Blazed Trail Stories

by White, Stewart Edward

  “Th’ log is sound and good, an’ ye’ll scale it, or I’ll know th’ reason why!”

  “I will not,” replied FitzPatrick.

  The following day he culled a log in another and distant skidway whose butt showed a slant of a good six inches. The day following he culled another of the same sort on still another skidway. He examined it closely, then sought the Rough Red.

  “It is useless, Jimmy Bourke,” said he, “to be hauling of the same poor log from skidway to skidway. You can shift her to every travoy trail in th’ Crother tract, but it will do ye little good. I’ll cull it wherever I find it, and never will ye get th’ scale of that log.”

  The Rough Red raised his hand, then dropped it again; whirled away with a curse; whirled back with another, and spat out:

  “By God, FitzPatrick, ye go too far! Ye’ve hounded me and harried me through th’ woods all th’ year! By God, ‘tis a good stick, an’ ye shall scale it!”

  “Yo’ and yore Old Fellows is robbers alike!” cried one of the men.

  FitzPatrick turned on his heel and resumed his work. The men ceased theirs and began to talk.

  That night was Christmas Eve. After supper the Rough Red went directly from the cook-camp to the men’s camp. FitzPatrick, sitting lonely in the little office, heard the sounds of debauch rising steadily like mysterious storm winds in distant pines. He shrugged his shoulders, and tallied his day’s scaling, and turned into his bunk wearily, for of holidays there are none in the woods, save Sunday. About midnight someone came in. FitzPatrick, roused from his sleep by aimless blunderings, struck a light, and saw the cook looking uncertainly toward him through blood-clotted lashes. The man was partly drunk, partly hurt, but more frightened.

  “They’s too big fer me, too big fer me!” he repeated, thickly.

  FitzPatrick kicked aside the blankets and set foot on the floor.

  “Le’ me stay,” pleaded the cook, “I won’t bother you; I won’t even make a noise. I’m skeered!”

  “Course you can stay,” replied the scaler. “Come here.”

  He washed the man’s forehead, and bound up the cut with surgeon’s plaster from the van. The man fell silent, looking at him in wonderment for such kindness.

  Four hours later, dimly, through the mist of his broken sleep, FitzPatrick heard the crew depart for the woods in the early dawn. On the crest of some higher waves of consciousness were borne to him drunken shouts, maudlin blasphemies. After a time he arose and demanded breakfast.

  The cook, pale and nervous, served him. The man was excited, irresolute, eager to speak. Finally he dropped down on the bench opposite FitzPatrick, and began.

  “Fitz,” said he, “don’t go in th’ woods to-day. The men is fair wild wid th’ drink, and th’ Rough Red is beside hi’self. Las’ night I heerd them. They are goin’ to skid the butt log again, and they swear that if you cull it again, they will kill you. They mean it. That’s all why they wint to th’ woods this day.”

  FitzPatrick swallowed his coffee in silence. In silence he arose and slipped on his mackinaw blanket coat. In silence he thrust his beechwood tablets into his pocket, and picked his pliable scaler’s rule from the corner.

  “Where are ye goin’?” asked the cook, anxiously.

  “I’m goin’ to do th’ work they pay me to do,” answered FitzPatrick.

  He took his way down the trail, his face set straight before him, the smoke of his breath streaming behind. The first skidway he scaled with care, laying his rule flat across the face of each log, entering the figures on his many-leaved tablets of beech, marking the timbers swiftly with his blue crayon.

  The woods were empty. No ring of the axe, no shout of the driver, no fall of the tree broke the silence. FitzPatrick comprehended. He knew that at the next skidway the men were gathered, waiting to see what he would do; gathered openly at last in that final hostility which had been maturing all winter. He knew, besides, that most of them were partly drunk and wholly reckless, and that he was alone. Nevertheless, after finishing conscientiously skidway number one, he moved on to skidway number two.

  There, as he had expected, the men were waiting in ominous silence, their eyes red with debauch and hate. FitzPatrick paid them no heed, but set about his business.

  Methodically, deliberately, he did the work. Then, when the last pencil-mark had been made, and the tablets had been closed with a snap of finality, the Rough Red stepped forward.

