"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 weel."
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, egg-shells, cans, and tea
grounds left over during the winter. In the shed itself hung great slabs
of beef.
It was all 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
centre 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
helped to make it seem like a den. There were roller-towels in the
corner and wash-basins, and a grindstone which made it seem like a
barn. It was, in fact, more cheerless than a 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 bugs, 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 as a yellow head raised itself over the bunk-board
a man presented a ghastly face. His big blue eyes fixed themselves on
the lovely woman with 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 silent
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 sealer 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 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 sha'n'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. Ridgeley got out and hitched
the team to a tree, and took Field up to the skidway. Mrs. Field
remained in the sleigh.
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 shivered, 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 improvement, 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 either 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.
A sudden tumult, shouts, trampling, laughter, and the door burst open
and they streamed in: Norwegians, French, half-breeds--dark-skinned
fellows, all of them, save the Norwegians. They came like a flood, but
they fell silent at sight of a woman, so beautiful and strange to them.
All words ceased. They sank into place beside the table with the thump
of falling sand-bags. They were all in their shirt-sleeves, but with
faces cleanly washed, and the most of them had combed their hair; but
they seemed very wild and hairy to Mrs. Field. She looked at her husband
and Ridgeley with a grateful pleasure; it was so restful to have them
close beside her.
The men ate like hungry dogs. They gorged in silence. Nothing was heard
but the clank of knives on tin plates, the drop of heavy platters of
food, and the occasional muttered words of some one asking for the bread
or the gravy.
As they ate they furtively looked with great curiosity and admiration up
at the dainty woman. Their eyes were bright and large, and gleamed out
of the obscure brown of their dimly lighted faces with savage
intensity--so it seemed to Mrs. Field, and she dropped her eyes before
their glare.
Her husband and Ridgeley tried to enter into conversation with those
sitting near. Ridgeley seemed on good terms with them all, and ventured
a joke or word, at which they laughed with terrific energy, and fell as
suddenly silent again.
As Mrs. Field looked up the second time she saw the dark, strange face
of Williams a few places down, and opposite her. His eyes were fixed on
her husband's hands with a singular intensity. Her eyes followed his,
and the beauty of her husband's hands came to her again with new force.
They were perfectly shaped, supple, warm-colored, and strong. Their
color and deftness stood out in vivid contrast to the heavy, brown,
cracked, and calloused, paw-like hands of the workmen.
Why should Williams study her husband's hands? If he had looked at her
she would not have been surprised. The other men she could read. They
expressed either frank, simple admiration or furtive desire. But this
man looked at her husband, and his eyes fell often upon his own hands,
which trembled with fatigue. He handled his knife clumsily, and yet she
could see he, too, had a fine hand--a slender, powerful hand, like that
people call an artist hand--a craftsman-like hand.
He saw her looking at him, and he flashed one enigmatical glance into
her eyes, and rose to go out.
"How you getting on, Williams?" Ridgeley asked.
Williams resented his question. "Oh, I'm all right," he said, sullenly.
The meal was all over in an incredibly short time. One by one, two by
two, they rose heavily and lumbered out with one last, wistful look at
Mrs. Field. She will never know how seraphic she seemed sitting there
amid those rough surroundings--the dim, red light of the kerosene lamp
falling across her clear pallor, out of which her dark eyes shone with
liquid softness, made deeper and darker by her half-sorrowful tenderness
for these homeless fellows.
An hour later, as they were standing at the door, just ready to take to
their sleigh, they heard the scraping of a fiddle.
"Oh, some one is going to play!" Mrs. Field cried, with visions of the
rollicking good times she had heard so much about, and of which she had
seen nothing so far. "Can't I look in?"
Ridgeley was dubious. "I'll go and see," he said, and entered the door.
"Boys, Mrs. Field wants to look in a minute. Go on with your fiddling,
Sam--only I wanted to see that you weren't sitting around in dishabill."
This seemed a good joke, and they all howled and haw-hawed gleefully.
"So go right ahead with your evening prayers. All but--you understand!"
"All right, captain," said Sam, the man with the fiddle.
When Mrs. Field looked in, two men were furiously grinding axes; several
were sewing on ragged garments; all were smoking; some were dressing
chapped or bruised fingers. The atmosphere was horrible. The socks and
shirts were steaming above the huge stove; the smoke and stench for a
moment were sickening, but Ridgeley pushed them just inside the door.
"It's better out of the draught."
Sam jigged away on the violin. The men kept time with the cranks of the
grindstone, and all faces turned with bashful smiles and bold grins at
Mrs. Field. Most of them shrank a little from her look, like shy
animals.
Ridgeley threw open the window. "In the old days," he explained to Mrs.
Field, "we used a fireplace, and that kept the air better."
As her sense of smell became deadened the air seemed a little more
tolerable to Mrs. Field.
"Oh, we must change all this," she said. "It is horrible."
"Play us a tune," said Sam, extending the violin to Field. He did not
think Field could play. It was merely a shot in the dark on his part.
Field took it and looked at it and sounded it. On every side the men
turned face in eager expectancy.
"He can play, that feller."
"I'll bet he can. He handles her as if he knew her."
"You bet your life. Tune up, Cap."
Williams came from the obscurity somewhere, and looked over the
shoulders of the men.
"Down in front!" somebody called, and the men took seats on the benches,
leaving Field standing with the violin in hand. He smiled around upon
them in a frank, pleased way, quite ready to show his skill. He played
_Annie Laurie_, and a storm of applause broke out.
"_Hoo-ray!_ Bully for you!"
"Sam, you're out of it!"
"Sam, your name is Mud!"
"Give us another, Cap!"
"It ain't the same fiddle!"
He played again some simple tune, and he played it with the touch which
showed the skilled amateur. As he played, Mrs. Field noticed a growing
restlessness on Williams' part. He moved about uneasily. He gnawed at
his finger-nails. His eyes glowed with a singular fire. His hands
drummed and fingered. At last he approached, and said, roughly:
"Let me take that fiddle a minute."
"Oh, cheese it, Williams!" the men cried. "Let the other man play."
"What do _you_ want to do with the fiddle--think it's a music-box?"
asked Sam, its owner.
"Go to hell!" said Williams. As Field gave the violin over to him, his
hands seemed to tremble with eagerness.
He raised his bow, and struck into an imposing, brilliant strain, and
the men fell back in astonishment.
"Well, I'll be damned!" gasped the owner of the violin.
"Keep quiet, Sam."