Bob and Welton left the buckboard at Sycamore Flats and rode up to the
mill by a détour. There they plunged into active work. The labour of
getting the new enterprise under way proved to be tremendous. A very
competent woods foreman, named Post, was in charge of the actual
logging, so Welton gave his undivided attention to the mill work. All
day the huge peeled timbers slid and creaked along the greased slides,
dragged mightily by a straining wire cable that snapped and swung
dangerously. When they had reached the solid "bank" that slanted down
toward the mill, the obstreperous "bull" donkey lowered its crest of
white steam, coughed, and was still. A man threw over the first of these
timbers a heavy rope, armed with a hook, that another man drove home
with a blow of his sledge. The rope tightened. Over rolled the log, out
from the greased slide, to come, finally, to rest among its fellows at
the entrance to the mill.
Thence it disappeared, moved always by steam-driven hooks, for these
great logs could not be managed by hand implements. The sawyers, at
their levers, controlled the various activities. When the time came the
smooth, deadly steel ribbon of the modern bandsaws hummed hungrily into
the great pines; the automatic roller hurried the new-sawn boards to the
edgers; little cars piled high with them shot out from the cool dimness
into the dazzling sunlight; men armed with heavy canvas or leather
stacked them in the yards; and then----
That was the trouble; and then, nothing!
From this point they should have gone farther. Clamped in rectangular
bundles, pushing the raging white water before their blunt noses, as
strange craft they should have been flashing at regular intervals down
the twisting, turning and plunging course of the flume. Arrived safely
at the bottom, the eight-and twelve-horse teams should have taken them
in charge, dragging them by the double wagon load to the waiting yards
of Marshall & Harding. Nothing of the sort was happening. Welton did not
dare go ahead with the water for fear of prejudicing his own case. The
lumber accumulated. And, as the mill's capacity was great and that of
the yards small, the accumulation soon threatened to become
embarrassing.
Bob acted as Welton's lieutenant. As the older lumberman was at first
occupied in testing out his sawyers, and otherwise supervising the
finished product, Bob was necessarily much in the woods. This suited him
perfectly. Every morning at six he and the men tramped to the scene of
operations. There a dozen crews scattered to as many tasks. Far in the
van the fellers plied their implements. First of all they determined
which way a tree could be made to fall, estimating long and carefully on
the weight of limbs, the slant of the trunk, the slope of ground, all
the elements having to do with the centre of gravity. This having been
determined, the men next chopped notches of the right depth for the
insertion of short boards to afford footholds high enough to enable them
to nick the tree above the swell of the roots. Standing on these springy
and uncertain boards, they began their real work, swinging their axes
alternately, with untiring patience and incomparable accuracy. Slowly,
very slowly, the "nick" grew, a mouth gaping ever wider in the brown
tree. When it had gaped wide enough the men hopped down from their
springboards, laid aside their axes, and betook themselves to the saw.
And when, at last, the wedges inserted in the saw-crack started the
mighty top, the men calmly withdrew the long ribbon of steel and stood
to one side.
[Illustration: The men calmly withdrew the long ribbon of steel and
stood to one side]
After the dust had subsided, and the last reverberations of that mighty
crash had ceased to reëcho through the forest, the fellers stepped
forward to examine their work. They took all things into consideration,
such as old wind shakes, new decay, twist of grain and location of the
limbs. Then they measured off the prostrate trunk into logs of twelve,
fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, or even twenty feet, according to the best
expediency. The division points between logs they notched plainly, and,
shouldering their axes and their sledge and their long, limber saw,
pocketing their wedges and their bottle of coal oil, they moved on to
where the next mighty pine had through all the centuries been awaiting
their coming.
Now arrived on the scene the "swampers" and cross-cut men, swarming over
the prostrate tree like ants over a piece of sugar. Some of them cut off
limbs; others, with axes and crowbars, began to pry away great slabs of
bark; still others, with much precaution of shovel, wedge and axe
against jamming, commenced the slow and laborious undertaking of sawing
apart the logs.