  “Ye have finished with this skidway?” asked the foreman in soft cat-tones.

  “I have,” answered FitzPatrick, briefly.

  “Yo’ have forgot to scale one stick.”

  “No.”

  “There is a stick still not marked.”

  “I culled it.”

  “Why?”

  “It was not sawed straight.”

  FitzPatrick threw his head back proudly, answering his man at ease, as an accomplished swordsman. The Rough Red shifted his feet, almost awed in spite of himself. One after another the men dropped their eyes and stood ill at ease. The scaler turned away; his heel caught a root; he stumbled; instantly the pack was on him, for the power of his eye was broken.

  Mad with rage they kicked and beat and tore at FitzPatrick’s huddled form long after consciousness had left it. Then an owl hooted from the shadow of the wood, or a puff of wind swept by, or a fox barked, or some other little thing happened, so that in blind unreasoning panic they fled. The place was deserted, save for the dark figure against the red-and-white snow.

  FitzPatrick regained his wits in pain, and so knew he was still on earth. Every movement cost him a moan, and some agency outside himself inflicted added torture. After a long time he knew it was the cook, who was kindly kneading his limbs and knuckling his hair. The man proved to be in a maze of wonderment over his patient’s tenacity of life.

  “I watched ye,” he murmured soothingly, “I did not dare interfere. But I kem to yo’ ‘s soon as I could. See, here’s a fire that I built for ye, and some tea. Take a little. And no bones broke! True for ye, ye’re a hearty man, and strong with th’ big muscles on ye fit to fight th’ Rough Red man to man. Get th’ use of yere legs, darlint, an’ I’ll tak’ ye to camp, for its fair drunk they are by now. Sure an’ I tole ye they’d kill ye!”

  “But they didn’t,” muttered FitzPatrick with a gleam of humour.

  “Sure ‘twas not their fault—nor yer own!”

  Hours later, as it seemed, they moved slowly in the direction of camp. The cold had stiffened FitzPatrick’s cuts and bruises. Every step shot a red wave of torture through his arteries to his brain. They came in sight of camp. It was silent. Both knew that the men had drunk themselves into a stupor.

  “I’d like t’ kill th’ whole lay-out as she sleeps,” snarled the cook, shaking his fist.

  “So would I,” replied FitzPatrick.

  Then as they looked, a thin wreath of smoke curled from under the open doorway and spread lazily in the frosty air. Another followed; another; still another. The cabin was afire.

  “They’ve kicked over th’ stove again,” said FitzPatrick, seating himself on a stump. His eyes blazed with wrath and bitterness.

  “What yo’ goin’ to do?” asked the cook.

  “Sit here,” replied FitzPatrick, grimly.

  The cook started forward.

  “Stop!” shouted the scaler, fiercely; “if you move a step, I’ll break your back!”

  The cook stared at him through saucer eyes.

  “But they’d be burnt alive!” he objected, wildly.

  “They ought to be,” snarled the scaler; “it ain’t their fault I’m here to help them. ‘Tis their own deed that I’m now lyin’ beyant there in th’ forest, unable to help myself. Do you understand? I’m yet out there in th’ woods!”

  “Ah, wirra, wirra!” wailed the cook, wringing his hands. “Th’ poor lads!” He began to weep.

  FitzPatrick stared straight in front of him for a moment. Then he struck his forehead, and with wonderful agility,
considering the injuries he had but just received, tore down the hill in the direction of the smouldering cabin. The cook followed him joyfully. Together they put out the fire. The men snored like beasts, undisturbed by all the tumult.

  “‘Tis th’ soft heart ye have after all, Fitz,” said the cook, delightedly, as the two washed their hands in preparation for a lunch. “Ye could not bear t’ see th’ lads burn.”

  FitzPatrick glowered at him for an instant from beneath his square brows.

  “They can go to hell for all of me,” he answered, finally, “but my people want these logs put in this winter, an’ there’s nobody else to put them in.”

  *

  IV

  THE RIVER-BOSS

  “Obey orders if you break owners” is a good rule, but a really efficient river-boss knows a better. It runs, “Get the logs out. Get them out peaceably if you can, but get them out.” He does not need a field-telephone to headquarters to teach him how to live up to the spirit of this rule. That might involve headquarters.

