IN A LOGGING CAMP
FITZ-ADAMS'S CAMP, ENGLISH CENTRE, LYCOMING
COUNTY, PA., Tuesday, October 27, 1891.
In spite of the fast-falling rain, Fitz-Adams, the boss, ordered us
up at half-past four, as usual, this morning; but when breakfast was
over, the rain was too heavy to admit of our going to work. Some of the
woodsmen are gone back to bed, and some are mending their clothes in
the loft, and the rest of the gang are loafing in the "lobby," smoking,
and playing what they call "High, low, Jack and the game," except Mike,
a superb young Irishman, who, seated on a bench, with his back braced
against the window-sill, is reading a worn paper copy of one of the
Duchess's novels, which is the only book that I have so far seen in
the camp. Jennie, the head-cook and housekeeper, has given me leave to
write at one of the long tables where the gang is fed.
It is a relief sometimes to get away from the men. There may be _ennui_
that is more soul-destroying, but I have never known any that caused
such evidently acute suffering as the form which seizes upon workingmen
of my class in hours of enforced idleness. When the day's work is done,
they take their rest as a matter of course, and enjoy it. But a day
like this, which lays them off from work, and shuts them within doors,
furnishes awful evidence of the poverty of their lives. Most of the
men here can read, but not to one of them is reading a resource. The
men at play are in blasphemous ill-temper over the cards, and are,
apparently, on the brink of blows, while Mike is laboriously spelling
his way through a page, and nervously squirming in an effort to find
a comfortable seat. And I know, from the experience of Sundays, in
what humor the men will come down to dinner from the loft, to face an
afternoon of eternal length to them, which, in some way, must be lived
through.
I note the contrast with their normal selves the more, because, as
a body of workmen, this is much the most wholesomely happy company
which I have so far fallen in with. We are about twenty in number, a
curiously assorted crew, all bred to the roughest life. Far up in the
mountains, miles from any settlement, we live the healthful life of
a lumber camp, working from starlight to starlight; breathing the
mountain air, keen with the frosty vigor of autumn, and fragrant of
pine and hemlock; eating ravenously the plain, well-cooked food which
is served to us, now in the camp and now on the mountain-side, where we
sit among the newly stripped logs; sleeping deeply at night in closely
crowded beds in the cabin-loft, where the wind sweeps freely from
end to end through the gaping chinks between the logs, and where, on
rising, we sometimes slip out of bed upon a carpeting of snow. This is
the life which these men know and which half-unconsciously they love,
breaking from it at times, in a passion of discontent, and spending the
earnings of months in a short, wild _abandon_ of debauch, but always
coming back again, remorseful, ashamed to meet the faces of the other
men, yet reviving as by miracle under the touch of their native life.
They charm you with their freedom of spirit, and their rude sturdiness
of character, until you find your heart warming to them with a real
affection, and feeling for them the intimate pain of personal sorrow
at sight of their cruel limitations. Away from their work, their
one notion of the necessary accompaniment to leisure is money; and
possessed of time and treasure, their first instinctive reach is after
liquor and lust.
Even now as Fitz-Adams and his brother, in yellow oil-cloth coats and
wide tarpaulins, set out through the pouring rain in an open rig for
English Centre, there is a chorus of voices from the door and windows
of the cabin, shouting to them to bring back whiskey and plenty of it.
If they do, and the rain continues, only God knows what the camp will
be to-night.
* * * * * * * *
It is sixty miles, I should judge, from Pleasant Hill to Williamsport,
and it proved a two days' march. Although the distance covered must
have been about the same on both days, the difference that they each
presented in actual experience of the journey was of the kind-of
contrast which a wayfarer must expect.
Monday was a faultless autumn day. The air was quick, and the roads
were in good condition, and I was feeling fit, and was "passing rich"
with three dollars and seventy-five cents, the wages of five days on
the farm.
The region through which I walked was typical of the open country of
the Middle States. Over its rolling surface was the varied arrangement
of wood and field and pasture-land, with the farmers' houses and barns
attesting separate possession. There were frequent brooks and narrow
winding country roads; roads lined with zigzag rail fences and loose
stone walls, along which dwarfed birches grew, and elderberry bushes,
and sumach, with wild grape-vines and clematis creeping on the walls;
while in the coarse turf on the banks, there blossomed immortelles, and
purple aster, and golden-rod.
