Great American Industries Series
TWO YOUNG LUMBERMEN
OR
FROM MAINE TO OREGON FOR FORTUNE
BY EDWARD STRATEMEYER
Author of "At the Fall of Montreal," "Young Explorers of the
Isthmus," "American Boy's Life of William McKinley,"
"Old Glory Series," "Between Boer and
Briton," "On to Pekin," etc.
_ILLUSTRATED BY A. B. SHUTE_
BOSTON
LEE AND SHEPARD
1903
Published, October, 1903
COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY LEE AND SHEPARD
_All rights reserved_
Norwood Press
BERWICK & SMITH
Norwood, Mass.
U. S. A.
PREFACE
"TWO YOUNG LUMBERMEN" is a complete story in itself, but forms
the first volume of a line to be issued under the general title of
"Great American Industries Series."
In beginning this series, I have in mind to acquaint our boys and young
men with the main details of a number of industries which have become
of prime importance, not alone to ourselves as a nation, but likewise
to a large part of the world in general.
Our United States is a large country and consequently the industries
are many, yet none is perhaps of greater importance than that of the
lumber trade. Lumber gives us material for our buildings and our ships,
our railroads and our telegraph lines, and furnishes the pulp from
which millions of pounds of paper are made annually. We export lumber
to Europe, to the West Indies, and even to the Orient, drawing on a
forest treasure that covers thousands of square miles of territory.
The tale opens in Maine, which in years gone by was the paradise of
the American lumberman. In those days pine was king, and Maine became
known far and wide as the Pine Tree State. When the best of the pine
had disappeared, spruce claimed the logger's attention; and then the
lumberman looked elsewhere for his timber, first in Michigan and along
the Great Lakes, and in the South, and then in California, and in that
vast section of our country drained by the Columbia (or Oregon) River.
The two young lumbermen of this story are hardly heroes in the accepted
sense of that term. They are bright youths of to-day, willing to
work hard for what they get, but always on the alert to better their
condition. As choppers, river-drivers, mill hands, and general camp
workers they have a variety of adventures, but only such as fall to the
lot of more than one lumberman working in the woods of Maine, Michigan,
or Oregon to-day. It was in the Far West that they found their greatest
opportunity for advancement, and how they made the most of that chance
is described in the pages which follow.
In presenting this work the author desires once again to thank the many
who have interested themselves in his previous books. May they find the
reading of this volume even more interesting and profitable.
EDWARD STRATEMEYER.
_August 1, 1903._
CONTENTS
I. A TALK ABOUT EMPLOYMENT
II. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE BROOK
III. TWO YOUNG LUMBERMEN AT HOME
IV. A FRESH START
V. SOMETHING ABOUT THE MAINE LUMBER TRADE
VI. DEEP IN THE WOODS
VII. THE DANGERS OF LOG-ROLLING
VIII. CHRISTMAS, AND AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL
IX. DALE AND OWEN SPEAK THEIR MIND
X. WHAT HAPPENED IN THE WOODS
XI. SPRINGTIME IN THE CAMP
XII. THE LODGE AT PINE TREE LAKE
XIII. A LOG JAM ON THE PENOBSCOT
XIV. BERTIE AND GERTRUDE
XV. TWO LITTLE RUNAWAYS
XVI. PURSUED BY THE FOREST FIRE
XVII. THE RAGING OF THE ELEMENTS
XVIII. BOUND FOR THE GREAT LAKES
XIX. A TALK ON THE TRAIN
XX. AT JOHN HOOVER'S HOME
XXI. AN UNSIGNED CONTRACT
XXII. A LUMBER BOAT IN A STORM
XXIII. OFF FOR OREGON
XXIV. SOMETHING ABOUT THE NORTHWEST LUMBER INDUSTRY
XXV. AN INTERVIEW WITH ULMER BALASCO
XXVI. IN AN OREGON FOREST
XXVII. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LOG TRAIN
XXVIII. JEFFERSON WILBUR SEEKS INFORMATION
XXIX. MATTERS OF IMPORTANCE
XXX. ULMER BALASCO SHOWS HIS HAND
XXXI. THE CRISIS
XXXII. AN UNEXPECTED APPOINTMENT
XXXIII. THE RAILROAD CONTRACT
XXXIV. DALE COMES INTO HIS OWN
XXXV. END OF THE CONTRACT AND OF THE STORY
ILLUSTRATIONS
"Want a job, eh?"
It leaped forward with lowered antlers directly for the young lumberman.
"Jump! Don't wait! Jump!" yelled Owen.
