Bob was awakened before daylight by the unholy shriek of a great
whistle. He then realized that for some time he had been vaguely aware
of kindling and stove sounds. The bare little room had become bitterly
cold. A gray-blackness represented the world outside. He lighted his
glass lamp and took a hasty, shivering sponge bath in the crockery
basin. Then he felt better in the answering glow of his healthy,
straight young body; and a few moments later was prepared to enjoy a
fragrant, new-lit, somewhat smoky fire in the big stove outside his
door. The bell rang. Men knocked ashes from their pipes and arose; other
men stamped in from outside. The dining room was filled.
Bob took his seat, nodding to the men. A slightly grumpy silence
reigned. Collins and Fox had not yet appeared. Bob saw Roaring Dick at
the other table, rather whiter than the day before, but carrying himself
boldly in spite of his poor head. As he looked, Roaring Dick caught his
eye. The riverman evidently did not recognize having seen the young
stranger the day before; but Bob was again conscious of the quick impact
of the man's personality, quite out of proportion to his diminutive
height and slender build. At the end of ten minutes the men trooped out
noisily. Shortly a second whistle blew. At the signal the mill awoke.
The clang of machinery, beginning slowly, increased in tempo. The
exultant shriek of the saws rose to heaven. Bob, peering forth into the
young daylight, caught the silhouette of the elephantine tram horse,
high in the air, bending his great shoulders to the starting of his
little train of cars.
Not knowing what else to do, Bob sauntered to the office. It was locked
and dark. He returned to the boarding house, and sat down in the main
room. The lamps became dimmer. Finally the chore boy put them out. Then
at last Collins appeared, followed closely by Fox.
"You didn't get up to eat with the men?" the bookkeeper asked Bob a
trifle curiously. "You don't need to do that. We eat with Mrs. Hallowell
at seven."
At eight o'clock the little bookkeeper opened the office door and
ushered Bob in to the scene of his duties.
"You're to help me," said Collins concisely. "I have the books. Our
other duties are to make out time checks for the men, to answer the
correspondence in our province, to keep track of camp supplies, and to
keep tab on shipments and the stock on hand and sawed each day. There's
your desk. You'll find time blanks and everything there. The copying
press is in the corner. Over here is the tally board," He led the way to
a pine bulletin, perhaps four feet square, into which were screwed a
hundred or more small brass screw hooks. From each depended a small pine
tablet or tag inscribed with many figures. "Do you understand a tally
board?" Collins asked.
"No," replied Bob.
"Well, these screw hooks are arranged just like a map of the lumber
yards. Each hook represents one of the lumber piles--or rather the
location of a lumber pile. The tags hanging from them represent the
lumber piles themselves; see?"
"Sure," said Bob. Now that he understood he could follow out on this
strange map the blocks, streets and alleys of that silent, tenantless
city.
"On these tags," pursued Collins, "are figures. These figures show how
much lumber is in each pile, and what kind it is, and of what quality.
In that way we know just what we have and where it is. The sealers
report to us every day just what has been shipped out, and what has been
piled from the mill. From their reports we change the figures on the
tags. I'm going to let you take care of that."
Bob bestowed his long figure at the desk assigned him, and went to work.
He was interested, for it was all new to him. Men were constantly in and
out on all sorts of errands. Fox came to shake hands and wish him well;
he was off on the ten o'clock train. Bob checked over a long invoice of
camp supplies; manipulated the copying press; and, under Collins's
instructions, made out time checks against the next pay day. The
insistence of details kept him at the stretch until noon surprised him.
After dinner and a breath of fresh air, he plunged again into his tasks.
Now he had the scalers' noon reports to transfer to the tally board. He
was intensely interested by the novelty of it all; but even this early
he encountered his old difficulties in the matter of figures. He made no
mistakes, but in order to correlate, remember and transfer correctly he
was forced to an utterly disproportionate intensity of application. To
the tally board he brought more absolute concentration and will-power
than did Collins to all his manifold tasks. So evidently painstaking was
he, that the little bookkeeper glanced at him sharply once or twice.
However, he said nothing.
When darkness approached the bookkeeper closed his ledger and came over
to Bob's desk. In ten minutes he ran deftly over Bob's afternoon work;
re-checking the supply invoices, verifying the time checks, comparing
the tallies with the scalers' reports. So swiftly and accurately did he
accomplish this, with so little hesitation and so assured a belief in
his own correctness that the really taxing job seemed merely a bit of
light mental gymnastics after the day's work.
"Good!" he complimented Bob; "everything's correct."
Bob nodded, a little gloomily. It might be correct; but he was very
tired from the strain of it.
"It'll come easier with practice," said Collins; "always difficult to do
a new thing."
The whistle blew. Bob went directly to his room and sat down on the
edge of his bed. In spite of Collins's kindly meant reassurances, the
iron of doubt had entered his soul. He had tried for four months, and
was no nearer facility than when he started.
"If a man hadn't learned better than that, I'd have called him a dub and
told him to get off the squad," he said to himself, a little bitterly.
He thought a moment. "I guess I'm tired. I must buck up. If Collins and
Archie can do it, I can. It's all in the game. Of course, it takes time
and training. Get in the game!"