The Blazed Trail

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Blazed Trail

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The early part of autumn had been characterized by a heavy snow-
fall immediately after a series of mild days. A warm blanket of
some thickness thus overlaid the earth, effectually preventing the
freezing which subsequent cold weather would have caused. All
the season Radway had contended with this condition. Even in the
woods, muddy swamp and spring-holes caused endless difficulty and
necessitated a great deal of "corduroying," or the laying of poles
side by side to form an artificial bottom. Here in the open some
six inches of water and unlimited mud awaited the first horse that
should break through the layer of snow and thin ice. Between each
pair of islands a road had to be "tramped."

Thorpe and the rest were put at this disagreeable job. All day long
they had to walk mechanically back and forth on diagonals between
the marks set by Radway with his snowshoes. Early in the morning
their feet were wet by icy water, for even the light weight of a
man sometimes broke the frozen skin of the marsh. By night a road
of trampled snow, of greater or less length, was marked out across
the expanse. Thus the blanket was thrown back from the warm earth,
and thus the cold was given a chance at the water beneath. In a
day or so the road would bear a horse. A bridge of ice had been
artificially constructed, on either side of which lay unsounded
depths. This road was indicated by a row of firs stuck in the snow
on either side.

It was very cold. All day long the restless wind swept across the
shivering surface of the plains, and tore around the corners of the
islands. The big woods are as good as an overcoat. The overcoat
had been taken away.

When the lunch-sleigh arrived, the men huddled shivering in the lee
of one of the knolls, and tried to eat with benumbed fingers before
a fire that was but a mockery. Often it was nearly dark before their
work had warmed them again. All of the skidways had to be placed on
the edges of the islands themselves, and the logs had to be travoyed
over the steep little knolls. A single misstep out on to the plain
meant a mired horse. Three times heavy snows obliterated the roads,
so that they had to be ploughed out before the men could go to work
again. It was a struggle.

Radway was evidently worried. He often paused before a gang to
inquire how they were "making it." He seemed afraid they might
wish to quit, which was indeed the case, but he should never have
taken before them any attitude but that of absolute confidence in
their intentions. His anxiety was natural, however. He realized
the absolute necessity of skidding and hauling this job before the
heavy choking snows of the latter part of January should make it
impossible to keep the roads open. So insistent was this necessity
that he had seized the first respite in the phenomenal snow-fall of
the early autumn to begin work. The cutting in the woods could wait.

Left to themselves probably the men would never have dreamed of
objecting to whatever privations the task carried with it. Radway's
anxiety for their comfort, however, caused them finally to imagine
that perhaps they might have some just grounds for complaint after
all. That is a great trait of the lumber-jack.

But Dyer, the scaler, finally caused the outbreak. Dyer was an
efficient enough man in his way, but he loved his own ease. His
habit was to stay in his bunk of mornings until well after daylight.
To this there could be no objection--except on the part of the cook,
who was supposed to attend to his business himself--for the scaler
was active in his work, when once he began it, and could keep up
with the skidding. But now he displayed a strong antipathy to the
north wind on the plains. Of course he could not very well shirk
the work entirely, but he did a good deal of talking on the very
cold mornings.

"I don't pose for no tough son-of-a-gun," said he to Radway, "and
I've got some respect for my ears and feet. She'll warm up a little
by to-morrow, and perhaps the wind'll die. I can catch up on you
fellows by hustling a little, so I guess I'll stay in and work on
the books to-day."

"All right," Radway assented, a little doubtfully.

This happened perhaps two days out of the week. Finally Dyer hung
out a thermometer, which he used to consult. The men saw it, and
consulted it too. At once they felt much colder.

"She was stan' ten below," sputtered Baptiste Tellier, the Frenchman
who played the fiddle. "He freeze t'rou to hees eenside. Dat is
too cole for mak de work."

"Them plains is sure a holy fright," assented Purdy.

"Th' old man knows it himself," agreed big Nolan; "did you see him
rammin' around yesterday askin' us if we found her too cold? He
knows damn well he ought not to keep a man out that sort o' weather."

"You'd shiver like a dog in a briar path on a warm day in July,"
said Jackson Hines contemptuously.

"Shut up!" said they. "You're barn-boss. You don't have to be out
in th' cold."

This was true. So Jackson's intervention went for a little worse
than nothing.