But most interesting and complicated of all were the further processes
of handling the great logs after they had been peeled and sawed.
The ends of steel cables were dragged by a horse to the prostrate tree,
where they were made fast by means of chains and hooks. Then the puffing
and snorting donkey engine near the chute tightened the cable. The log
stirred, moved, plunged its great blunt nose forward, ploughing up the
soil. Small trees and bushes it overrode. But sooner or later it
collided head on, with a large tree, a stump, or a boulder. The cable
strained. Men shouted or waved their arms in signal. The donkey engine
ceased coughing. Then the horse pulled the end of the log free. Behind
it was left a deep trough, a half cylinder scooped from the soil.
At the chutes the logs were laid end to end, like a train of cars. A
more powerful cable, endless, running to the mill and back again, here
took up the burden. At a certain point it was broken by two great hooks.
One of these, the one in advance, the men imbedded in the rear log of
the train. The other was dragged behind. Away from the chutes ten feet
the returning cable snapped through rude pulleys. The train of logs
moved forward slowly and steadily, sliding on the greased ways.
On the knoll the donkey engine coughed and snorted as it heaved the
mighty timbers from the woods. The drag of the logs was sometimes
heavier than the engine, so it had to be anchored by other cables to
strong trees. Between these opposing forces--the inertia of the rooted
and the fallen--it leaped and trembled. At its throttle, underneath a
canopy knocked together of rough boards, the engineer stood, ready from
one instant to another to shut off, speed up, or slow down, according to
the demands of an ever-changing exigence. His was a nervous job, and he
earned his repose.
At the rear of the boiler a boy of eighteen toiled with an axe, chopping
into appropriate lengths the dead wood brought in for fuel. Next year it
would be possible to utilize old tops for this purpose, but now they
were too green. Another boy, in charge of a solemn mule, tramped
ceaselessly back and forth between the engine and a spring that had been
dug out down the hill in a ravine. Before the end of that summer they
had worn a trail so deep and hard and smooth that many seasons of snow
failed to obliterate it even from the soft earth. On either side the
mule were slung sacks of heavy canvas. At the spring the boy filled
these by means of a pail. Returned to the engine, he replenished the
boiler, draining the sacks from the bottom, cast a fleeting glance at
the water gauge of the donkey engine, and hastened back to the spring.
He had charge of three engines; and was busy.
And back along the line of the chutes were other men to fill out this
crew of many activities--old men to signal; young men to stand by with
slush brush, axe, or bar when things did not go well; axe-men with
teams laying accurately new chutes into new country yet untouched.
Bob found plenty to keep him busy. Post, the woods foreman, was a good
chute man. By long experience he had gained practical knowledge of the
problems and accidents of this kind of work. To get the logs out from
the beds in which they lay, across a rugged country, and into the mill
was an engineering proposition of some moment. It is easy to get into
difficulties from which hours of work will not extricate.
But a man involved closely in the practical management of a saw log may
conceivably possess scant leisure to correlate the scattered efforts of
such divergent activities. The cross cutters and swampers may get ahead
of the fellers and have to wait in idleness until the latter have
knocked down a tree. Or the donkey may fall silent from lack of logs to
haul; or the chute crews may smoke their pipes awaiting the donkey. Or,
worst and unpardonable disgrace of all, the mill may ran out of logs!
When that happens, the Old Fellow is usually pretty promptly on the
scene.
Now it is obvious that if somewhere on the works ten men are always
waiting--even though the same ten men are not thus idle over once a
week--the employer is paying for ten men too many. Bob found his best
activity lay in seeing that this did not happen. He rode everywhere
reviewing the work; and he kept it shaken together. Thus he made himself
very useful, he gained rapidly a working knowledge of this new kind of
logging, and, incidentally, he found his lines fallen in very pleasant
places indeed.
