'ave see
dem bre'k t'rough two, t'ree tam in de day, but nevaire dat she
get drown! W'en dose dam-fool can't t'ink wit' hees haid--sacre
Dieu! eet is so easy, to chok' dat cheval--she make me cry wit'
de eye!"

"I suppose it was a good deal my fault," commented Radway, doubtfully
shaking his head, after Laveque had left the office. "I ought to
have been surer about the ice."

"Eight inches is a little light, with so much snow atop," remarked
the scaler carelessly.

By virtue of that same careless remark, however, Radway was so
confirmed in his belief as to his own culpability that he quite
overlooked Fabian's just contention--that the mere thinness of the
ice was in reality no excuse for the losing of the horses. So Pat
and Henrys were not discharged--were not instructed to "get their
time." Fabian Laveque promptly demanded his.

"Sacre bleu!" said he to old Jackson. "I no work wid dat dam-fool
dat no t'ink wit' hees haid."

This deprived the camp at once of a teamster and a team. When you
reflect that one pair of horses takes care of the exertions of a
crew of sawyers, several swampers, and three or four cant-hook men,
you will readily see what a serious derangement their loss would
cause. And besides, the animals themselves are difficult to replace.
They are big strong beasts, selected for their power, staying
qualities, and intelligence, worth anywhere from three to six
hundred dollars a pair. They must be shipped in from a distance.
And, finally, they require a very careful and patient training
before they are of value in co-operating with the nicely adjusted
efforts necessary to place the sawlog where it belongs. Ready-
trained horses are never for sale during the season.

Radway did his best. He took three days to search out a big team
of farm horses. Then it became necessary to find a driver. After
some deliberation he decided to advance Bob Stratton to the post,
that "decker" having had more or less experience the year before.
Erickson, the Swede, while not a star cant-hook man, was nevertheless
sure and reliable. Radway placed him in Stratton's place. But now
he must find a swamper. He remembered Thorpe.

So the young man received his first promotion toward the ranks of
skilled labor. He gained at last a field of application for the
accuracy he had so intelligently acquired while road-making, for
now a false stroke marred a saw-log; and besides, what was more to
his taste, he found himself near the actual scene of operation, at
the front, as it were. He had under his very eyes the process as
far as it had been carried.

In his experience here he made use of the same searching analytical
observation that had so quickly taught him the secret of the ax-
swing. He knew that each of the things he saw, no matter how
trivial, was either premeditated or the product of chance. If
premeditated, he tried to find out its reason for being. If
fortuitous, he wished to know the fact, and always attempted to
figure out the possibility of its elimination.

So he learned why and when the sawyers threw a tree up or down
hill; how much small standing timber they tried to fell it through;
what consideration held for the cutting of different lengths of log;
how the timber was skilfully decked on the skids in such a manner
that the pile should not bulge and fall, and so that the scaler
could easily determine the opposite ends of the same log;--in short,
a thousand and one little details which ordinarily a man learns only
as the exigencies arise to call in experience. Here, too, he first
realized he was in the firing line.

Thorpe had assigned him as bunk mate the young fellow who assisted
Tom Broadhead in the felling. Henry Paul was a fresh-complexioned,
clear-eyed, quick-mannered young fellow with an air of steady
responsibility about him. He came from the southern part of the
State, where, during the summer, he worked on a little homestead
farm of his own. After a few days he told Thorpe that he was
married, and after a few days more he showed his bunk mate the
photograph of a sweet-faced young woman who looked trustingly out
of the picture.

"She's waitin' down there for me, and it ain't so very long till
spring," said Paul wistfully. "She's the best little woman a man
ever had, and there ain't nothin' too good for her, chummy!"

Thorpe, soul-sick after his recent experiences with the charity of
the world, discovered a real pleasure in this fresh, clear passion.
As he contemplated the abounding health, the upright carriage, the
sparkling, bubbling spirits of the young woodsman, he could easily
imagine the young girl and the young happiness, too big for a
little backwoods farm.

Three days after the newcomer had started in at the swamping, Paul,
during their early morning walk from camp to the scene of their
operations, confided in him further.

"Got another letter, chummy," said he, "come in yesterday. She
tells me," he hesitated with a blush, and then a happy laugh, "that
they ain't going to be only two of us at the farm next year."

"You mean!" queried Thorpe.

"Yes," laughed Paul, "and if it's a girl she gets named after her
mother, you bet."

The men separated. In a moment Thorpe found himself waist-deep in
the pitchy aromatic top of an old bull-sap, clipping away at the
projecting branches. After a time he heard Paul's gay halloo.

"TimBER!" came the cry, and then the swish-sh-sh,--CRASH of the
tree's fall.

Thorpe knew that now either Hank or Tom must be climbing with the
long measuring pole along the prostrate trunk, marking by means of
shallow ax-clips where the saw was to divide the logs. Then Tom
shouted something unintelligible. The other men seemed to understand,
however, for they dropped their work and ran hastily in the direction
of the voice. Thorpe, after a moment's indecision, did the same.
He arrived to find a group about a prostrate man. The man was Paul.

Two of the older woodsmen, kneeling, were conducting coolly a hasty
examination. At the front every man is more or less of a surgeon.