"It ain't lak' he has nuttin' besides," went on Baptiste. "He can
mak' de cut in de meedle of de fores'."

"That's right," agreed Bob Stratton, "they's the west half of eight
ain't been cut yet."

So they sent a delegation to Radway. Big Nolan was the spokesman.

"Boss," said he bluntly, "she's too cold to work on them plains
to-day. She's the coldest day we had."

Radway was too old a hand at the business to make any promises on
the spot.

"I'll see, boys," said he.

When the breakfast was over the crew were set to making skidways
and travoy roads on eight. This was a precedent. In time the work
on the plains was grumblingly done in any weather. However, as to
this Radway proved firm enough. He was a good fighter when he knew
he was being imposed on. A man could never cheat or defy him openly
without collecting a little war that left him surprised at the
jobber's belligerency. The doubtful cases, those on the subtle line
of indecision, found him weak. He could be so easily persuaded that
he was in the wrong. At times it even seemed that he was anxious to
be proved at fault, so eager was he to catch fairly the justice of
the other man's attitude. He held his men inexorably and firmly to
their work on the indisputably comfortable days; but gave in often
when an able-bodied woodsman should have seen in the weather no
inconvenience, even. As the days slipped by, however, he tightened
the reins. Christmas was approaching. An easy mathematical
computation reduced the question of completing his contract with
Morrison & Daly to a certain weekly quota. In fact he was surprised
at the size of it. He would have to work diligently and steadily
during the rest of the winter.

Having thus a definite task to accomplish in a definite number of
days, Radway grew to be more of a taskmaster. His anxiety as to
the completion of the work overlaid his morbidly sympathetic human
interest. Thus he regained to a small degree the respect of his
men. Then he lost it again.

One morning he came in from a talk with the supply-teamster, and
woke Dyer, who was not yet up.

"I'm going down home for two or three weeks," he announced to Dyer,
"you know my address. You'll have to take charge, and I guess
you'd better let the scaling go. We can get the tally at the
banking grounds when we begin to haul. Now we ain't got all the
time there is, so you want to keep the boys at it pretty well."

Dyer twisted the little points of his mustache. "All right, sir,"
said he with his smile so inscrutably insolent that Radway never
saw the insolence at all. He thought this a poor year for a man
in Radway's position to spend Christmas with his family, but it
was none of his business.

"Do as much as you can in the marsh, Dyer," went on the jobber.
"I don't believe it's really necessary to lay off any more there
on account of the weather. We've simply got to get that job in
before the big snows."

"All right, sir," repeated Dyer.

The scaler did what he considered his duty. All day long he tramped
back and forth from one gang of men to the other, keeping a sharp
eye on the details of the work. His practical experience was
sufficient to solve readily such problems of broken tackle, extra
expedients, or facility which the days brought forth. The fact that
in him was vested the power to discharge kept the men at work.

Dyer was in the habit of starting for the marsh an hour or so after
sunrise. The crew, of course, were at work by daylight. Dyer heard
them often through his doze, just as he heard the chore-boy come in
to build the fire and fill the water pail afresh. After a time the
fire, built of kerosene and pitchy jack pine, would get so hot that
in self-defense he would arise and dress. Then he would breakfast
leisurely.

Thus he incurred the enmity of the cook and cookee. Those
individuals have to prepare food three times a day for a half
hundred heavy eaters; besides which, on sleigh-haul, they are
supposed to serve a breakfast at three o'clock for the loaders
and a variety of lunches up to midnight for the sprinkler men.
As a consequence, they resent infractions of the little system
they may have been able to introduce.

Now the business of a foreman is to be up as soon as anybody. He
does none of the work himself, but he must see that somebody else
does it, and does it well. For this he needs actual experience
at the work itself, but above all zeal and constant presence. He
must know how a thing ought to be done, and he must be on hand
unexpectedly to see how its accomplishment is progressing. Dyer
should have been out of bed at first horn-blow.

One morning he slept until nearly ten o'clock. It was inexplicable!
He hurried from his bunk, made a hasty toilet, and started for the
dining-room to get some sort of a lunch to do him until dinner
time. As he stepped from the door of the office he caught sight of
two men hurrying from the cook camp to the men's camp. He thought
he heard the hum of conversation in the latter building. The cookee
set hot coffee before him. For the rest, he took what he could find
cold on the table.

