Riding the Flume

by Patricia Curtis Pfitsch

  The look Lewis Granger gave her was icy. “You shut up and leave this to your betters,” he growled at her. “You’ve caused me enough trouble already. I’ve half a mind to put the law onto you!”

  Francie saw her mother’s head jerk up. Her father stiffened, and Francie was surprised to hear the anger she’d expected to be directed at her lash out at Granger instead. “Don’t speak to my daughter like that, Granger,” he said, and the cold warning in his voice was clear.

  Granger stepped back. “I beg your pardon,” he said, and he even gave a slight bow. “I didn’t mean to give you any offense. But this is a decision for the adults to make, don’t you agree, Cavanaugh?”

  “I do,” Francie’s father answered. He put his hands in his pockets and stared down at his feet.

  Francie held her breath, but when her father didn’t look at her, she felt as if a lump the size of a boulder had settled into her stomach. Her mother was staring out at the devastation the loggers had made around Carrie’s tree.

  “I just don’t see how I can be the one to put the company in the red,” Francie’s father said finally.

  Francie couldn’t let him finish. She grabbed his hands and spun around to face him. “Papa, I know I’ve disappointed you. I know you’d rather have Carrie here than me, but please, please, listen to me just this once.” She looked up into his face, which was suddenly twisted into an expression of such pain and sadness it made her catch her breath. But she couldn’t stop. “If you let them cut down this tree, it will be like Carrie dying all over again. Please, Papa, we can’t have her back, but don’t take this last part of her away from me.” She held onto him as if she was drowning and he was the only lifeline.

  Her father’s face went white, as if she’d slapped him, and she realized that the crowd of loggers around them had become utterly silent. She turned to find that her mother had covered her face with her hands—her shoulders were shaking.

  Francie felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over her. She closed her eyes. Once again, she’d crossed the line; she’d embarrassed them in front of everyone. Her father lifted his eyes to the men around them and then looked back at her. She saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed.

  “Francie,” he whispered, using her nickname for the first time since Carrie died. “With all my heart I wish I had both you and Carrie here. I could never choose one over the other.” He lifted a shaking hand and touched her hair. “You look so much like her . . .” he swallowed again, and she saw that his eyes were red with unshed tears. “When we couldn’t find you yesterday . . . before we got Court’s telegram, and I thought I’d lost you, too . . .” He took a breath that sounded like a sob. “I couldn’t have borne it.” He closed his eyes and pressed his lips together. He was gripping her hand as hard as she had been gripping his, and she felt, suddenly, that she was his lifeline, too.

  “But I can’t be the one to put the lumber company under,” he continued. He let go of her hands. “It’s not the money. It’s not just my hotel. It’s the jobs of all these men, too.” He looked out at the loggers, and Francie heard shuffling as some of them shifted on their feet. “What else can I do?”

  He was right. Francie knew it as soon as the words were spoken. If the company went broke, all those men would be out of work.

  “Besides,” Granger said, “this section is already cut. It’s too late to save these trees—why not save jobs instead?” He patted the pocket of his shirt as if he were looking for his pen to write out the check then and there.

  Granger had won and he knew it. Francie could hardly stand seeing that smug look on his face. She gritted her teeth and looked around the valley—once thick with growing pines. Now it looked like a desert—Carrie’s tree was the only one left.

  Her mother sighed, and her cheeks were wet with tears. “If there were only some way to turn back the clock—but the damage has already been done. We can’t put the trees back.”

  Francie stared at her, and an idea suddenly blossomed in her mind. But would her father accept it? “Mama is right,” she said slowly, turning to her father. “We can’t put the other trees back. So why don’t we sell them the wood they’ve cut already? We could even let them log the rest of the section as well—everything but Carrie’s tree.”

  “That’s preposterous!” Granger’s face turned dark red. “The company has already paid for this lumber once. Paying again would put us even farther on the road to ruin!”

