Wayside Courtships

by Garland, Hamlin

  It was all green and gray and blue and yellow-white and wild. The sky was not more illimitable than the rugged forest which extended on every hand.

  "Oh, this is glorious—glorious!" said the wife. "Do I own some of this town?" she asked, as they rose to go out.

  "I reckon you do."

  "Oh, I'm so glad!"

  As they stepped out on the platform, a large man in corduroy and wolf-skin faced them like a bandit.

  "Hello, Ed!"

  "Hello, Jack! Well, we've found you. My wife, Mr. Ridgeley. We've come up to find out how much you've embezzled," he said, as Ridgeley pulled off an immense glove to shake hands all round.

  "Well, come right over to the hotel. It ain't the Auditorium, but then, again, it ain't like sleeping outdoors."

  As they moved along they heard the train go off, and then the sound of the saw resumed its domination of the village noises.

  "Was the town named after you, or you after the town?" asked Field.

  "Named after me. Old man didn't want it named after him; would kill it," he said.

  Mr. and Mrs. Field found the hotel quite comfortable and the dinner wholesome. They beamed upon each other.

  "It's going to be delightful," they said.

  Ridgeley was a bachelor, and found his home at the hotel also. That night he said: "Now we'll go over the papers and records of your uncle's property, and then we'll go out and see if the property is all there. I imagine this is to be a searching investigation."

  "You may well think it. My wife is inexorable."

  As night fell, the wife did not feel so safe and well pleased. The loud talking in the office below and the occasional whooping of a crowd of mill hands going by made her draw her chair nearer and lay her fingers in her husband's palm.

  He smiled indulgently. "Don't be frightened, my dear. These men are not half so bad as they sound."

  II.

  Mrs. Field sat in the inner room of Ridgeley's office, waiting for the return of her husband with the team. They were going out for a drive.

  Ridgeley was working at his books, and he had forgotten her presence.

  She could not but feel a deep admiration for his powerful frame and his quick, absorbed action as he moved about from his safe to his desk. He was a man of great force and ready decision.

  Suddenly the door opened and a man entered. He had a sullen and bitter look on his thin, dark face. Ridgeley's quick eyes measured him, and his hand softly turned the key in his money drawer, and as he faced about he swung shut the door of the safe.

  The stranger saw all this with eyes as keen as Ridgeley's. A cheerless and strange smile came upon his face.

  "Don't be alarmed," he said. "I'm low, but I ain't as low as that."

  "Well, sir, what can I do for you?" asked Ridgeley. Mrs. Field half rose, and her heart beat terribly. She felt something tense and strange in the attitude of the two men.

  But the man only said, "You can give me a job if you want to."

  Ridgeley remained alert. He ran his eyes over the man's tall frame. He looked strong and intelligent, although his eyes were fevered and dull.

  "What kind of a job?"

  "Any kind that will take me out into the woods and keep me there," the man replied.

  There was a self-accusing tone in his voice that Ridgeley felt.

  "What's your object? You look like a man who could do something else. What brings you here?"

  The man turned with a sudden resolution to punish himself. His voice expressed a terrible loathing.

  "Whisky, that's what. It's a hell of a thing to say, but I can't let liquor alone when I can smell it. I'm no common hand, or I wouldn't be if I—But let that go. I can swing an axe, and I'm ready to work. That's enough. Now the question is, can you find a place for me?"

  Ridgeley mused a little. The young fellow stood there, statuesque, rebellious.

  Then Ridgeley said, "I guess I can help you out that much." He picked up a card and a pencil. "What shall I call you?"

  "Oh, call me Williams; that ain't my name, but it'll do."

  "What you been doing?"

  "Everything part of the time, drinking the rest. Was in a livery stable down at Wausau last week. It came over me, when I woke yesterday, that I was gone to hell if I stayed in town. So I struck out; and I don't care for myself, but I've got a woman to look out for—" He stopped abruptly. His recklessness of mood had its limits, after all.

  Ridgeley penciled on a card. "Give this to the foreman of No. 6. The men over at the mill will show you the teams."

  The man started toward the door with the card in his hand. He turned suddenly.