On an inverted cracker box the cook sat reading an old copy of the
Police Gazette. Various fifty-pound lard tins were bubbling and
steaming on the range. The cookee divided his time between them
and the task of sticking on the log walls pleasing patterns made
of illustrations from cheap papers and the gaudy labels of canned
goods. Dyer sat down, feeling, for the first time, a little guilty.
This was not because of a sense of a dereliction in duty, but
because he feared the strong man's contempt for inefficiency.

"I sort of pounded my ear a little long this morning," he remarked
with an unwonted air of bonhomie.

The cook creased his paper with one hand and went on reading; the
little action indicating at the same time that he had heard, but
intended to vouchsafe no attention. The cookee continued his
occupations.

"I suppose the men got out to the marsh on time," suggested Dyer,
still easily.

The cook laid aside his paper and looked the scaler in the eye.

"You're the foreman; I'm the cook," said he. "You ought to know."

The cookee had paused, the paste brush in his hand.

Dyer was no weakling. The problem presenting, he rose to the
emergency. Without another word he pushed back his coffee cup
and crossed the narrow open passage to the men's camp

When he opened the door a silence fell. He could see dimly that
the room was full of lounging and smoking lumbermen. As a matter
of fact, not a man had stirred out that morning. This was more for
the sake of giving Dyer a lesson than of actually shirking the work,
for a lumber-jack is honest in giving his time when it is paid for.

"How's this, men!" cried Dyer sharply; "why aren't you out on
the marsh?"

No one answered for a minute. Then Baptiste:

"He mak' too tam cole for de marsh. Meester Radway he spik dat we
kip off dat marsh w'en he mak' cole."

Dyer knew that the precedent was indisputable.

"Why didn't you cut on eight then?" he asked, still in peremptory
tones.

"Didn't have no one to show us where to begin," drawled a voice in
the corner.

Dyer turned sharp on his heel and went out.

"Sore as a boil, ain't he!" commented old Jackson Hines with a
chuckle.

In the cook camp Dyer was saying to the cook, "Well, anyway, we'll
have dinner early and get a good start for this afternoon."

The cook again laid down his paper. "I'm tending to this job of
cook," said he, "and I'm getting the meals on time. Dinner will
be on time to-day not a minute early, and not a minute late."

Then he resumed his perusal of the adventures of ladies to whom the
illustrations accorded magnificent calf-development.

The crew worked on the marsh that afternoon, and the subsequent
days of the week. They labored conscientiously but not zealously.
There is a deal of difference, and the lumber-jack's unaided
conscience is likely to allow him a certain amount of conversation
from the decks of skidways. The work moved slowly. At Christmas
a number of the men "went out." Most of them were back again after
four or five days, for, while men were not plenty, neither was work.
The equilibrium was nearly exact.

But the convivial souls had lost to Dyer the days of their debauch,
and until their thirst for recuperative "Pain Killer," "Hinckley"
and Jamaica Ginger was appeased, they were not much good. Instead
of keeping up to fifty thousand a day, as Radway had figured was
necessary, the scale would not have exceeded thirty.

Dyer saw all this plainly enough, but was not able to remedy it.
That was not entirely his fault. He did not dare give the
delinquents their time, for he would not have known where to fill
their places. This lay in Radway's experience. Dyer felt that
responsibilities a little too great had been forced on him, which
was partly true. In a few days the young man's facile conscience
had covered all his shortcomings with the blanket excuse. He
conceived that he had a grievance against Radway!

Chapter X

Radway returned to camp by the 6th of January. He went on snowshoes
over the entire job; and then sat silently in the office smoking
"Peerless" in his battered old pipe. Dyer watched him amusedly,
secure in his grievance in case blame should be attached to him.
The jobber looked older. The lines of dry good-humor about his eyes
had subtly changed to an expression of pathetic anxiety. He attached
no blame to anybody, but rose the next morning at horn-blow, and the
men found they had a new master over them.

And now the struggle with the wilderness came to grapples. Radway
was as one possessed by a burning fever. He seemed everywhere at
once, always helping with his own shoulder and arm, hurrying eagerly.
For once luck seemed with him. The marsh was cut over; the "eighty"
on section eight was skidded without a break. The weather held cold
and clear.