"A bear!" cried Dale.
Logs rose and fell in front and on each side of them.
"Have ye got 'em?" he demanded, in a shrill voice.
"Hurrah! it's down!" cried Dale.
Ulmer Balasco shook his fist in the young lumberman's face.
TWO YOUNG LUMBERMEN
CHAPTER I
A TALK ABOUT EMPLOYMENT
"Do you mean to tell me that Hickley said he wouldn't send over that
lot of logs I ordered last week?"
"That is what he said, Mr. Larson. He is short himself, and said he
told you he thought he couldn't spare them. Not a drive has come down
the river for three weeks."
"I know that, Bradford." John Larson, the owner of the Enterprise
Lumber Mill, rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "It's hard luck. I guess
I'll have to shut down after all. And I was calculating to keep you all
working."
The face of Dale Bradford became as serious as that of his employer.
"How soon will you close up the mill?" he asked after a pause.
"As soon as those logs over yonder are cut up." The owner of the
sawmill kicked a block of wood out of his way rather savagely. "It's a
shame not to get logs, with so much timber cut ready to use."
"The pulp mill is what's done it," replied Dale. "They have a big
contract to fill, so I was told over in Oldtown, and so they are
willing to pay big prices for any sort of stuff."
"You're right, Bradford. They'll buy little sticks that we couldn't
afford to handle."
"What we've got on hand won't keep us going longer than Saturday,"
continued Dale, gazing around at the small pile of logs resting partly
in and partly out of the stream upon which the sawmill was situated.
"Just about Saturday."
"And there's no telling when we'll be able to start up again, I
suppose."
"Just as soon as I can get hold of the stuff to go ahead with. I don't
like to have the mill idle any more than you or the others like to be
out of work."
"I'll have to get something to do pretty quick," said Dale earnestly.
"I can't live on nothing."
"You ought to have something saved."
"A fellow can't save much out of six dollars a week, Mr. Larson.
Besides, I've been paying off that little debt my father left when he
died."
"I see, I see," interposed the mill owner hastily. "You're a good sort
of a lad, Dale--as good a lad as your father was a man. If we shut
down on Saturday perhaps I can keep you on a week longer--cleaning up
around the mill and along the river, and doing other odd jobs. That
will give you more time in which to look for another opening."
The head sawyer of the mill now came up to question John Larson
concerning the cutting up of certain large logs, and Dale moved away
to resume his regular work, that of piling up the boards in the little
yard adjoining the steamboat landing.
It was hard work, especially in this summer, noon-day sun, but Dale was
used to it and did not complain. And this was a good thing, as nobody
would have listened to his complaint, for all around that mill worked
just as hard as he did. John Larson was a just man, but a strict one,
and he required every man he employed to earn his salary.
Dale Bradford was an orphan, eighteen years of age, tall, muscular,
healthy, and as sunburnt as outdoor life could make him. He was the
only son of Joel Bradford, who in years gone by had owned a good-sized
lumber tract on the west branch of the Penobscot River, in Maine, where
this story opens.
When a small boy Dale had had two sisters, and his home with his
parents, on the shore of Chesuncook Lake, had been a happy one. But
the death of the two sisters and the mother had caused great grief to
the father and the son, and it can truthfully be said that after these
loved ones were laid away in the little cemetery among the pines, Joel
Bradford was never the same. He lost interest in his lumber camp and
in the spot that had been his home for so many years, and at the first
opportunity he sold out and moved down to Bangor.
It was at Bangor that he fell in with several men who were interested
in the gold and silver mines of the great West. One of these men
induced him to invest nearly all his money in a mine said to be located
in Oregon. The ground was purchased by Joel Bradford, and preparations
were made to begin mining on a small scale, when word came that no
gold or silver was to be found in that locality, and the scheme fell
through, and the man who had induced Mr. Bradford to invest disappeared.
The money lost in this transaction amounted to six thousand
dollars--nearly the whole of Joel Bradford's capital--and the former
lumberman felt the blow keenly. He grew reckless and speculated in
lumber in and around Bangor, and soon found himself in debt to the sum
of five hundred dollars. This he paid all but a hundred dollars, when,
during unusually severe weather on the river, he contracted pneumonia,
from which he never recovered.
Dale was not yet seventeen years of age when he found himself utterly
alone in the world, for this branch of the Bradford family had never
been large and the grandparents had come to Maine from Connecticut
years before. Dale had a fair common-school education, but most of his
life had been spent at the lumber camps and along the river and the
lakes with his father. He could fell a tree almost as well as a regular
lumberman, and had followed more than one drive down the stream to the
boom or the sawmill.