Mr. Hill had given me clear directions. At the post-office of Irish
Lane I turned sharply toward Marshall's Hollow, and passed on the
way a camp-meeting ground, where deep in the shadows of a grove
stood numbers of rough wooden huts; grouped in chance community, and
little suggesting in the weird stillness of desertion, the sounds of
revival worship, with which they are made to ring through a part of
every summer. At Harveyville I turned abruptly up the hillside in the
direction of Cambra. It was high noon when I reached that village, and
I was but a few miles beyond it, on the way to Benton, when I stopped
to get something to eat. It was the evident poverty of the house where
I stopped that interested me. I knew that there was no hope of earning
a meal at such a place, but I could pay for what I ate, and I was sure
of being less of an annoyance there than at some well-to-do farmer's
house.
The cottage was an unpainted wooden shell, and, like it, the corn-crib
and pig-pen and little barn beyond seemed tottering to a fall. Faded
leaves of a woodbine, that climbed upon the cottage, were thick
about the door-way, and lay strewn by the wind upon the bare floor
within. There was but one room on the ground floor, and a stove and
a sewing-machine and a small wooden chest were all its furniture. I
knocked at the open door. Through an opposite one, communicating with a
lean-to, a woman appeared. She was large and muscular, but in her face
was the sickly pallor of ill-nourishment, and her hair was dishevelled,
and the loose, ragged dress which she wore was covered with dark,
greasy stains.
I asked for bread and milk; she explained that the family had just
finished dinner, but that she could give me something, if I would wait,
and she invited me to a seat on the chest.
I drew from my pack an unfinished newspaper, and as I read I could
feel innumerable eyes upon me. Through the cracks in the door, and the
ragged breaks in the plaster, came the inquisitive gaze of children's
eyes, and I could hear their eager whispers as a swarm of children
crowded one another for possession of the best peep-holes.
Their mother asked me in, and set before me, on a table littered with
remnants of dinner, a pitcher of fresh milk and some huge slices
of coarse bread, a large yellow bowl, and a pewter tablespoon. The
children stared at me as I ate, and I tried to form an accurate
estimate of their number, but despaired when, after I thought that
I had distinguished eight, I found my estimate upset by sudden
apparitions of faces hitherto unrecognized. The oldest child seemed
not more than twelve, and the youngest lay asleep in a cradle near the
stove, where its mother could rock it as she worked. They all were as
ragged and dirty as the children of the slums, but they had nothing
of the vivacity of these, nor of the quick adjustment to changing
circumstances which gives to children, bred upon the street, their
first hold upon your interest.
Stolid and wide-eyed they stood about the room, intently watching me,
moving here and there for new points of view; until their mother, who
had showed no wish to talk as she washed the dishes, now broke the
silence with a sounding cuff upon the ear of a little boy, as, with a
loud command, she sent him sobbing into the back yard to fetch her wood.
The children scattered instantly, except a little girl with flaxen
hair and grotesquely dirty face, who clung to her mother's skirts, and
seemed to hamper her immeasurably; the more so as the baby had wakened
in the noise, and had begun to cry. I grew sick with fear of what was
coming next, but the mother's mood had changed; for catching the crying
baby in her arms, she almost smothered it with kisses, and sitting down
she fondled it, and gently stroked the head of the child beside her.
It was a veritable country slum, with nearly all the barren squalor of
a crowded tenement. You thought of life in it as some hard necessity,
from which all choice and spontaneity are gone. And so in great part
it must have been, and the wonder was the stronger at sight of the
instinct of mother love, springing like a living fountain in an arid
plain.
The village of Benton wore a preoccupied air when I entered it. I soon
found the cause in an auction sale of horses in the stable-yard of the
tavern. The horses huddled close, as if for common protection, in an
angle formed by the buildings. They were watched by a mounted rider,
whose duty it was to prevent any from breaking loose. A small crowd
of farmers and village men, all of them coatless and in their working
clothes, formed a semicircle about the animals. The surrounding doors
and windows were full of women's faces, alive with interest in the
progress of events; and children perched upon the fences, or dodged in
and out among the groups of men. A fat and ruddy auctioneer walked back
and forth excitedly before the crowd, loudly repeating a call for bids;
or having caught one, running it rapidly through changes of inflection
and intonation, until a fresh bid started him anew on his flight of
varying tones, which ended at last in the dying cadences of "Going!
going! gone!"