  "One thing more. I want you to send ten dollars of my pay every two weeks to this address." He took an envelope out of his pocket. "It don't matter what I say or do after this, I want that money sent. The rest will keep me in tobacco and clothing. You understand?"

  Ridgeley nodded. "Perfectly. I've seen such cases before."

  The man went out and down the walk with a hurried, determined air, as if afraid of his own resolution.

  As Ridgeley turned toward his desk he met Mrs. Field, who faced him with tears of fervent sympathy in her eyes.

  "Isn't it awful?" she said, in a half whisper. "Poor fellow, what will become of him?"

  "Oh, I don't know. He'll get along some way. Such fellows do. I've had 'em before. They try it a while here; then they move. I can't worry about them."

  Mrs. Field was not listening to his shifty words. "And then, think of his wife—how she must worry."

  Ridgeley smiled. "Perhaps it's his mother or a sister."

  "Anyway it's awful. Can't something be done for him?"

  "I guess we've done about all that can be done."

  "Oh, I wish I could help him! I'll tell Ed about him."

  "Don't worry about him, Mrs. Field; he ain't worth it."

  "Oh yes, he is. I feel he's been a good boy once, and then he's so self-accusing."

  Her own happiness was so complete, she could not bear to think of others' misery. She told her husband about Williams, and ended by asking, "Can't we do anything to help the poor fellow?"

  Field was not deeply concerned. "No; he's probably past help. Such men are so set in their habits, nothing but a miracle or hypnotism can save them. He'll end up as a 'lumber Jack,' as the townsmen call the hands in the camps."

  "But he isn't that, Edward. He's finer some way. You feel he is. Ask Mr. Ridgeley."

  Ridgeley merely said: "Yes, he seemed to me to be more than a common hand. But, all the same, it won't be two weeks before he'll be in here as drunk as a wild cat, wanting to shoot me for holding back his money."

  In this way Williams came to be to Mrs. Field a very important figure in the landscape of that region. She often spoke of him, and on the following Saturday night, when Field came home, she anxiously asked, "Is Williams in town?"

  "No, he hasn't shown up yet."

  She clapped her hands in delight. "Good! good! He's going to win his fight."

  Field laughed. "Don't bet on Williams too soon. We'll hear from him before the week is out."

  "When are we going to visit the camp?" she asked, changing the subject.

  "As soon as it warms up a little. It is too cold for you."

  She had a laugh at him. "You were the one who wanted to 'plunge into the snowy vistas.'"

  He evaded her joke on him by assuming a careless tone. "I'm not plunging as much as I was; the snow is too deep."

  "When you go I want to go with you—I want to see Williams."

  "Ha!" he snorted melodramatically. "She scorns me faithful heart. She turns——"

  Mrs. Field smiled faintly. "Don't joke about it Ed. I can't get that wife out of my mind."

  III.

  A few very cold gray days followed, and then the north wind cleared the sky; and, though it was still cold, it was pleasant. The sky had only a small white cloud here and there to make its blueness the more profound.

  Ridgeley dashed up to the door w
ith a hardy little pair of bronchos hitched to a light pair of bobs, and Mrs. Field was tucked in like a babe in a cradle.

  Almost the first thing she asked was, "How is Williams?"

  "Oh, he's getting on nicely. He refused to sleep with his bunk mate, and finally had to lick him, I understand, to shut him up. Challenged the whole camp then to let him alone or take a licking. They let him alone, Lawson says.—G'lang there, you rats!"

  Mrs. Field said no more, for the air was whizzing by her ears, and she hardly dared look out, so keen was the wind, but as soon as they entered the deeps of the forest it was profoundly still.

  The ride that afternoon was a glory she never forgot. Everywhere yellow-greens and purple shadows. The sun in a burnished blue sky flooded the forests with light, striking down through even the thickest pines to lay in fleckings of radiant white and gold upon the snow.