  “And who did they pay it to last time?” Francie dug her fingernails into her palms to stop herself from shouting. “I think it was you!”

  Francie’s father put his hand on her shoulder. “Calm down, daughter,” he said. “Let me handle this.” He turned to Granger. “A moment ago you were offering me five hundred dollars for the lumber in this section.” He folded his arms. “I believe I’m missing the point here.”

  “The point is,” Granger spluttered, “that tree’s half the wood in this section. Without it, the deal’s no good to us. We’ll go under and it’ll be your fault. We’ve got to bring down that tree!”

  Francie watched her father. His eyes narrowed, but his glance strayed to the loggers, standing grim and silent, and she knew he couldn’t do it, couldn’t take the money away from the company.

  “Papa!” She grabbed his hand again to get his attention. “What if we give them the rest of the wood in the section. For free. Then it won’t cost the company anything more than it did before. All they’d lose would be Carrie’s tree.”

  Francie’s father blinked and his eyebrows rose. “Give them the lumber? Is that good business sense?”

  Francie wanted to scream, but she tried to keep her voice calm. “This isn’t business! This is saving Carrie’s tree without taking the loggers’ jobs.”

  Francie’s father stroked his mustache with his finger. Then he glanced at Granger.

  “That tree’s half the wood in this section,” Granger said again. His jaw was set and his hands were balled into fists.

  “If one tree’s gonna make the difference between life and death for the company,” one logger called out, “then I might as well quit right now!” Murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd of men surrounding them.

  “It seems like a fair deal to me,” Mr. Court said, grinning. “And you’d save the company that five hundred dollars, too.”

  Francie’s father gave Francie a long look. Then he looked at Francie’s mother, and there was a light in his eyes Francie had not seen there in a long time. Francie’s mother gave a slight nod. Then her father turned to Granger. “That’s our offer, then. You can have the wood you’ve already cut and the rest of the lumber in this section free and clear, but you don’t cut that tree. And we keep ownership of the land.”

  Granger’s face was so red Francie thought he might burst. “I’ll have to discuss it with Mr. Connor,” he growled. He shoved the men nearest him aside and stomped off up the hill toward the pass.

  “They’ll take it,” Sheriff Bennett said, watching Granger’s back. “Granger can’t afford to take a stand on this. I doubt if we could prove foul play in the death of his brother, but there’s something very fishy about the whole thing. How does he know the man’s dead? And why was he paid five times as much as anyone else for his section? He knows I’ll be looking into it.”

  “Do you think he killed his own brother, then?” Mr. Court asked.

  Sheriff Bennett stroked his chin with his fingers. “He’s a mean one, but murder? I don’t think he’d go that far.”

  Mr. Court shoved his hand in his pockets. “But the lumber company wanted this land. What if Old Robert refused to sell? Maybe there was a fight. Robert fell or hit his head—some kind of accidental death. Suddenly what Granger wanted to happen did happen—his brother is dead. Set the cabin on fire . . . a four-hundred-dollar bonus for his trouble . . .”

  “Hold on, Court.” Sheriff Bennett held up his hand. “Sounds like you’re writing one of those dime novels to me. It makes
me nervous when a newspaperman begins to speculate in advance of the evidence.”

  Mr. Court grinned. “Sorry,” he said. “But if Connor accepts the Cavanaughs’ offer it might be an indication of possible wrongdoing.”

  “Why wouldn’t he accept it?” Sheriff Bennett asked. “Connor can’t afford to turn down free lumber even without the wood in the big sequoia.”

  “We weren’t sure we could bring that giant down in one piece, anyway,” one of the loggers put in. He glanced at the tree, and his look was wistful. “Sure would’ve been fun to try, though.”

  “Looks like we get the rest of the day off, boys,” Charlie said, slapping his hat on his thigh. “I think I’ll go ride the flume into St. Joseph.” He looked sideways at Francie as everyone laughed, and the crowd began to break up.