  Jimmy was such a river-boss. Therefore when Mr. Daly, of the firm of Morrison & Daly, unexpectedly contracted to deliver five million feet of logs on a certain date, and the logs an impossible number of miles up river, he called in Jimmy.

  Jimmy was a small man, changeless as the Egyptian sphinx. A number of years ago a French comic journal published a series of sketches supposed to represent the Shah of Persia influenced by various emotions. Under each was an appropriate caption, such as Surprise, Grief, Anger, or Astonishment. The portraits were identically alike, and uniformly impassive.

  Well, that was Jimmy. He looked always the same. His hair, thick and black, grew low on his forehead; his beard, thick and black, mounted over the ridge of his cheek-bones; and his eyebrows, thick and black, extended in an uninterrupted straight line from one temple to the other. Whatever his small, compact, muscular body might be doing, the mask of his black and white imperturbability remained always unchanged. Generally he sat clasping one knee, staring directly in front of him, and puffing regularly on a “meerschaum” pipe he had earned by saving the tags of Spearhead tobacco. Whatever you said to him sank without splash into this almost primal calm and was lost to your view forever. Perhaps after a time he might do something about it, but always without explanation, calmly, with the lofty inevitability of fate. In fact, he never explained himself, even to his employers.

  Daly swung his bulk back and forth in the office chair. Jimmy sat bolt upright, his black hat pendant between his knees.

  “I want you to take charge of the driving crew, Jimmy,” said the big man; “I want you to drive those logs down to our booms as fast as you can. I give you about twenty days. It ought to be done in that. Sanders will keep time for you, and Merrill will cook. You can get a pretty good crew from the East Branch, where the drive is just over.”

  When Daly had quite finished his remarks, Jimmy got up and went out without a word. Two days later he and sixty men were breaking rollways forty-five miles up-stream.

  Jimmy knew as well as Daly that the latter had given him a hard task. Twenty days was too brief a time. However, that was none of his business.

  The logs, during the winter, had been piled in the bed of the stream. They extended over three miles of rollways. Jimmy and his crew began at the down-stream end to tumble the big piles into the current. Sometimes only two or three logs would rattle down; at others the whole deck would bulge outward, hover for a moment, and roar into the stream like grain from an elevator. Shortly the narrows below the rollways jammed. Twelve men were detailed as the jam crew. Their business was to keep the stream free in order that the constantly increasing supply from the rollways might not fill up the river. It was not an easy business, nor a very safe. As the “jam” strung out over more and more of the river, the jam crew was constantly recruited from the men on the rollways. Thus some of the logs, a very few, the luckiest, drifted into the dam pond at Grand Rapids within a few days; the bulk jammed and broke and jammed again at a point a few miles below the rollways, while a large proportion stranded, plugged, caught, and tangled at the very rollways themselves.

  Jimmy had permitted himself two days in which to “break out” the rollways. It was done in two. Then the “rear” was started. Men in the rear crew had to see that every last log got into the current. When a jam broke, the middle of it shot down-stream in a most spectacular fashion, but along the banks “winged out” most distressingly. Sometimes the heavy sticks of timber had been forced right out on the dry land. The rear crew lifted them back. When an obstinate log grounded, they jumped cheerfully into the water—with the rotten ice swirling around them—and pried the thing off bottom. Between times they stood upright on single, unstable logs and pushed mightily with poles, while the ice-water sucked in and out of their spiked river shoes.

  As for the compensations, naturally there was a good deal of rivalry between the men on the right and left banks of the river as to which “wing” should advance the fastest; and one experiences a certain physical thrill in venturing under thirty feet of jammed logs for the sole purpose of teasing the whole mass to cascade down on one, or of shooting a rapid while standing upright on a single timber. I believe, too, it is considered the height of glory to belong to a rear crew. Still, the water is cold and the hours long, and you have to sleep in a tent.

  It can readily be seen that the progress of the “rear” measures the progress of the drive. Some few logs in the “jam” may run fifty miles a day—and often do—but if the sacking has gone slowly at the rear, the drive may not have gained more than a thousand yards. Therefore Jimmy stayed at the rear.