  The trail (it was not a road) ran like a graceful furrow over the hills, around little lakes covered deep with snow, through tamarack swamps where the tracks of wild things thickened, over ridges of tall pine clear of brush, and curving everywhere amid stumps, where dismantled old shanties marked the site of the older logging camps. Sometimes they met teams going to the store. Sometimes they crossed logging roads—wide, smooth tracks artificially iced, down which mountainous loads of logs were slipping, creaking and groaning. Sometimes they heard the dry click-clock of the woodsmen's axes, or the crash of falling trees deep in the wood. When they reached the first camp, Ridgeley pulled up the steaming horses at the door and shouted, "Hello, the camp!"

  A tall old man with a long red beard came out. He held one bare red arm above his eyes. He wore an apron.

  "Hello, Sandy!"

  "Hello, Mr. Ridgeley!"

  "Ready for company?"

  "Am always ready for company," he said, with a Scotch accent.

  "Well, we're coming in to get warm."

  "Vera wal."

  As they went in, under the roofed shed between the cook's shanty and the other and larger shanty, Mrs. Field sniffed. Sandy led them past a large pyramid composed of the scraps of beef bones, eggshells, cans, and tea grounds left over during the winter. In the shed itself hung great slabs of beef.

  It was as untidy and suggestive of slaughter as the nest of a brood of eagles.

  Sandy was beginning dinner on a huge stove spotted with rust and pancake batter. All about was the litter of his preparation. Beef—beef on all sides, and tin dishes and bare benches and huge iron cooking pans.

  Mrs. Field was glad to get out into the sunlight again.

  "What a horrible place! Are they all like that?"

  "No, my camps are not like that—or, I should say, our camps," Ridgeley added, with a smile.

  "Not a gay place at all," said Field, in exaggerated reserve.

  But Mrs. Field found her own camps not much better. True, the refuse was not raised in pyramidal shape before the front door, and the beef was a little more orderly, but the low log huts, the dim cold light, the dingy walls and floors, the lack of any womanly or home touch, the tin dishes, the wholesale cooking, all struck upon her with terrible force.

  "Do human beings live here?" she asked Ridgeley, when he opened the door of the main shanty of No. 6.

  "Forty creatures of the men kind sleep and house here," he replied.

  "To which the socks and things give evidence," said Field promptly, pointing toward the huge stove which sat like a rusty-red cheese in the center of the room. Above it hung scores of ragged gray and red socks and Mackinac boots and jackets which had been washed by the men themselves.

  Around were the grimy bunks where the forty men slept like tramps in a steamer's hold. The quilts were grimy, and the posts greasy and shining with the touch of hands. There were no chairs—only a kind of rude stool made of boards. There were benches near the stove nailed to the rough floor. In each bunk, hanging to a peg, was the poor little imitation-leather hand-bag which contained the whole wardrobe of each man, exclusive of the tattered socks and shirts hanging over the stove.

  The room was chill and cold and gray. It had only two small windows. Its doors were low. Even Mrs. Field was forced to stoop in entering. This made it seem more like a den. There were roller towels in the corner, and washbasins, and a grindstone, which made it seem like a barn. It was, in fact, more cheerless than the barn, and less wholesome.

  "Doesn't that hay in the bunks get a—a—sometimes?" asked Field.

  "Well, yes, I shouldn't wonder, though the men are pretty strict about that. They keep pretty free from that, I think. However, I shouldn't want to run no river chances on the thing myself." Ridgeley smiled at Mrs. Field's shudder of horror.

  "Is this the place?" The men laughed. She had asked that question so many times before.

  "Yes, this is where Mr. Williams hangs out.—Say, Field, you'll need to make some new move to hold your end up against Williams."

  Mrs. Field felt hurt and angry at his rough joke. In the dim corner a cough was heard, and a yellow head raised itself over the bunk board ghastily. His big blue eyes fixed themselves on the lovely woman and he wore a look of childish wonder.

  "Hello, Gus—didn't see you. What's the matter—sick?"

  "Yah, ai baen hwick two days. Ai tank ai lack to hav doketer."

  "All right, I'll send him up. What seems the matter?"