  Francie flushed. “I’ll never hear the end of that,” she said under her breath.

  “Not for a while,” her mother answered. “I just hope those men don’t break their necks trying to best you, Francie.” She coughed and put her hand over her mouth, and Francie thought she might be concealing a smile.

  “And there’s also the matter of your punishment.” Her father gave her a stern look. “Your mother and I can’t condone that wild ride into St. Joseph, no matter how glad we are that you made it there safely.”

  Francie squared her shoulders, resolved not to argue no matter what the punishment was. But when she met his eyes, she saw that he was smiling. He smoothed her hair again with a hand that was still not quite steady. “Though I have no doubt that your sister would have been proud of you.” He took her arm and they all walked together up toward the pass.

  At the crest of the hill, Francie turned to look back at Carrie’s tree. The loggers were dismantling the scaffolding. “The oldest tree on earth,” she whispered, thinking about how many thousands of years it had stood surrounded by the quiet forest. Now it was alone. The trees in the valley were gone. Most of the other sequoias in the whole of Connor’s Basin were gone. It had been the first tree, and now it was the last.

  “I’m glad you saved it,” her father said, touching her shoulder.

  “You are?” She glanced up to see that he was still smiling. “Even with all the worry I caused you?”

  “Even then.” He reached down and, as if she were still only nine years old, he took her hand. She held her breath, realizing that he had not done that since Carrie died. Her hand felt small in his, warm and protected. “But I want you to promise,” he added, “that you’ll try to cause a little less trouble in the future.”

  Francie looked up at him, and turned to include her mother in her gaze, as well. She knew what she needed—what they all needed. “I will,” she said, finally, “if you’ll both promise to come here with me sometimes. I want to sit here and read to you from Carrie’s diary.”

  She saw the shadow pass over her father’s face, and her mother bit her lip. She put her hand to her collar, and Francie knew she wanted to say no, to hide from the pain it would cause. But at last they both nodded. Her father cleared his throat. “We’ll all come together. I promise.”

  “Good.” She knew, then, that it would happen.

  • Author’s Note •

  Before 1890 the area west of Kings Canyon National Park known as the Converse Basin was home to the finest stand of Sierra redwood trees (also known as sequoias) in the United States—some say it was the finest stand on earth. Between 1890 and 1903, the entire basin was logged. You can drive through Converse Basin. You can still see the stumps of these huge trees, and the ones that shattered when they hit the ground.

  At the far north end of Converse Basin stands the Boole Tree. It was discovered when logging in the area was drawing to a close, and it was believed to be the largest and possibly also the oldest tree on earth. (More recent measurements have shown it to be third largest in bulk, though it has the largest circumference—112 feet with a base diameter of 35 feet.) Though preparations were made to log the tree, it was never cut. Some say it was simply too big—it couldn’t be brought down and moved without shattering the brittle wood. Others say that conservationists engineered a trade—the saving of the Boole Tree in exchange for easier to log timber on nearby land. The true answer will probably never be known.

  At the time of its discovery, all the trees around the Boole Tree were cut. Old photos show the lone giant standing amid the rubble of downed trees. But today, one hundred years later, the Boole Tree is no longer alone. If you take the mile hike, as I have, up over a steep hill and down the other side, you will find it surrounded by new generations of pine and firs, and even a number of thin and willowy sequoias, still in their infancy, but healthy and strong.

  I’ve been fascinated with sequoias for many years, since I read The Biggest Living Thing by my friend and fellow children’s writer, Carolyn Arnold. From that book and from my later research I learned that the first white man to see a sequoia was a hunter named A. T. Dowd. He found the tree in what is now the Calaveras Big Trees State Park in about 1852. Only a year later, in 1853, it was cut down because people wanted to find out its age. It was, they learned, more than two thousand years old. When I learned this I was outraged at the arrogance of humankind, of people who thought it was proper to kill something that had been in the world for two thousand years simply to find out how old it was.

