Woodsmen of the West

by Martin Allerdale Grainger

  It was dark when we passed Protection Point, and I was in a cold sweat from weakness; my hands were sore, my wrists were numb. The other men were leaving me behind; from somewhere ahead I could hear the splash of furious bailing. Suddenly arose a great shouting, that I answered, and out of the darkness Fisher’s sinking boat ran alongside mine. One of the dough plasters had come out.

  That was why, oh blessed relief! the great race was never finished. We reached Hanson Island Hotel in my boat, late that night; two of us rowing, one bailing. And before my bed was made on the attic floor of the hotel, Fisher and John were reasonably drunk in the bar-room. Glorious first drunk of the season!

  BACK TO CARTER

  The morning was fine and calm when I pushed off from the landing-stage and began to row slowly down Port Browning Harbour upon my homeward way. Eight days had passed since I had come down the Inlet, but during all that time rain and sleet and snow had fallen turn about, and furious sou’-east wind had blown. I had lain idle at the Store, waiting for calm weather.

  My boat, as I pushed heavily upon the oars that morning, moved slowly like a barge. Like a barge, too, she floated low upon the water, and like a barge she was piled high with freight. One pile filled the stern, another the forward part; between the two there was a space where I could row and bail.

  The Finnish boat-builders at the Port had plugged me many of the larger leaks; the boat with all that freight in her leaked hardly more than formerly when empty. But she had lain so many years upon rough beaches, been dragged over, bumped upon, so many rocks, had so many loads of steamer fuel hurled roughly into her, that little strength was left in her worn, cracked planks. The unpainted wood, besides, was all splintery and sodden with sea-water. Sudden shock or strain, I knew, would open up the puttied seams afresh. I pictured in my mind dark landings among rocks in fear of storm, and the laden boat bumping in the swell, while wading alongside I hurried to throw the freight ashore. She would never stand that sort of thing. Such single-handed work with rotten boats was foolishness.

  As I rowed – stroke upon stroke upon stroke – and watched the swirls from my oars spin slowly astern, and glided sluggishly through the still water past point after point of the forest shore, I became haunted by unhappy thoughts. To be frank – I felt fear. Fear of the boat swamping; fear of wind and waves and chill water; fear of the poignant ache of cold feet and cold hands, and cold, wet clothes; fear of rocky shores and enforced landings at the feet of cliffs; fear of freezing clothes and night of wet snow and physical exhaustion; of the upper Inlet, where in that dismal wintry weather no tired man could ever hope to light a fire and warm himself and cook his food.

  Fear ached inside me as does a rotten tooth. Mile after mile I rowed, and there was nothing to distract my mind in that monotony of movement. The shores past which I rowed were pleasing to the eye even in that winter season, but they were all familiar and monotonous; they did not hold my thoughts. There was no help anywhere; nothing to save me from picturing the shores that I should come to by-and-by Up There, up Coola Inlet – up among the cliffs and snow and desolation. Days and weeks perhaps of misery ahead! And loneliness!

  I have a great power of frightening myself with terrors vividly imagined. When, lost among such thoughts, I woke up suddenly that day to find myself among the dancing waves of a small tide-rip, and when the boat took water over both low-sunk sides at once, I felt a spasm of a much more tolerable fear that almost gave me pleasure. I rowed hard out of the rip, half thinking that I might need to throw freight overboard. But the trifling scare eased me wonderfully in mind and stilled my worrying imagination.

  So when towards evening I rowed wearily into the small bay where Hanson Island Hotel moors its many boats, I thought of nothing but my supper. I piled my freight upon the landing-stage and covered it from fear of rain, and walked up to the house.

  There were a group of men upon the hotel veranda, and one of them asked as I came near:

  “What the blank is the matter with your boat, feller?”

  “There ain’t enough time before supper to tell you all that,” said I, by way of being humorous.

  “She looked wonderful low in the water when you was rowing in,” said some one.

  “She had a wonderful amount of freight and water in her,” said I.

