Woodsmen of the West

by Martin Allerdale Grainger

  “The blank-blank son of a dog,” he would gasp; “d’you know what that blank sez to me just now? He …” The man would splutter.

  Perhaps my own condition is revealed in this – that once when François shook his fist at heaven and jumped upon his hat I did not even smile. It seemed a very proper thing for him to do. I felt like that myself….

  The tide was far out, after supper, on the second evening. Across the sands a light showed from Kendall’s tent. And the idea came to me suddenly to go and visit Kendall – that solitary hand-logger who never came near Carter’s camp. So, for the first time in all these months, I made my way round by the beach to the little rock-strewn point of land beside which Kendall had made his camp. A stolid sort of man I thought that he must be. For avalanches may repeat themselves; and Cran and Blackmore had been killed by one the previous spring within a few feet of Kendall’s door, and broken timbers of their buried cabin still cocked themselves skywards from among the clay and boulders. I should have thought Kendall would have felt uneasy when wakened in the night by the hollow roar and echoes of the rock-slides that we used to hear….

  Into the dizzy tropic heat of his air-tight tent Mike Kendall welcomed me with a flood of words; the sudden outpouring of a man who had not used his tongue for many days. He poked more wood into his red-hot stove and put a billy on to boil some tea, and turned his lamp wick higher, in hospitality. I sat me down upon his springy bunk, springy with fine hemlock boughs, and let my head reel as I breathed the fierce warmth of the oft-used air. It is a marvel to me that logging men, who live so much in open air, can like these hot-house atmospheres at home….

  Mike’s photograph, I saw, would have made the fortune of a hair-restorer. Long hair stood out all round his head and fell upon his neck as you may see in giants’ portraits in children’s story-books. Mike’s beard was long and sweeping, his whiskers and moustache immense. He asked me, at some future visit, to bring my scissors and to cut his hair.

  We had tea, and Mike gave me at great length his views upon the methods used in Wall Street and upon the currency crisis that had brought hard times upon us all. Harriman had said this, Roosevelt proved that, James K. Hill had been interviewed – to fill pages upon pages of ten-cent magazines; the consolation of Mike Kendall, a lonely reader living in a hot tent among the snows and gloominess of Coola Inlet in the winter….

  Talking was a rare enjoyment to Mike Kendall. He needed no encouragement from me. So he talked, talked well and argued (at second hand) with force; and I gave him a formal attention. But my eye wandered round the tent’s interior, noting the well-kept rifle, the piled goatskins, the ragged clothes hung up upon a line, the pan of yeast dough set to raise, the gap in the rough-hewn floor where Mike was used to split his stove wood, the clumsy table, the tins of groceries, and then the sacks of stores. Mike seemed to have very little flour left.

  I almost started as an idea struck me. “Pretty near out of grub, Mike, ain’t you?” I asked, breaking in upon his talk with sudden intensity. He said he was.

  “What d’you reckon to do about it?” said I, breathless.

  “I’m expecting the Doherty boys up most any day now,” he drawled; “I arranged with them months ago to bring up my winter’s grub.”

  “Mike,” said I, my heart thumping with relief, “when the boys come, for Heaven’s sake – for Heaven’s sake!! – don’t let them go away again without telling me. I’m just crazy for a chance to get down this blanky Inlet.”

  I QUIT

  The Dohertys were coming! Their rowboat might come into sight, a distant speck, at any moment! So the morning after my visit to Mike Kendall I began a feverish watch-down-the-Inlet, haunted by the fear that the men would reach Kendall’s tent and leave their freight and go away again (forgetting me) without my seeing them from Carter’s camp.

  It was part of my work to cook our hasty meals. Now as I cooked my eye was ever glancing through the window to see if any object were moving in the distant water. Once in a while I would take a hurried look through Carter’s glasses.

  Between meals I worked near to the beach with François, handling the rigging on the snow; Carter working the donkey-engine and running to and fro to help us. We would haul two or three logs in the day, after great efforts: a futile sort of work. And I worked listlessly, for I could watch the sea.