Presently I found a man who was so far unoccupied by the sale as to
have leisure to direct me on my way. Taking his advice I started for
Union Church and Unityville. In the outskirts of Benton, as I left
the village, an urchin sat upon the door-step of a cottage, idly
beating about him with a stick, consoling himself apparently as best
he could for not having been allowed to go to the sale. The sight of
a tramp with a pack upon his back diverted him; and far as the sound
could carry there came following me, as I climbed the hill beyond the
village, his shouts of "Git there, Eli!"
The contrast with Monday's march appeared at once on Tuesday morning.
The clouds which were threatening when I made an early start grew more
threatening while I walked on, and they broke in torrents of rain as I
entered Lairdsville, with Williamsport still twenty-four miles away.
A tavern gave me shelter, but presently the rain slackened and I made
up my mind to push on to Williamsport in spite of the storm, for my
letters were there; and once on the road with your mail definitely in
view, you grow highly impatient of delays.
An hour's rain had worked great changes in the roads. Hard and dusty
when I set out in the early morning, they were quagmires now and were
running with muddy streams. The rain pelted my face and dripped through
my ragged hat, and trickled down my back and washed into my boots. I
was a dangerous-looking vagrant when I reached Hughesville at noon. I
walked rapidly through the village street in some fear of arrest, but
the storm had passed, and I soon learned the road to Williamsport by
way of Hall's Landing.
Splashing wearily along the heavy roads with that awful load chafing my
back, I knew vaguely that I was passing through an exceedingly rich and
beautiful farming region, but my interest was all in the surest footing
to be found, and it was with glad relief that late in the afternoon I
stepped upon the solid pavements of the town.
I had been told, on the road, of a laborer's cottage in Church Street
where cheap board and lodging could be had. From the post-office I
readily found my way to this cottage, and was soon propped up in bed
reading my letters, while the laborer's wife hung up my clothes to dry
in the kitchen and put my boots under the stove.
In the morning all the brilliance of the clear, cold autumn had
returned. It was such a day as seems to emerge renewed with fresh and
ample vigor from the cleansing of a storm.
The streets presented a really singular picture. The town itself is
the conventional American, provincial, manufacturing centre, with its
business portion built up in "brick blocks," which are innocent of
any attraction but utility. From this quarter it shades gradually, in
one direction, into the workshops and cottages of the region of the
proletariat, and in another into the wide, well-shaded avenues where
are the somewhat ostentatious homes and churches of the well-to-do.
Long lines of booths now crowded the curves about the central public
square and reached far down the communicating streets. In these booths
the farming people of the surrounding country sold their fruits and
garden vegetables, and butter and eggs and poultry; and white-aproned
butchers spread their meats in tempting array. It was an Oriental
bazaar in all but color and the highly pitched jabber of Eastern
bargaining. But still more perfect as a reproduction of foreign scenes
were the groups of women who, with colored shawls tied round their
heads and falling about their shoulders, sat on the steps of public
buildings with baskets of provisions about them and talked among
themselves, and came to terms with customers in their oddly mixed
vernacular.
It recalled at once the Platz of a German city thronged by peasant
women on market days, only here, too, was a lack of color. The women
were unmistakably Teutonic. All had the generous contour of countenance
which approaches to a family likeness in a whole race of peasantry,
but the red of the old country complexion had faded to our prevailing
pallor.
In spite of a large foreign element, or in virtue of it, I do not know
which, the town itself is aggressively American. The fact that some
hundreds of million feet of lumber come each year from its mills gives
to it great importance as a lumber centre. And the good fortune of this
form of industry the city certainly shows in its freedom from the usual
begriming effects of manufacture on a large scale.
In one of the morning papers of the town I found the spirit of the
place expressed in a reported speech of a local celebrity, an ex-member
of Congress. The chief burden of it was the note of congratulation to
the people of the town on their progress and prosperity, as indicated
in their electric lights and rapid transit system, and in their growing
industries and increasing numbers, which, he declared, "had passed the
stopping-point."