Now it became necessary to put the roads in shape for hauling. All
winter the blacksmith, between his tasks of shoeing and mending,
had occupied his time in fitting the iron-work on eight log-sleighs
which the carpenter had hewed from solid sticks of timber. They were
tremendous affairs, these sleighs, with runners six feet apart, and
bunks nine feet in width for the reception of logs. The bunks were
so connected by two loosely-coupled rods that, when emptied, they
could be swung parallel with the road, so reducing the width of the
sleigh. The carpenter had also built two immense tanks on runners,
holding each some seventy barrels of water, and with holes so
arranged in the bottom and rear that on the withdrawal of plugs the
water would flood the entire width of the road. These sprinklers
were filled by horse power. A chain, running through blocks attached
to a solid upper framework, like the open belfry of an Italian
monastery, dragged a barrel up a wooden track from the water hole to
the opening in the sprinkler. When in action this formidable machine
weighed nearly two tons and resembled a moving house. Other men had
felled two big hemlocks, from which they had hewed beams for a V plow.

The V plow was now put in action. Six horses drew it down the road,
each pair superintended by a driver. The machine was weighted down
by a number of logs laid across the arms. Men guided it by levers,
and by throwing their weight against the fans of the plow. It was a
gay, animated scene this, full of the spirit of winter--the plodding,
straining horses, the brilliantly dressed, struggling men, the
sullen-yielding snow thrown to either side, the shouts, warnings,
and commands. To right and left grew white banks of snow. Behind
stretched a broad white path in which a scant inch hid the bare earth.

For some distance the way led along comparatively high ground. Then,
skirting the edge of a lake, it plunged into a deep creek bottom
between hills. Here, earlier in the year, eleven bridges had been
constructed, each a labor of accuracy; and perhaps as many swampy
places had been "corduroyed" by carpeting them with long parallel
poles. Now the first difficulty began.

Some of the bridges had sunk below the level, and the approaches
had to be corduroyed to a practicable grade. Others again were
humped up like tom-cats, and had to be pulled apart entirely. In
spots the "corduroy" had spread, so that the horses thrust their
hoofs far down into leg-breaking holes. The experienced animals
were never caught, however. As soon as they felt the ground giving
way beneath one foot, they threw their weight on the other.

Still, that sort of thing was to be expected. A gang of men who
followed the plow carried axes and cant-hooks for the purpose of
repairing extemporaneously just such defects, which never would
have been discovered otherwise than by the practical experience.
Radway himself accompanied the plow. Thorpe, who went along as one
of the "road monkeys," saw now why such care had been required of
him in smoothing the way of stubs, knots, and hummocks.

Down the creek an accident occurred on this account. The plow had
encountered a drift. Three times the horses had plunged at it, and
three times had been brought to a stand, not so much by the drag of
the V plow as by the wallowing they themselves had to do in the drift.

"No use, break her through, boys," said Radway. So a dozen men
hurled their bodies through, making an opening for the horses.

"Hi! YUP!" shouted the three teamsters, gathering up their reins.

The horses put their heads down and plunged. The whole apparatus
moved with a rush, men clinging, animals digging their hoofs in,
snow flying. Suddenly there came a check, then a CRACK, and then
the plow shot forward so suddenly and easily that the horses all
but fell on their noses. The flanging arms of the V, forced in a
place too narrow, had caught between heavy stubs. One of the arms
had broken square off.

There was nothing for it but to fell another hemlock and hew out
another beam, which meant a day lost. Radway occupied his men with
shovels in clearing the edge of the road, and started one of his
sprinklers over the place already cleared. Water holes of suitable
size had been blown in the creek bank by dynamite. There the
machines were filled. It was a slow process. Stratton attached
his horse to the chain and drove him back and forth, hauling the
barrel up and down the slideway. At the bottom it was capsized
and filled by means of a long pole shackled to its bottom and
manipulated by old man Heath. At the top it turned over by its
own weight. Thus seventy odd times.

Then Fred Green hitched his team on and the four horses drew the
creaking, cumbrous vehicle spouting down the road. Water gushed in
fans from the openings on either side and beneath; and in streams
from two holes behind. Not for an instant as long as the flow
continued dared the teamsters breathe their horses, for a pause
would freeze the runners tight to the ground. A tongue at either
end obviated the necessity of turning around.