  Carter must have been annoyed at my poor activity, for he set himself next day to gall my vanity.

  “You look sick, boy,” he said sweetly. “I want you to do nuthin’ but cook for me and François from now on. Don’t you come out to work no more. Just cook and clean up the bunk-house, and saw wood for the stoves, and flunkey around to fill in time.”

  I felt sick enough. The constant strain of watching, the sudden hopes when moving specks would appear upon the Inlet’s distant water, the ache of disappointment when these specks would reveal themselves as mere floating logs, the remorse that never ceased to worry me – all these had sickened me till I felt physically weak.

  And my sense of humour had played out under such drain of nervous energy, and because of that Carter contrived to get the better of me. My vanity was absurdly hurt. To be cook and flunkey to Carter and François! The blood of all the Celts boiled in my veins. In a childish rage I went across again to see Mike Kendall. He counselled patience. “He’s got you in a tight place, boy,” said he; “don’t give the man the satisfaction of seeing that you mind. Besides, it’s only for a day or two. The Dohertys are bound to come soon.” I felt desperate.

  “Mike,” said I, “I’m pretty near the end of what I can stand from Carter. If the Dohertys don’t come on the third day from now, will you get out your sloop and take me down to Port Browning for thirty dollars?”

  Mike looked at me in silence, doubtfully.

  Then I argued with him; pointed out how we could set up his old cook-stove on the sloop, and take lots of firewood; proved to him the course that he could take in each contingency of nasty weather. The sloop was a good sea-boat; Mike could await a favourable occasion for his journey home. He could bring up his winter’s grub himself and save expense.

  But all my talk did not convince him. And as I walked back to Carter’s camp that evening I had a guilty feeling that I had been tempting Mike – tempting him to break good resolutions; to run the risk of going to Port Browning, the risk of going near to whisky, the risk of going “on the bust.” …

  In cooking I did, without conscious thought, what men are used to do when living upon a few simple foods. From meal to meal I varied the manner of cooking, varied the ingredients of cakes and puddings. So Carter saw another opening for delightful subtlety.

  “That last cook was a dandy, François,” he said, at table (that I might hear); “all-ways the same, François, all-ways the same! You all-ways knew what you were going to get to eat, and just how it would taste. That cook was ALL right. Youbetcher!” Carter was discovering the gulf that lay between himself and me, a gulf whose width my sense of humour no longer bridged. François was now his confidant, taking my former place….

  But all these small manceuvrings and all the notice that I took of them were matters on the surface. Beneath them and beneath the everyday employment of our faculties, our inner selves, all three, were under heavy stress. We lived confined together under such mutual repulsion; our work was so purposeless, so unsuccessful; the days were spent in such gloom of fog and falling snow, or else in such sight of bleak mountain slopes and gaunt, snow-blotched cliffs – the whole process of our life was so dismal, so devoid of livening motive – that all three of us were suffering from nerves.

  Carter showed a distinct hysteria in his treatment of his dog. That wretched animal had long fled away from Carter’s touch. It lived a frightened life around the outskirts of our camp, and (as I have seen dogs do when wolves were prowling round a camp-fire) it was used to bristle every hair on end, and snarl and show its teeth, and slink away whenever it had come near Carter unawares. But it now happened that Carter caught
the dog in the blacksmith shop, and there he first soothed it with a piece of meat, and then tied it to the anvil, and then took a stick and beat the animal till it was nearly dead. At any other time I should have felt like interfering; I could not have endured the howls of pain. But I was too much taken up by my own tortures to care the least for Carter’s dog….

  So five days passed at Carter’s camp and I came near the breaking point. The morning of the sixth day I got out of bed in a nervous fury. But when I had busied myself over the cooking of the breakfast, and thumped the gong to waken the other men and summon them to eat, I felt somewhat composed. I took my place beside the cooking-stove to pour and flap the hot cakes that go swiftly from pan to table during the course of every breakfast at a logging-camp.

  Carter came in and sat him down, and then François. Carter, I saw, was in a villainous bad temper. He began to eat.