But I must hurry on. Early on Friday afternoon, October 9th, I set out
from Williamsport, with Oil City as my next objective point. I had no
money, but this did not disturb me, for I was entering the open country
and felt sure of finding work. The road lay along the fertile river
bottom and then began to climb the range of hills which walls in the
valley on the north. The lasting impression here is of a region of most
uncommon natural wealth. Many square miles of farms come into the range
of vision; the soil looks like a deep, rich loam. And a like impression
comes to you from the opposite bank of the river, where the land lies
flat to the foot of the southern range of hills.
From such a vantage ground you see at a glance how the river, shut in
by these barriers, could have risen to so great a height in the flood
of 1889 and have worked such appalling disaster.
There are constant references to "the flood" among the inhabitants of
the valley, and it plainly holds for them the place of a chronological
mark not unlike that held farther East by the "blizzard" of 1888,
only it sounds not a little odd at first to hear common reference to
antediluvian events.
Presently I came to a road which forked at Linden to the right, and
made in the direction of a gap in the hills. Its general course seemed
westward, and so I followed it. An hour or two later it had led me
into a forest, where the sunlight was fast fading. I was intent on the
question of finding work before nightfall, when I heard the rumble of
wheels behind me, and a voice singing a German song.
I looked up as the wagon came alongside. The horses were walking
slowly up the hill, and a young man lounged at leisure on the seat.
His legs were crossed, and the reins lay loosely in one hand. A light,
wide-brimmed felt hat was pushed back on his crown, and from under the
rim the yellow hair rested on his forehead. He was singing from sheer
lightness of heart; and young and strong and handsome as he was, he
made you think of Alvary in his part of _Siegfried_.
"Have a ride?" he called to me, and there was no trace of foreign
accent in his speech.
"Thank you," I said; and in another moment my pack was in the bottom of
the wagon and I on the seat beside the driver.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm looking for a job."
"You want work on a farm?"
"Yes, that or any other kind of work that I can get."
"Well, there ain't much doing on the farms now. I don't know nobody
that's looking for a hired man. There's Abe Potter, I heard him say
as how he wanted to hire a man to work for him all winter; but Miss'
Potter, she told my wife last night that he'd got Jim Hale's boy, Al,
to live out to him. Say, did you ever work in the woods?"
"No."
"Well, there's plenty of work in the woods. It's a rough life, but it
ain't so bad when you're used to it. I worked in the woods before I
was married. I could go out to the woods now, and earn two dollars a
day and my keep; but my wife wouldn't let me. And it's a pretty rough
life, only I come to like it. But I've got my farm now, and my wife and
children; and her old folks lives with us, and I've got to stay to
home, and take care of things. Say, where are you going to-night?"
"I don't know. I'll try to find some place to stay where I can help
with the work to pay for my keep; and then to-morrow I'll go to the
woods, and try to get a job."
"I tell you, stranger, you stay at my house to-night, and in the
morning you can go to English Centre. I guess you'll get a job on one
of the camps."
My thanks could have expressed but little of the gratitude I felt.
I shared his light-hearted mood at once, and was a very interested
and attentive listener to the narrative of his early life; his
disagreements with his father, and how he had inherited the farm from
him burdened with debt, but had almost paid the mortgages, and had his
eye now upon a neighbor's farm with a view to purchasing that.
He was singing again as we drove up the lane toward his home, and
was plainly expectant. The cause was clear when two children, a girl
and boy of about six and four, came running toward the wagon, with
excited cries of welcome. They drew up sharply at sight of a stranger,
and their father loudly greeted them with a medley of affectionate
diminutives in English and German, until they lost their fear, and
began to talk rapidly with him in the quaintest German, which sounded
as though it might be one with the strange dialects which you see in
_Fliegende Blätter_.
I helped to unhitch the horses, and then asked whether there was more
that I could do. There were apples to be picked up from under the trees
in the orchard, and I worked at this task until dark, when there came
the call to supper.
After that meal the children were put to bed, and the rest of us
gathered in the kitchen, where a large open fire burned, and an
oil-lamp lent its light. An "apple-butter making" was to be the feature
of the next day's work, and we spent the evening in getting ready for
it.