"I've got to buckle in and make a man of myself," was what he told
himself after the first great grief over the loss of his father was
over. "I can't afford to sit down and do nothing. I've got to support
myself, and pay off that debt father left behind him."
He had been doing odd jobs for a lumber firm owning an interest in
yards at Bangor and at Oldtown, twelve miles further up the Penobscot.
But these did not pay very well, and he looked further, until he struck
Larson's Run, a small settlement located on a tributary of the big
river. Larson had known Joel Bradford well for years, and had purchased
many a cut of logs from him.
"So your father is dead and you want a job," John Larson had said.
"Well, I'll give you the best that I have open"; and then and there he
had engaged Dale at a salary of four dollars per week, a sum which was
afterwards raised to six dollars.
Dale secured board with a mill hand living near by, and as soon as he
was settled he began a systematic reduction of the debt his father had
left unpaid. He felt that this was a duty he owed to the memory of his
parent and to the honor of the family at large.
"They shan't say that he swindled anybody," was the way he put it to
himself. "I'll pay every dollar of it before I buy a thing for myself
that isn't actually necessary."
In the bottom of his trunk at the boarding house Dale had the deed to
the land in Oregon which his father had purchased--that unfortunate
transaction that had practically beggared them. The young lumberman
often read the papers over carefully. They showed that his father had
been the sole owner of many acres of territory located in the heart of
the great West. Of this great tract of land Dale was now the sole owner.
"And to think that the tract is only a rocky mountain side, good for
nothing at all," he would say with a sigh. "Now, if it were only a
stretch of farm land, I might go out and try my luck at farming some
day. I guess it's only fit for a stone quarry,--same as the rocky lands
here,--but nobody wants a quarry out there, a hundred miles or more
from nowhere at all."
So far Dale had managed to pay up all but thirty dollars of the debt
left behind by his parent. He might have paid this, but a log had
rolled on his foot, causing him a bruise that had kept him from work
for two weeks and given him a doctor's bill to pay in addition.
The thirty dollars was owing to a riverman named Hen McNair. The fellow
was a Scotchman and exceedingly close-fisted, and he had bothered Dale
a good deal, hoping to have his claim paid at once.
"You can pay up if you want to," said McNair in his Scotch accent. "If
you've not the money sell off some of your things."
"I've sold off all I can spare," had been Dale's reply. "You'll have to
wait. From next Saturday on I'll pay you two dollars a week."
"Hoot! 'Twill be fifteen weeks--nigh four months--before we come to the
end."
"It's the very best I can do."
"Can't you pay me five or ten dollars now?"
"No. The most I can give you is two dollars."
"Then give me that. And see you keep your word about the balance." And
stuffing the bill Dale handed him into his pocket, Hen McNair had gone
off grumbling something about the want of honor in a lad who wouldn't
pull himself together and pay his father's honest debts.
The sawmill owned by John Larson was run both by water power and by
steam--the latter helping out the former when the flow of the stream
was not at its best. Rain had been wanting for several weeks, and this
had delayed a drive of logs the mill owner had counted on, and had
also made it necessary to depend entirely on steam as a motive power.
The plant employed twenty-four hands, and this and another mill on the
opposite shore were the main industries of the Run.
"How did you make out about those logs, Dale?" questioned a fellow
worker in the yard, as the young lumberman resumed his labors.
"Didn't get them," was the laconic answer.
"Didn't think you would," went on Philip Sommers. "Hickley is in with
the pulp mill. If he can't get logs, what is the old man going to do?"
"He'll have to shut down."
"Phew! That's bad!"
"Yes, and the worst of it is there is no telling when we'll start up
again."
"In that case I'm going to pack up and go up to the West Branch. A
friend of mine is going to open up on a claim there about the first of
October."
"That is a good while yet. I can't afford to be idle that long."
"What will you do?"
"I don't know yet--perhaps try the other mills."
"Better try the pulp mill--they've got the business just now. Folks
must have paper even if they don't get boards," and Philip Sommers gave
a short laugh.
"I don't think I'd care to work in a pulp mill," answered Dale. "I like
a sawmill or else being out in a lumber camp. But I'd rather work in a
pulp mill than be idle."
"The pulp mill over----Hullo, there goes the noon whistle!" Philip
Sommers dropped the board he was carrying. "Aint got time to talk any
more," he cried. "Going home for something to eat." And picking up his
jacket from a lumber pile, he walked away, leaving Dale alone.