  Jimmy was a mighty good riverman. Of course he had nerve, and could do anything with a log and a peavy, and would fight at the drop of a hat—any “bully boy” would qualify there—but also he had judgment. He knew how to use the water, how to recognise the key log of jams, where to place his men—in short, he could get out the logs. Now Jimmy also knew the river from one end to the other, so he had arranged in his mind a sort of schedule for the twenty days. Forty-eight hours for the rollways; a day and a half to the upper rapids; three days into the dam pond; one day to sluice the drive through the Grand Rapids dam; three days for the Crossing; and so on. If everything went well, he could do it, but there must be no hitches in the programme.

  Even from this imperfect fragment of the schedule the inexperienced might imagine Jimmy had allowed an altogether disproportionate time to cover the mile or so from the rapids to the dam pond. As it turned, however, he found he had not allowed enough, for at this point the river was peculiar and very trying.

  The backwater of the dam extended up-stream a half mile; then occurred a rise of four feet, down the slope of which the water whirled and tumbled, only to spread out over a broad fan of gravel shallows. These shallows did the business. When the logs had bumped through the tribulations of the rapids, they seemed to insist obstinately on resting in the shallows, like a lot of wearied cattle. The rear crew had to wade in. They heaved and pried and pushed industriously, and at the end of it had the satisfaction of seeing a single log slide reluctantly into the current. Sometimes a dozen of them would clamp their peavies on either side, and by sheer brute force carry the stick to deep water. When you reflect that there were some twenty thousand pieces in the drive, and that a good fifty per cent. of them balked below the rapids, you can see that a rear crew of thirty men had its work cut out for it. Jimmy’s three days were three-fourths gone, and his job not more than a third finished. McGann, the sluice boss, did a little figuring.

  “She’ll hang over thim twinty days,” he confided to Jimmy. “Shure!”

  Jimmy replied not a word, but puffed piston-like smoke from his pipe. McGann shrugged in Celtic despair.

  But the little man had been figuring, too, and his arrangements were more elaborate and more nearly completed than McGann suspected. That very morning he sauntered leisurely out over the rear logs, his hands in his pocket
s. Every once in a while he stopped to utter a few low-voiced words to one or another of the men. The person addressed first looked extremely astonished; then shouldered his peavy and started for camp, leaving the diminished rear a prey to curiosity. Soon the word went about. “Day and night work,” they whispered, though it was a little difficult to see the difference in ultimate effectiveness between a half crew working all the time and a whole crew working half the time.

  About now Daly began to worry. He took the train to Grand Rapids, anxiety written deep in his brows. When he saw the little inadequate crew pecking in a futile fashion at the logs winged out over the shallows, he swore fervidly and sought Jimmy.

  Jimmy appeared calm.

  “We’ll get them out all right, Mr. Daly,” said he.

  “Get them out!” growled Daly. “Sure! But when? We ain’t got all the summer this season. Those logs have got to hit our booms in fourteen days or they’re no good to us!”

  “You’ll have ‘em,” assured Jimmy.

  Such talk made Daly tired, and he said so.

  “Why, it’ll take you a week to get her over those confounded shallows,” he concluded. “You got to get more men, Jimmy.”

  “I’ve tried,” answered the boss. “They ain’t no more men to be had.”

  “Suffering Moses!” groaned the owner. “It means the loss of a fifty-thousand-dollar contract to me. You needn’t tell me! I’ve been on the river all my life. I know you can’t get them off inside of a week.”

  “I’ll have ‘em off to-morrow morning, but it may cost a little something,” asserted Jimmy, calmly.

  Daly took one look at the mass of logs, and the fifteen men pulling out an average of one a minute. Then he returned in disgust to the city, where he began to adjust his ideas to a loss on his contract.

  At sundown the rear crew quit work, and swarmed to the encampment of white tents on the river-bank. There they hung wet clothes over a big skeleton framework built around a monster fire, and ate a dozen eggs apiece as a side dish to supper, and smoked pipes of strong “Peerless” tobacco, and swapped yarns, and sang songs, and asked questions. To the latter they received no satisfactory replies. The crew that had been laid off knew nothing. It appeared they were to go to work after supper. After supper, however, Jimmy told them to turn in and get a little more sleep. They did turn in, and speedily forgot to puzzle.