We sat in a semicircle in front of the fire, first the farmer's wife,
and then the patriarchal grandfather, who was almost deaf, and was
known to all the household by the not euphonious name of "Gross-pap,"
and next to him the grandmother, and last the guest. The farmer himself
sat at a table near us, briskly working an apple-peeler, while the rest
of us removed the cores, and cut the apples into small sections.
It was a very comfortable place which I seemed to have found in the
household. I was taken in with natural hospitality, and the family
life moved on unhampered by my presence, while I, a welcome guest,
could sit and watch it at my ease.
The old man had every excuse for silence, and he and his wife spoke
rarely, and always in their native tongue, but they evidently
understood English perfectly. The farmer and his wife spoke English to
each other, and spoke it as though born to its use, but they used that
quaint German dialect in talking with the old people and the children.
The wife was a plain woman, inclined to fretfulness, I thought, and
she had a certain air with her husband, which is not uncommon to plain
women whose husbands are distinctly handsome. She had little to say,
but she listened attentively to the farmer's talk.
He was entertainment for us all. Good-looking, high-spirited, manly
fellow--in perfect unconsciousness of self, he talked on with the
genial freedom of a true man of the world.
His trip to Williamsport was a fruitful theme, and no least event of
the journey was without its interest. He told us of the neighbors whom
he met on the road, and all of his conjectures regarding their probable
errands. He had taken a load of vegetables to town, and now recounted
every sale and purchase, for he had been charged with many commissions.
One was the purchase of braid for his wife's new dress. He was full of
good-humor at each fresh departure in his tale; but, for some reason,
the story of this last commission pleased him most. With high regard
for circumstantial detail, he told it to us at least five times, and
ended every narrative with a beaming smile, and the unvarying remark
that "I'd have got it wider if I'd only known," to which his wife
replied each time with unfaltering insistence upon the last word: "But
you might have known."
In the morning he was as cheerful as on the night before, and he put me
in high spirits as, with many good wishes for my success, he told me
again how sure he was that I could find work in the woods.
At Salladasburg I stopped for further directions about the way to
English Centre; and the tavern-keeper, at whose door I inquired,
confirmed me strongly in my expectation of ready employment.
An old plank road lead me through a mountain-pass, and along the course
of a stream, far into the interior. The earlier miles of the march were
among mountains that had long been stripped of all valuable timber, and
that now stood ragged and uncouth in their new growths, and in the
blackened remnants of forest fires.
Here there were a few scattered farms; stony and of thin soil, where,
for fences, uptorn stumps of trees had been placed side by side, with
their twisted roots so interwoven as to form an impenetrable barrier.
A caravan of gypsies met and passed me; but except for these, the road
was almost deserted, and seemed to be leading into yet lonelier regions.
Mountains now succeeded, on which the forests were untouched, and
which, in autumn colors, were like huge mounds of foliage plant, so
richly did the gorgeous hues of the maple-trees and chestnuts and
beeches blend with the dark greens of hemlock and pine.
At a little after noon I came quite suddenly upon an iron bridge that
crossed the wide bed of a mountain-stream, which was little more than
a brook now, but gave evidence of rising, at times, to the volume
and strength of a torrent. A large tavern stood near the bridge, and
beyond it, to the right, was a huge tannery which plainly provided the
chief industry of the place. The village street was lined with rows of
wooden cottages, each an unpainted duplicate of its neighbor, and all
eloquent, I thought, of the monotony of the life which they held.
I went at once to the post-office, and there learned that my journey
was by no means at an end; for the lumber camps were yet some miles
farther in the mountains. The camp of "Wolf Bun" was mentioned as an
important one, where work was plenty, and I set out at once for that.
I was tired and not a little hungry; for this mountain-air acts always
as a whet upon your appetite, and I had eaten nothing since the early
morning, and had already walked some fifteen miles. But the camp road,
although rough, was easy to follow, and I found much satisfaction in
dramatizing my approach to some short-handed employer, who would take
me on at once. I dwelt longingly on supper and a restful night and
Sunday in the camp, and thought hopefully of the work to be begun on
Monday morning.
And then there was a peculiar interest in meeting lumbermen on the way.
Some were teamsters, who sat high in air on top of immense loads of
bark, which they were carting to the tannery. Many of these wore wide
sombreros, and jackets made of blanket stuff in gay plaids. Others were
on foot, small companies of four and five together, walking to the
village, for it was Saturday afternoon.