  “Cook me two eggs,” he barked suddenly.

  I went to cook them without realising his tone.

  “Take the lid off the stove,” shouted Carter.

  I felt there was something wrong.

  “Turn them eggs.”

  It burst upon me with a rush. This was Carter’s railroad foreman’s manner – a manner that I had seen him use to other men! This was the first time he had tried that manner upon me.

  “Put salt and pepper on them.” It was an order – staccato.

  The tone cut me like a whip.

  I heard his words with difficulty; the word “salt” was indistinct. There was a throbbing in my ears. I had some idea of going closer to him to hear the better….

  I found myself floating towards him in a sort of atmosphere that shook in little waves like the shimmering of air upon a plain, under a blazing sun. I did not hear my own steps or feel my own movements. The air buoyed me up. Objects surrounding Carter, in that cook-house scene, were of foggy outline, blurred; and only objects near to him were visible at all. Fog cut off the rest. It was like looking down a tunnel. But in the middle of the tunnel, clear cut and distinct, was Carter’s face, framed in black hair and beard.

  My eye caught Carter’s – Carter’s black beady eye.

  “WHAT SAUCE?” I yelled in Carter’s face….

  It was touch and go. My fists were quivering for the blows; nerves along the inside of my wrists and up my arms were itching. I could feel a sort of succulent anticipation of the collapse of the cranky table, the smash of the shattering crockery, the wrestle and fall and bump as Carter’s body and mine should reach the floor. There I would bash him in the face and put an arm lock on him. A gloating thrill ran through me to think how I would listen for the crack of Carter’s dislocated arm as the lock bent it back beyond the natural outstretch. There would not be much moving of that arm for Carter for the next three months or so….

  Then Carter’s eye dropped from mine, and I had a vivid picture of a sparkling Carter looking at a sparkling plate upon the breakfast table. Notes of mildness came to me across the vibrating air. The noise seemed to soothe me, seemed somehow to put a sudden check upon the spring I was about to make. I felt my whole frame relax from a great tension – every nerve untauten, almost noisily. But what words Carter spoke I do not know, nor even what happened then….

  I came to my prosaic self kneeling upon the bunk-house floor. I was engaged in rolling up my blankets, with movements swift and intent. My bag had long been packed, ready for departure at any time.

  I took my bag and blanket-roll and pushed open the bunk-house door – and met Carter coming, face to face….

  The logger “quitting” is a man of great punctilio. I played the perfect logger.

  “Well,” said I, faultlessly correct, “guess I’m going down the Inlet.”

  Carter gave me a quick look, that was an error of deportment. It showed unfeigned surprise, for Carter based his influence over men upon the sixty miles of Inlet that cut them off completely from the world except when boats were plying.

  “All right,” he said; and then, “How are you going?”

  “In Kendall’s sloop,” I said, not truthfully; for Kendall had not given his consent.

  That was an unpleasant stab for Carter – the suggestion of Kendall interfering with his policy; Kendall whom he had hated bitterly ever since that mortifying game of cards.

  Carter took my remark without the least sign of interest. “You’ll meet Bill below,” he said listlessly, looking over to where the donkey-engine awaited the day’s work. His meaning was that Bill would pay my wages.

  “All right,” said I, and jumped down upon the beach and clambered round the coast to Kendall’s tent, with never a glance behind. Then I remembered that my new working gloves were on the cook-house table. Dignity forbade a return to fetch them. The value of two dollars lost! …

  I came to Kendall’s tent, and found the man engaged in cooking a late breakfast. “It’s no use trying to work while the snow’s this deep,” said he in explanation; “I just get up when I feel like it these winter days.”

  “Mike,” said I, “I want to stop with you. I can’t stay in the same camp with that Carter, not one moment longer. It’s beyond me; I feel sure there would be some bad trouble come of it.” And then I told him what had happened, and offered to pay for my board until the Doherty boys should arrive; and offered to pay for my passage to Port Browning if the boys should fail to come.