The forest never lost its marvel to him, but after he had to some extent
become accustomed to the immense trees, he began to notice the smaller
affairs of the woodland. The dogwoods and azaleas were beginning to come
out; the waxy, crimson snow plants were up; the tiny green meadows near
the heads of streams were enamelled with flowers; hundreds of species of
birds sang and flashed and scratched and crept and soared. The smaller
animals were everywhere. The sun at noon disengaged innumerable and
subtle tepid odours of pine and blossom.
One afternoon, a little less than a week subsequent to the beginning of
work, Bob, riding home through the woods by a détour around a hill, came
upon sheep. They were scattered all over the hill, cropping busily at
the snowbush, moving ever slowly forward. A constant murmur arose, a
murmur of a silent, quick, minute activity. Occasionally some mother
among them lifted her voice. Bob sat his horse looking silently on the
shifting grays. In ten seconds his sight blurred; he experienced a
slight giddiness as though the substantial ground were shifting beneath
him in masses, slowly, as in a dream. It gave him a curious feeling of
instability. By an effort he focused his eyes; but almost immediately he
caught himself growing fuzzy-minded again, exactly as though he had been
gazing absently for a considerable period at a very bright light. He
shook himself.
"I don't wonder sheep herders go dotty," said he aloud.
He looked about him, and for the first time became aware of a tow-headed
youth above him on the hill. The youth leaned on a staff, and at his
feet crouched two long-haired dogs. Bob turned his horse in that
direction.
When he had approached, he saw the boy to be about seventeen years old.
His hair was very light, as were his eyebrows and eyelashes. Only a
decided tinge of blue in his irises saved him from albinism. His lips
were thick and loose, his nose flat, his expression vacant. In contrast,
the two dogs, now seated on their haunches, their heads to one side,
their ears cocked up, their eyes bright, looked to be the more
intelligent animals.
"Good evening," said Bob.
The boy merely stared.
"You in charge of the sheep?" inquired the young man presently.
The boy grunted.
"Where are you camped?" persisted Bob.
No answer.
"Where's your boss?"
A faint gleam came into the sheep-herder's eyes. He raised his arm and
pointed across through the woods.
Bob reined his horse in the direction indicated. As he passed the last
of the flock in that direction, he caught sight of another herder and
two more dogs. This seemed to be a bearded man of better appearance than
the boy; but he too leaned motionless on his long staff; he too gazed
unblinking on the nibbling, restless, changing, imbecile sheep.
As Bob looked, this man uttered a shrill, long-drawn whistle. Like
arrows from bows the two dogs darted away, their ears flat, their bodies
held low to the ground. The whistle was repeated by the youth.
Immediately his dogs also glided forward. The noise of quick, sharp
barkings was heard. At once the slow, shifting movement of the masses of
gray ceased. The sound of murmurous, deep-toned bells, of bleating, of
the movement of a multitude arose. The flock drew to a common centre; it
flowed slowly forward. Here and there the dark bodies of the dogs
darted, eager and intelligently busy. The two herders followed after,
leaning on their long staffs. Over the hill passed the flock. Slowly the
sounds of them merged into a murmur. It died. Only remained the fog of
dust drifting through the trees, caught up by every passing current of
air, light and impalpable as powder.
Bob continued on his way, but had not proceeded more than a few hundred
feet before he was overtaken by Lejeune.
"You're the man I was looking for," said Bob. "I see you got your sheep
in all right. Have any trouble?"
The sheepman's teeth flashed.
"Not'tall," he replied. "I snik in ver' easy up by Beeg Rock."
At the mill, Bob, while luxuriously splashing the ice cold water on his
face and throat, took time to call to Welton in the next room.
"Saw your sheep man," he proffered. "He got in all right, sheep and
all."
Welton appeared in the doorway, mopping his round, red face with a
towel.
"Funny we haven't heard from Plant, then," said he. "That fat man must
be keeping track of Leejune's where-abouts, or he's easier than I
thought he was."