I was prepared for some degree of roughness in a lumber camp, and in
the woodsmen themselves, but there was something in the appearance
of these men whom I met that hinted at my not having guessed all
the truth. I judged of roughness by what I knew of the gang at West
Point, and in the sewer ditch at the Asylum, but here was something
of a widely different kind from the hardness of broken-spirited,
time-serving laborers. Instinctively you knew these men for men; and
I respectfully kept silence, and looked to them for greeting, and got
none.
When you, a total stranger, try to meet the questioning gaze of five
strong men at once, all of them sturdy and lean, and deeply lined in
face and keen of eye, there is bred in you a vague unease, not of fear,
but an answering to that wonder as to what you are and what you are
doing there. I was conscious then only of the disturbing of my earlier
confidence in entering the woods. I could not analyze the look which
met me, but now I know it for meaning, reft of its strongest words,
"Who in ---- are you? Gospel sharks we know, and camp cooks, and honest
Jew pedlers who get our wages from us for their brass-gold watches and
glass jewels, but such a ----! ----! ----! ----! ----! ----! as you, we
never saw before."
It was about the middle of the afternoon when a turn in the
mountain-road brought to view a cluster of log-cabins, which I knew to
be the camp of Wolf Run. The cabins were splendid buildings of their
kind. The logs were clean and fresh and were securely fitted, while the
chinks were well plastered with mud, and the roofs tightly shingled,
and the gables closely boarded-up.
No one was in sight from where I stood; but there issued, from one of
the smaller cabins, the ring of a blacksmith's hammer, and I found a
group of men about the cabin-door.
The camp stood in a little clearing on the mountain; and in contrast
with the shadowy gloom in the forest around it, the sunlight flooded
this open rift with concentrated light. The chestnut-trees on the edge
of the wood shone like burnished gold, and the maple leaves, still
green, nearest to the trees, and but lightly touched with red along the
boughs, deepened gradually, until, in the full sunlight, they blazed
in crimson splendor. It was still with the stillness of autumn, and
the sound of the blacksmith's stroke and the answering ring of the
anvil were echoed far into the forest, where you could hear, fretting
down its stony bed, a mountain-stream, which, in the speech of the
lumbermen, is called a "run."
I had slipped the pack from my back, and carrying it in my hand I went
up to a group of men. One of them stood leaning against the door-post.
He was very tall and straight, and under his wide sombrero, the upper
forehead was white and smooth as a girl's. The brows were arched above
dark-brown eyes, and his nose was straight and sharply chiselled; the
cheeks were lean and ruddy brown; and under a light mustache was a
clean-cut, shapely mouth that answered in strength to a well-rounded,
slightly protruding chin. His hands were thrust into the side-pockets
of a bright blanket jacket, and his dark trousers were tucked into a
pair of top-boots, that were laced over the insteps and up the outer
sides of the legs.
All the men were eying me with that disturbing look; even the
blacksmith had quit his work and joined them. In the questioning
silence I summoned what courage I had, and walked up to young Achilles
at the cabin-door, and thus addressed him:
"Is this the camp of Wolf Run?"
"Yes."
"Is Mr. Benton here?" [Benton is my version of the superintendent's
name.]
"No, he's in English Centre."
"Is the camp boss here?" [That was a rash plunge on my part, but it was
successful.]
"Yes, that's him," and Achilles' head nodded slightly in the direction
of the largest cabin. From the door nearest us there stepped an elderly
man of massive frame, bent slightly forward, and with arms so long that
the hands seemed to reach to his knees. He was dressed in an old suit
of dark material--a long-tailed coat that fitted very loosely, and
baggy trousers--and a soiled linen shirt and collar, and a black ribbon
necktie. His face was very set and stern, not with an expression of
unkindness, simply the face of a man to whom life is a serious matter,
and who means business all the time.
He was evidently absorbed, and, carrying an iron bar, he was about to
enter the forge with no least notice of any of us, when I interrupted
him.
"I beg your pardon, sir, I understand that you are the boss."
He stood still, and looked down upon me out of keen black eyes from
under shaggy brows that bristled with coarse hairs; and in the
deepening silence, I wondered what I should say next.
"I'm looking for a job, and I heard in English Centre that men were
wanted here."