  It was with that sense of outrage that I began the research that led, more than ten years later, to Riding the Flume. I learned much about logging and loggers, and now I find my outrage tempered with a kind of awe and even grudging respect for the men who had the daring and confidence to pit their tiny selves and their even tinier axes against the giants. It is amazing to me that they would even imagine that they could cut down a sequoia—more than three hundred feet tall and sometimes much more than twenty feet in diameter—with an ax. But they did imagine it. They even attempted it. And they succeeded.

  It is a fact worth pondering—humans are, without a doubt, the most powerful species in the world. We can destroy a species much bigger and stronger than we are. It is only our awareness of that power, and our resolve to use it responsibly, that will stop us from destroying the earth.

  • Glossary •

  axmen: the men who began the process of cutting down a tree. With broad, swinging strokes of their double-bitted axes, they chopped a triangular-shaped notch on one side of the tree.

  chute: a dry wooden track running along the ground on which logs were slid from the woods to a landing. The logs were chained together in long lines and dragged along the chute by oxen or by the cables attached to a donkey engine.

  chute rider: The man who rode on top of the last log in the line as the logs were pulled down the chute. Sometimes logs would rear up in the track, fall off the track, or even catch on fire from friction. Then the chute rider would touch the telegraph wires near the chute with a metal-tipped pole to signal the man running the donkey engine about what was happening and whether to slow down or speed up the log train.

  crosscut saw: a saw with a long thin blade with teeth on one side. The kind used in the California logging operations usually had a handle on each end. Two men were needed to draw the saw back and forth and cut into the tree trunk.

  donkey steam engine: a portable steam engine with cables attached. It was used to pull logs through the woods to a central location where they were loaded onto railroad cars and taken to the mill. It replaced the teams of oxen used to perform the same task.

  double-bitted ax: an ax with a sharpened edge on either side of the metal head.

  fallers: the men who did the work of cutting down or “felling” the trees.

  featherbed: also called a “felling bed”—a pile of small trees and branches arranged beside the tree to cushion it when it fell and hopefully keep it from shattering.

  flume herders: the men who lived in small houses built at regular intervals along the flume route. They monitored the lumber floating down the flume, broke up log jams, and repaired leaks.

&n
bsp; logging show: the logging operation in the woods . . . cutting the trees and transporting them to the mill.

  lumber flume: a U-shaped or V-shaped trough built above the ground on a framework or scaffolding. The flume looked a bit like a roller coaster and the trough had several feet of water flowing through it. It was, in essence, a man-made stream or river built above the ground and used to move lumber from mills high in the mountains to other locations at lower elevations.

  picaroon: (also spelled pickaroon) a long pole with a hook on one end. The flume herders used picaroons to help maneuver the lumber down the flume.

  sawmill: where logs were sawed into boards by machinery.

  sawyers: the men who wielded the crosscut saw. Standing one on either side of the tree, they drew the saw back and forth, making a cut that was parallel to the ground. They always began the cut on the side of the tree that was opposite to the undercut. The men who worked in the mill sawing the logs into boards and planks were also called sawyers.

  skidroad: a path through the woods used for dragging logs. The skidroad was also that part of a lumber town where most of the saloons were built—loggers went there to drink during their free time. The expression “on Skid Row” which means “poor and out of work,” later developed from this logging term.

  undercut: a triangular notch cut by the axmen in one side of the tree. The undercuts in sequoia trees were often big enough for a man on horseback to stand up inside the notch.

  wedges: large pieces of triangular-shaped steel hammered into the slice cut by the crosscut saw. This kept the weight of the tree from resting on the saw and trapping it in the trunk.

  • For Further Reading •

  Here are a few of the books I used in researching the discovery and logging of the redwood trees in California.

  Andrews, Ralph. Redwood Classic. New York: Bonanza Books, 1958. This book talks about the early days of logging in California.