"Is he hurt badly?" asked Thorpe; "what is it?"

"He's dead," answered one of the other men soberly.

With the skill of ghastly practice some of them wove a litter on
which the body was placed. The pathetic little procession moved in
the solemn, inscrutable forest.

When the tree had fallen it had crashed through the top of another,
leaving suspended in the branches of the latter a long heavy limb.
A slight breeze dislodged it. Henry Paul was impaled as by a javelin.

This is the chief of the many perils of the woods. Like crouching
pumas the instruments of a man's destruction poise on the spring,
sometimes for days. Then swiftly, silently, the leap is made. It
is a danger unavoidable, terrible, ever-present. Thorpe was destined
in time to see men crushed and mangled in a hundred ingenious ways
by the saw log, knocked into space and a violent death by the butts
of trees, ground to powder in the mill of a jam, but never would he
be more deeply impressed than by this ruthless silent taking of a
life. The forces of nature are so tame, so simple, so obedient;
and in the next instant so absolutely beyond human control or
direction, so whirlingly contemptuous of puny human effort, that
in time the wilderness shrouds itself to our eyes in the same
impenetrable mystery as the sea.

That evening the camp was unusually quiet. Tellier let his
fiddle hang. After supper Thorpe was approached by Purdy, the
reptilian red-head with whom he had had the row some evenings
before.

"You in, chummy?" he asked in a quiet voice. "It's a five apiece
for Hank's woman."

"Yes," said Thorpe.

The men were earning from twenty to thirty dollars a month. They
had, most of them, never seen Hank Paul before this autumn. He
had not, mainly because of his modest disposition, enjoyed any
extraordinary degree of popularity. Yet these strangers cheerfully,
as a matter of course, gave up the proceeds of a week's hard work,
and that without expecting the slightest personal credit. The money
was sent "from the boys." Thorpe later read a heart-broken letter
of thanks to the unknown benefactors. It touched him deeply, and
he suspected the other men of the same emotions, but by that time
they had regained the independent, self-contained poise of the
frontiersman. They read it with unmoved faces, and tossed it aside
with a more than ordinarily rough joke or oath. Thorpe understood
their reticence. It was a part of his own nature. He felt more
than ever akin to these men.

As swamper he had more or less to do with a cant-hook in helping
the teamsters roll the end of the log on the little "dray." He
soon caught the knack. Towards Christmas he had become a fairly
efficient cant-hook man, and was helping roll the great sticks of
timber up the slanting skids. Thus always intelligence counts,
especially that rare intelligence which resolves into the analytical
and the minutely observing.

On Sundays Thorpe fell into the habit of accompanying old Jackson
Hines on his hunting expeditions. The ancient had been raised in
the woods. He seemed to know by instinct the haunts and habits of
all the wild animals, just as he seemed to know by instinct when
one of his horses was likely to be troubled by the colic. His
woodcraft was really remarkable.

So the two would stand for hours in the early morning and late
evening waiting for deer on the edges of the swamps. They haunted
the runways during the middle of the day. On soft moccasined feet
they stole about in the evening with a bull's-eye lantern fastened
on the head of one of them for a "jack." Several times they
surprised the wolves, and shone the animals' eyes like the
scattered embers of a camp fire.

Thorpe learned to shoot at a deer's shoulders rather than his heart,
how to tell when the animal had sustained a mortal hurt from the
way it leaped and the white of its tail. He even made progress
in the difficult art of still hunting, where the man matches his
senses against those of the creatures of the forest,--and sometimes
wins. He soon knew better than to cut the animal's throat, and
learned from Hines that a single stab at a certain point of the
chest was much better for the purposes of bleeding. And, what is
more, he learned not to over-shoot down hill.

Besides these things Jackson taught him many other, minor, details
of woodcraft. Soon the young man could interpret the thousands of
signs, so insignificant in appearance and so important in reality,
which tell the history of the woods. He acquired the knack of
winter fishing.

These Sundays were perhaps the most nearly perfect of any of the
days of that winter. In them the young man drew more directly face
to face with the wilderness. He called a truce with the enemy;
and in return that great inscrutable power poured into his heart
a portion of her grandeur. His ambition grew; and, as always with
him, his determination became the greater and the more secret. In
proportion as his ideas increased, he took greater pains to shut
them in from expression. For failure in great things would bring
keener disappointment than failure in little.

He was getting just the experience and the knowledge he needed; but
that was about all. His wages were twenty-five dollars a month,
which his van bill would reduce to the double eagle. At the end
of the winter he would have but a little over a hundred dollars to
show for his season's work, and this could mean at most only fifty
dollars for Helen. But the future was his. He saw now more plainly
what he had dimly perceived before, that for the man who buys timber,
and logs it well, a sure future is waiting. And in this camp he was
beginning to learn from failure the conditions of success.

Chapter IX

They finished cutting on section seventeen during Thorpe's second
week. It became necessary to begin on section fourteen, which lay
two miles to the east. In that direction the character of the
country changed somewhat.

The pine there grew thick on isolated "islands" of not more than
an acre or so in extent,--little knolls rising from the level of a
marsh. In ordinary conditions nothing would have been easier than
to have ploughed roads across the frozen surface of this marsh. The
peculiar state of the weather interposed tremendous difficulties.

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