"Have you ever worked in the woods?"
"No."
"Then you'll not get work in the woods this side of hell."
He moved on at once, and the blacksmith followed him into the shop.
I was left standing in the midst of the other men, who had listened
intently, and were now soberly enjoying the quality of that _bon mot_,
and were eyeing me in leisurely curiosity.
Again I appealed to Achilles:
"Is there another camp near here?"
"There's Long's Camp, a quarter of a mile up the run," and a slight
inclination of his head indicated the way.
Mr. Long did not want me, and knew of no one who might, if I was not
wanted at Wolf Run, unless, on second thought, I could get a job at
Fitz-Adams's Camp.
"And where is that?" I asked.
"You remember a road which forked to the left about two mile back as
you came up from English Centre?"
"Yes."
"Well, you follow that road about two mile and a half, and you'll come
to Fitz-Adams's Camp."
The road was the roughest that I had so far travelled. It cut its
way along the sheer side of the mountain, following the course of the
run. Presently I came to a small log cabin, where, in a little yard
beside it, a cow was munching straw, and in front, a fat sow wallowed
in a pool in the middle of the road. An old Irishman, who sat on the
door-step, told me that I was not half a mile from the camp.
There was a stout log dam on the run a little farther up, but the gates
were open and only a slender stream flowed through the muddy bottom,
for the dam was undergoing repairs. Near by was a cabin large enough
for a score of lumbermen.
The sun had sunk behind the mountain a good half hour before; not even
the trees on the summits were lighted up with its setting rays, and the
still, clear air bit you with a sudden chill. All the confidence which
I had felt in the morning was gone; it was a very tired and hungry, a
sobered and a chastened proletaire, that at length caught sight, in the
gloom, of Fitz-Adams's Camp.
It stood in a clearing like the camp of Wolf's Run. On the highest area
was a long, stout log cabin, to which there was given an added air of
security by an earth embankment, which sloped from the ground to the
lower logs all around the building, as a means of preventing the air
from sweeping under the floors. A door was in the end of the cabin
nearest me, and a window was cut in the boarded gable above. A wooden
block served as a step to the door, and near this a grindstone swung
in its frame. On the outer walls of the cabin were tacked some half
dozen advertisements on tin, bidding you, in black letters on an orange
background, "Chew----Cut." Over a rough bridge that crossed the run
near the cabin, I could faintly see one or two other smaller buildings
like it, which proved to be the blacksmith's shop, and the stable for
the teamsters' horses. The mountain-road continued its course past the
main cabin, and disappeared among the trees in the gorge. So narrow
was the ravine, that the mountain rose abruptly from one side of the
cabin, and in much the same manner from the bank of the run on the
opposite side, leaving a valley scarcely thirty yards in width. The
larger timber had been cut away, but the mountain-sides, all about the
clearing and the road, were dense with poplar, and white-barked birch
and chestnut, and the younger growths of evergreen.
There was perfect quiet in the camp; not a living thing was to be seen
or heard. I went up to the nearest door, and knocked. There was no
answer. I knocked again, and still there was no answer. At the side,
far to the rear, I found another door, and knocked there. It opened
instantly, and in the twilight I could faintly see a young woman in a
dark print dress.
"Is this Fitz-Adams's Camp?"
"Yes."
"Is Mr. Fitz-Adams here?"
And then in louder voice over her shoulder into the darkness behind her:
"Say, Jim, here's a man that wants you."
There was the sound of heavy footsteps upon the wooden floor, and in
another moment Fitz-Adams stood framed in the door-way.
I was standing on the ground, quite two feet below, and looking up at
him in that uncertain light, he seemed to me gigantic. A great muscular
frame fairly filled the door. He was dressed in a suit of light-gray
corduroy, a flannel shirt, a dark felt hat, and top-boots, and I
could see that he was young and not unhandsome, although of a very
different type of good looks from those of Achilles. His large, round
head rested close upon a trunk that was massive yet quite splendidly
shapely, and highly suggestive of agility and strength. His face was
round, and the features full and of uncertain moulding, but you did not
miss the evidence of strength in his thick, firm lips and the clear,
unfaltering eyes with their expression of perfect unconsciousness of
self. He was plainly Irish, but quite as plainly of American birth,
which was clear when he spoke.