  As they talked, Mrs. Field again chilled with the cold gray comfortlessness of it all; to be sick in such a place! The strange appearance of the man out of his grim corner was startling. She was glad when they drove out into the woods again, where the clear sunshine fell, and the pines stood against the blazing winter sky motionless as iron trees. Her pleasure in the ride was growing less. To her delicate sense this life was sordid, not picturesque. She wondered how Williams endured it. They arrived at No. 8 just as the men were trailing down the road to work after eating their dinner. Their gay-colored jackets of Mackinac wool stood out like trumpet notes in the prevailing white and blue and bronze green.

  The boss and the scaler came out and met them, and after introductions they went into the shanty to dinner. The cook was a deft young Norwegian—a clean, quick, gentlemanly young fellow with a fine brown mustache. He cleared a place for them at one end of the long table, and they sat down.

  It was a large camp, but much like the others. On the table were the same cheap iron forks, the tin plates, and the small tin basins (for tea) which made up the dinner set. Basins of brown sugar stood about.

  "Good gracious! Do people still eat brown sugar? Why, I haven't seen any of that for ages," cried Mrs. Field.

  The stew was good and savory, and the bread fair. The tea was not all clover, but it tasted of the tin. Mrs. Field said:

  "Beef, beef, everywhere beef. One might suppose a menagerie of desert animals ate here. Edward, we must make things more comfortable for our men. They must have cups to drink out of; these basins are horrible."

  It was humorous to the men, this housewifely suggestion.

  "Oh, make it napkins, Allie!"

  "You can laugh, but I sh'an't rest after seeing this. If you thought I was going to say, 'Oh, how picturesque!' you're mistaken. I think it's barbarous."

  She was getting impatient of their patronizing laughter, as if she were a child. They changed their manner to one of acquiescence, but thought of her as a child just the same.

  After dinner they all went out to see the crew working. It was the biggest crew anywhere in the neighborhood, and they sat a long while and watched the men at work. Ridgeley got out and hitched the team to a tree, and took Field up to the skidway. Mrs. Field remained in the sleigh, however.

  Near her "the swamping team," a span of big deep-red oxen, came and went among the green tops of the fallen pines. They crawled along their trails in the snow like some strange machinery, and the boy in a blue jacket moved almost as listlessly. Somewhere in the tangle of refuse boughs the swampers' axes click-clocked, saws uttered their grating, rhythmic snarl, and great trees at intervals shive
red, groaned, and fell with soft, rushing, cracking sweeps into the deep snow, and the swampers swarmed upon them like Lilliputians attacking a giant enemy.

  There was something splendid (though tragic) in the work, but the thought of the homelessness of the men, their terrible beds, and their long hours of toil oppressed the delicate and refined woman. She began to take on culpability. She was partly in authority now, and this system must be changed. She was deep in plans for change, in shanties and in sleeping places, when the men returned.

  Ridgeley was saying: "No, we control about thirty thousand acres of pine as good as that. It ain't what it was twenty years ago, but it's worth money, after all."

  It was getting near to dark as they reached No. 6 again, and Ridgeley drew up and helped them out and into the cook's shanty.

  Mrs. Field was introduced to the cook, a short, rather sullen, but intelligent man. He stood over the red-hot stove, laying great slices of beef in a huge dripping-pan. He had a taffler or assistant in the person of a half-grown boy, at whom he jerked rough orders like hunks of stove wood. Some hit the boy and produced noticeable effects, others did not.

  Meanwhile a triumphant sunset was making the west one splendor of purple and orange and crimson, which came over the cool green rim of the pines like the Valhalla March in Wagner.

  Mrs. Field sat there in the dim room by the window, seeing that splendor flush and fade, and thinking how dangerous it was to ask where one's wealth comes from in the world. Outside, the voices of the men thickened; they were dropping in by twos and fours, with teams and on foot.

  The assistant arranged the basins in rows, and put one of the iron forks and knives on each side of each plate, and filled the sugar-basins and dumped in the cold beans, and split the bread into slabs, and put small pots of tea here and there ready for the hands of the men.

  At last, when the big pans of toast, the big plates of beef, were placed steaming on the table, the cook called Field and Ridgeley and said:

  "Set right here at the end." He raised his arm to a ring which dangled on a wire. "Now look out; you'll see 'em come sidewise." He jerked the ring and disappeared into the kitchen.