  “You don’t mean to tell me you’re going up the Inlet like that, Mart,” said another.

  “I don’t like the idea,” said I, with a grin that was not jaunty, upon the wrong side of my mouth.

  “It’s just straight suicide,” said he.

  Then I went in to supper feeling miserable. For I am very much affected by other people’s judgment.

  Talk after supper stirred my indignation. “I’ll be blanked if I’ll take that freight up in that boat,” I said to myself; “I’ll hire a gasoline, and if Carter kicks at the expense I’ll pay for it myself….

  To clinch my resolution, it happened that I heard, soon after, the throbbing of a motor-boat that came into the bay and anchored near the landing-stage. I waited, patient, at the bar-room door until the owners of that boat had come ashore and had their first four drinks. Then I went up to them and asked if they would take me and my freight to Carter’s camp. My heart beat fast at this my opportunity.

  The men consulted among themselves. They felt that times were hard and dollars scarce. They knew their boat was good, their engines sound and reliable. They had no fear of breaking down among the upper reaches of the Inlet. Therefore they agreed to take my freight and tow my boat for thirty dollars, provided that they could choose their opportunity and make the trip in quiet weather.

  I could have sung with joy to hear them talk; to think that the misery of that dismal trip had passed forever from me. I clinched the deal; I stood the drinks; I went upstairs and spread my blankets on the floor and went to happy sleep. And the whole hotel shook with the furious battering of gusts of wind; rain rattled loud upon the roof. A stiff sou’-easter wind was blowing.

  In the small hours of the morning one of the owners of the motor-boat came and woke me up. There was a dead calm, he said; a lull between sou’-easters. There was a fine chance to get to Carter’s camp before wind should arise. We took lanterns and loaded the freight into the launch cabin, and soon we put out and sped up the Inlet, towing my boat astern.

  The night was very dark; dark masses of cloud hung low upon the water. But the water surface had the dark sheen of perfect calm, and there was nothing to check our utmost speed. The launch quivered as it speeded along; outside in the night the water made a rushing noise, plashing from our bows. I, who had no work to do, a passenger, lay upon the piled-up freight listening through the long hours to the whirring of the petrol engines, noise like some great sewing-machine. And I thought so happily: – This is my last impression of the Inlet; this my last trip among the gloomy canyons and the snow-slopes and the icy winds. When the launch should arrive at Carter’s camp I would collect my boots and clothes, those ragged properties, and get my pay from Carter, and jump aboard the launch again, and shout to see the last of Coola Inlet….

  It was about noon when the launch ran alongside Carter’s boom. I went across to where Carter stood staring at us from the cook-house door.

  “And what the blank is this?” said he.

  “This,” said I, “is my racket. It don’t cost you a cent.”

  Now I had not meant to take upon myself so easily the cost of hiring that launch. Perhaps in doing so I had been stung with desire to try to make Carter feel mean. But at all times I will do much to avoid haggling over money. I like to be obliging; and here, with Carter, there was distinct temptation to be quixotic. Any action which was not plainly due to sordid motives would worry Carter into puzzled thought. I used at times to do small kindnesses to him, work in his interest to the neglect of my own, perform actions that would ring true, ring of unselfish fondness. And these experiments of curiosity would pay me well in fun. They rankled in Carter’s mind; they would not square with the mea
n theory of humanity he had formed. He felt I was manoeuvring to get the better of him; he felt baffled at such clever hiding of acquisitive intentions.

  Carter called to Bill, and the two men walked away over the logs and went ashore and sat long in talk. They seemed to come to some decision. Carter took an axe and went to work where the donkey-engine stood upon the beach. Bill called me to the office.

  “We’re going to send away the men,” he said; “times are too bad and there ain’t no sale for logs, and we’re up against the money trouble hard. We’ve got to keep expenses down and get along as best we can. We’ll keep that feller François until he’s worked off what he borrowed from me in Vancouver and then we’ll fire him out. Carter wants to break you in to run the donkey, and then him and me and you can go on hauling logs quietly until times get better. You just see to paying off the men, and they can go down the Inlet on the launch. I’m going down myself on business to Vancouver.”