  But Kendall made me welcome and put aside my offers of payment. Of course I could stay with him. And besides, as he told me smiling, “I’m right pleased to do anything to annoy that blanky Carter.”

  So I laid down upon the hemlock mattress inside the stuffy tent. And all day long I stayed inert; shaking and weak in the reaction from the extravagant emotion of the previous days; sick at the stomach, too, after the excitement of the morning. But when evening came and I had eaten some of Kendall’s doughy bread and feasted off a wild-goat kid that he had shot, I began to feel better. Then Kendall and I pictured to one another the state of Carter and François up there at the camp. Neither of those men could cook to satisfy even his own palate. Each loathed the other’s cookery. Kendall and I laughed and giggled till we ached to think of those two enemies now forced to live and work together – to cook for one another!

  Then we went to bed, and Kendall could not understand why I should want to sleep with my head against the doorstep in that air-tight tent of his.

  TO OBLIVION – WITH CARTER

  The cliffs of Axe Point rose like a wall beside us out from the gently swelling sea. They merged their blackness, at no great height above our heads, into the fog of swirling flakes. And the thick falling snow blurred all but the near expanse of ruffled water from our sight – blurred it (among those steep-to mountains) into murk.

  There was a log jammed endways into a crevice of the rock, and we had moored the sloop to it. Then we had lit a fire in an empty oil-can, and warmed up some beans and sow-belly, and boiled some tea, and eaten a grateful meal. But our chief longing had been to warm our aching feet, that had ached with the cold since we had left the bay at Kendall’s place, early that morning, before dawn. We had warmed them blissfully.

  We had just cast off from the log. We were pushing on the sweeps, intending to creep forward under the shelter of Axe Point (since the wind blew from ahead) before putting out upon our next tack across the Inlet, when round the corner of the cliff there shot into sight men standing, rowing, in a small boat. The Dohertys at last! The two Doherty boys and Mike M‘Curdy!

  Their boat was soon alongside ours. M‘Curdy fumbled under a tarpaulin and pulled a whisky-bottle out. “Drink hearty, Kendall,” he giggled cheerfully; “it’s your own whisky. We just had to open a few bottles to keep ourselves from freezing in this blank-blank rowboat.” “You blank-blank blanks,” said Kendall, but he did not mind….

  The Dohertys had come, and therefore Kendall had no further need to journey down the Inlet in the sloop. So we took the other men aboard, and tied their boat astern, and ran before the breeze straight back
to Kendall’s camp. Many drinks we had upon the way. The sloop once anchored and the freight all safe ashore inside the tent, it came to some one that a howl could easily be heard at Carter’s camp. So the jest was to raise a drunken hullaballoo, to torture Carter with the knowledge that there was whisky near him that he could not drink; to “rub it in” to him that Kendall, hateful Mike Kendall, was undergoing all the joys of drunkenness. You may bet that Carter and François heard and understood the noise, and that two tragic figures lay wakeful in their bunks that night.

  Supper and whisky and the return to warmth after the cold endurance of the day filled us all with glee. Kendall became full of hints of a mystery; the hints soon became so broad that we divined the truth. We had a poet in our midst!!

  The poet needed but a touch to burst him into song. But whether Carter (as the poet hoped) could hear the song was very doubtful. The tent door, anyway, was opened, and Kendall sang his loudest through it, and some of us thought that Carter might come lurking in the underbrush to hear. So, for the best effect, the song was sung again at intervals throughout the evening, until the singer had either become too drunk to sing or we too drunk to hear.

  CARTER: A SATIRE

  BY MIKE KENDALL

  (To the tune of the “White Cockade”)

  I

  As I was agoing for to bail my sloop,

  I passed the camp and I saw the group,

  So I came back and composed this rhyme,

  For they was busy splicing line.

  Chorus

  Grainger was a-firing, and the donkey throwing fog,

  Cully at the throttle, and he had a big log;

  Bill blew the whistle when the line it broke,

  For Joe was slingin’ riggin’, and Carter tending hook.

  II

  So they all went to supper when it got dark;