While the other men hewed at the required beam for the broken V
plow, Heath, Stratton, and Green went over the cleared road-length
once. To do so required three sprinklerfuls. When the road should
be quite free, and both sprinklers running, they would have to keep
at it until after midnight.

And then silently the wilderness stretched forth her hand and pushed
these struggling atoms back to their place.

That night it turned warmer. The change was heralded by a shift of
wind. Then some blue jays appeared from nowhere and began to scream
at their more silent brothers, the whisky jacks.

"She's goin' to rain," said old Jackson. "The air is kind o' holler."

"Hollow?" said Thorpe, laughing. "How is that?"

"I don' no," confessed Hines, "but she is. She jest feels that way."

In the morning the icicles dripped from the roof, and although the
snow did not appreciably melt, it shrank into itself and became
pock-marked on the surface.

Radway was down looking at the road.

"She's holdin' her own," said he, "but there ain't any use putting
more water on her. She ain't freezing a mite. We'll plow her out."

So they finished the job, and plowed her out, leaving exposed the
wet, marshy surface of the creek-bottom, on which at night a thin
crust formed. Across the marsh the old tramped road held up the
horses, and the plow swept clear a little wider swath.

"She'll freeze a little to-night," said Radway hopefully. "You
sprinkler boys get at her and wet her down."

Until two o'clock in the morning the four teams and the six men
creaked back and forth spilling hardly-gathered water--weird,
unearthly, in the flickering light of their torches. Then they
crept in and ate sleepily the food that a sleepy cookee set out
for them.

By morning the mere surface of this sprinkled water had frozen, the
remainder beneath had drained away, and so Radway found in his road
considerable patches of shell ice, useless, crumbling. He looked
in despair at the sky. Dimly through the gray he caught the tint
of blue.

The sun came out. Nut-hatches and wood-peckers ran gayly up the
warming trunks of the trees. Blue jays fluffed and perked and
screamed in the hard-wood tops. A covey of grouse ventured from the
swamp and strutted vainly, a pause of contemplation between each
step. Radway, walking out on the tramped road of the marsh, cracked
the artificial skin and thrust his foot through into icy water.
That night the sprinklers stayed in.

The devil seemed in it. If the thaw would only cease before the ice
bottom so laboriously constructed was destroyed! Radway vibrated
between the office and the road. Men were lying idle; teams were
doing the same. Nothing went on but the days of the year; and four
of them had already ticked off the calendar. The deep snow of the
unusually cold autumn had now disappeared from the tops of the
stumps. Down in the swamp the covey of partridges were beginning
to hope that in a few days more they might discover a bare spot in
the burnings. It even stopped freezing during the night. At times
Dyer's little thermometer marked as high as forty degrees.

"I often heard this was a sort 'v summer resort," observed Tom
Broadhead, "but danged if I knew it was a summer resort all the
year 'round."

The weather got to be the only topic of conversation. Each had his
say, his prediction. It became maddening. Towards evening the chill
of melting snow would deceive many into the belief that a cold snap
was beginning.

"She'll freeze before morning, sure," was the hopeful comment.

And then in the morning the air would be more balmily insulting
than ever.

"Old man is as blue as a whetstone," commented Jackson Hines, "an'
I don't blame him. This weather'd make a man mad enough to eat the
devil with his horns left on."

By and by it got to be a case of looking on the bright side of the
affair from pure reaction.

"I don't know," said Radway, "it won't be so bad after all. A
couple of days of zero weather, with all this water lying around,
would fix things up in pretty good shape. If she only freezes
tight, we'll have a good solid bottom to build on, and that'll be
quite a good rig out there on the marsh."

The inscrutable goddess of the wilderness smiled, and calmly,
relentlessly, moved her next pawn.

It was all so unutterably simple, and yet so effective. Something
there was in it of the calm inevitability of fate. It snowed.

All night and all day the great flakes zig-zagged softly down
through the air. Radway plowed away two feet of it. The surface
was promptly covered by a second storm. Radway doggedly plowed it
out again.

This time the goddess seemed to relent. The ground froze solid.
The sprinklers became assiduous in their labor. Two days later the
road was ready for the first sleigh, its surface of thick, glassy
ice, beautiful to behold; the ruts cut deep and true; the grades
sanded, or sprinkled with retarding hay on the descents. At the
river the banking ground proved solid. Radway breathed again, then
sighed. Spring was eight days nearer. He was eight days more behind.

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