  I was completely disconcerted. I had been upon the point of telling Bill that I was going down myself. Now it seemed unhandsome to interfere with thought-out plans….

  The men had been paid off, had gone aboard the launch, before I nerved myself to speak.

  “How about myself, Bill?” said I. “There won’t be no boats coming here, nor mail brought up. I’m just in the middle of planning to get married in the spring, and me stopping here will make a long break in letter-writing and put off getting settled. My woman won’t like it either, not hearing from me. I’ve got to go in a couple of months anyway.”

  Bill went across again to talk to Carter. When he came back –

  “Carter says of course you’ll suit yourself,” he said coldly.

  “What will you fellows do?” said I.

  “Don’t mind about us,” said he; “we’ll get along all right. I guess we’re going to have a good try to raise that Sonora.”

  I felt somehow as if I was leaving Bill in the lurch.

  “D’you want me to stop?” said I.

  “It would be appreciated,” said he.

  I thought (such is my power of imagination) that a faint note of appeal was in his voice. Then (motives are generally double) a pretty picture of Carter and Bill and I going through all the details of the manouvres of woodsmanship, from falling timber to hauling logs, from hauling logs to booming up, glowed for a moment in my mind and vanished. What a fine experience that would be – what a training for any one who, like myself, had a vague idea of starting a logging business of my own some day. (Some day when I should have earned some money.)

  “I’ll stay,” said I.

  “Please yourself,” said Bill, and went aboard the launch.

  My chance to “quit” had come and gone.

  NERVES AND REMORSE

  That evening Carter and I sat by the cook-house stove. François, well snubbed, had gone back to the bunk-house, and Carter’s soul was on the grill; producing an offensive odour, as I thought. Bad times, bad luck, Bill’s squanderings, the sinking of the Sonora – all these combined to light a vicious temper in the man.

  He talked of the Sonora – in savage, murmuring voice.

  “I paid for that boat. I tell you I paid; there weren’t no mortgages on her. That’s nothing to me. I’m not worrying; there’s no need for any one to worry. Them swine at Port Browning hate me. They’ll be pleased to hear she has sunk. I DON’T CARE if she has. I can get her up whenever I want to. I can buy a new boat if I want to. I can. Understand? I CAN. Answer me now? D’you hear me? …

  “That donkey-engine of mine is no more use to me. D’you understand? She’s wore out. I want to sell that donkey. I can. I can sell that donkey. I’m telling you. D’you hear? …

  “There’s no man in this country can show me how to log. I’m a logger and I understand all about logging. But I tell you I’m sick and tired of beating my brains out against these ruddy side-hills. These here leases wants a company with lots of capital to work them. The ground’s too steep for me and the old donkey. Besides, men won’t work on such side-hills.”

  Carter shouted, rolling his black eyes.

  “I want to sell these leases. I want to sell the leases, and the camps and the donkey and the steamer, and the whole blank-blank blank works. I can go and get more. I’m a logger. But what I was meant for was buying and selling….”

  He dropped his voice and murmured. Then he began to eye me shiftily, and I thought rancorously.

  “I tell you this here sentiment and obliging people is all slop. I KNOW. A man is working for you for just what he can get out of it for himself. If he sees he can get a dollar out of you he’ll do a dollar’s worth of work if he can’t get it no other way. He won’t do a fraction of a cent more.

  “I’ve had experience; I know what men are. They’re all the same, every mother’s son of them. I’ve never met with gratitude or men obliging me for nothing; there ain’t no such things except in talk. Men that wanted to oblige me I always found was after something for themselves on the quiet, though some was blank-blank clever in hiding it.” This was a dig at me apparently. It seemed to relieve Carter’s feelings and his tone became more amiable.

  “I pay for all I get. I never ask for no obliging. I don’t oblige nobody. I’d be the same with me own brother. That’s right! Running a logging-camp teaches you what men are. Remember Jim Hunt? He was hook-tending for me, and a first-class man he was. He came to me one morning when we was stuck – trying to get logs out of a fierce-looking gulch up on that there side-hill. I was depending on him, and he knew it.

  “‘Carter,’ says he, ‘guess I’m going to town.’

  “‘Right you are, boy,’ says I; ‘suits you and suits me. Get your time from Bill right away.’

  “That’s the way. Never show you care. I give as good as I get. Once a man quits I never coax him to stop, and I’ll see that he does quit too. No ‘changed his mind’ for me, even if he’s a man I’m really needing and can’t replace. That dirt can get to blank out of my camp, no matter who he is, or how long he’s worked for me, or what’s the matter with him.”

  Carter’s thoughts savaged him. Talk ceased to give him ease. His eye caught sight of account-books lying on the table. He seized one and read inside, moving a thick guiding finger from word to word.

  “Hi! whad’yer charge that Frenchman a dollar for them gloves for? You paid that for them. You’re working for me; them gloves was brought up on my steamboat. D’you understand? Am I going to run a boat for a convenience to people, and them pay nothing towards the expense? How much would them gloves have cost that feller if he’d been obliged to go down himself and fetch them? D’you think he’s going to thank you or me for saving him money? Eh? Answer me now? You’ve got no business get-up to you when you go doing foolish things like that. Take your book and mark him down two dollars for them gloves….

  “This here’s his store bill. He’s had more tobacco than that; it’s never been charged up to him. Put another two pounds in his bill. Don’t you worry now. Let him kick if there’s any mistake….”

  Carter’s talk had usually a charm for me. I could sit and listen to it by the hour; grunting in answer to his questions to show I was awake; pleased to be getting a sort of lazy knowledge of the man. But that evening Carter got upon my nerves; his talk disgusted me. I feigned sleepiness and escaped to bed.

  But in my sleep a horrid shape, like Carter, pursued me with its talk and made me join it, entangled me, in never-ending work that led me even farther from my woman. Nightmare fright woke me at last.

  Then, lying in the darkness, I saw myself to be a fool. I belonged again to the weakly-obliging class of men, the facile type that lends its bar-room friends small sums of dollars when wife and family are going hungry. For I had imposed a two months’ silence upon my woman, shut myself away from marriage plans, dropped out of sight into an uncertain world that letters could not reach – done all this injury to serve the mere convenience of Bill and Carter. For I was only a convenience to them; my work a trifling h
elp towards the gaining or the saving of a few miserable dollars. I saw how childish I had been. Staying with Carter for a sentiment! I could have kicked myself. Remorse gnawed me….

  And now began days that I would not willingly live through again – days that seemed lengthened into weeks. There were just the three of us, you understand – Carter and François and I. At the best of times we had not liked each other. Now we had to work together, and eat together, and bear each other company, and there was no escape from such association. And our nerves, besides, were all on edge.

  Carter was working, overworking, from mere nervous craving for work. Work was, for him, a vicious habit, and he seethed with anger all through each day to think how purposeless work had become. Times were too bad! Logs were unsaleable! To work and haul logs into water was to let the sea-worms spoil the good wood! Not to work was to go through nervous torture! …

  François was toiling (since he must) to pay his debt to Carter and to earn enough money to take him “back to God’s country” – anywhere away from Coola Inlet. He was a scared man, scared by the news of hard times, scared to move from Carter’s camp without money in his pocket. There was still fresh upon his mind the memory of some mysterious “trouble” he had had with the police at Vancouver. And so he stayed with Carter, and staying, hated Carter – hated him venomously. Crawling over the tangled, matted wreckage of the woods, falling breast-high into piles of brush and tree-limbs, handling heavy blocks and hooks and wire tackle in the treacherous wet snow that covered every pitfall, slipping and stumbling at his irritating work, François would almost foam with hate of the man driving him. He would come to where I worked, at every chance, his eyes gleaming, after some new offence from Carter.