"I'm looking for a job," I began, "and I've come to see whether I can
get one here."
"Who sent you?"
"They told me in Long's Camp that I might get a job here."
"They didn't want you, and so they sent you to me, eh?"
"They said that they didn't need more men there."
"Oh, they did, did they? And you've worked in the woods before, I
suppose?"
"No, but I have worked at other kinds of work, and if you'll give me a
chance you can see what I can do, and then you can discharge me if you
don't want me."
"Well, there's lots of work in this camp, Buddy. I don't guess from the
cut of you and the way you talk, that you know much about it. But you
can stay, and I'll see what's in you on Monday. Look lively now, and
split some of that wood, and build a fire in the lobby."
A pile of dry wood which had been sawed into lengths of two feet, lay
near the kitchen-door. On top of the pile was an axe; and as quickly
as I could, I split up an armful, and carried it around to the front of
the cabin and into the lobby. Near the centre of this room, which is
the loafing-place for the men, was an iron stove long enough to admit
the sticks which I had cut. It was the work of a minute to arrange
some chips in the bottom of the stove, and to pile the wood loosely on
top of these. I was about to touch a match to the finer stuff, when
Fitz-Adams appeared with a tin can in his hand. He bent over the stove,
and opening the door wide, he tossed in the contents of the can, and
the room was instantly full of a strong odor of kerosene.
In another moment the fire was blazing like mad, and roaring up the
stove-pipe, and fast turning the old cracked stove red hot, but
Fitz-Adams stood by in perfect unconcern, and presently departed in the
direction of the kitchen.
I began to look about me in the light that shone through the gleaming
cracks. Swift shadows were chasing one another over the walls and
ceiling, and I soon grew familiar with a room about twelve feet deep,
and which extended the width of the cabin. The floor was bare, and
was very damp with the Saturday's scrubbing, as were also the benches
which reached all round the walls. Besides the stove, the only piece
of furniture that the room contained was a heavy table, about four feet
square, which stood close to the benches in one corner, and directly
under the single window of the room, which was a small opening in the
logs, fitted with four panes of glass. A rough wooden staircase led
from the near corner through an opening in the ceiling to the loft; and
a door was cut through the thin board partition which separates the
lobby from the large room in the body of the cabin, where the men are
fed, and where I am writing now. The logs that formed the outer walls
of the room had been rough-hewn to a plane; and along these walls, on
two sides of the room, was a line of nails, on which hung coats and
hats and flannel shirts and overalls. On the partition-wall there was
nailed a small mirror with a little shelf below, on which lay a comb.
Near this were three wooden rollers, and over them as many towels,
large and coarse and fresh from the wash.
I found a dry spot on the bench near the stove, and shoving my pack
under me, I sat down, facing the outer door, and awaited developments.
It had grown quite dark Without. The young woman who met me at the
kitchen-door now came in with a small oil-lamp, which she placed on
the shelf near the mirror. I began to think that the men must all have
left the camp for Sunday, and my spirits rose at the thought of an easy
initiation into camp life. But I was soon roused from this revery by
the sound of many footsteps approaching the cabin, and the deep, gruff
voices of men.
The wooden latch lifted, the heavy door swung open, and there came
trooping in a crew of fifteen lumbermen, all dripping water from their
hair and faces and hands, for they were fresh from the evening wash in
the run. They went first to the towels, and then formed in line for
their turns at the mirror, where the comb was passed from hand to hand.
Fifteen pairs of wet, blinking eyes were fixed on me, and I was obliged
to meet each searching gaze in turn. But when this ordeal was passed, I
began to feel a little at my ease, for the men ignored me completely.
The air with which they turned away from the inspection seemed to say:
"There is something exceedingly irregular in there being in the camp so
abnormal a specimen as this, but the way in which to treat the case, at
least for the present, is to let it alone." It was precisely the manner
of well-bred men toward, let us say, some inharmonious figure in their
club, whose presence is for the moment unaccounted for.
As they finished their preparation for supper, the men crowded about
the stove to warm their hands, chilled by the cold ablution. Chiefly
they talked shop about the day's work, but in terms that were often
unintelligible to me, and the sentences were surcharged with oaths. I
watched them with deep personal interest, and pictured myself in line,
and wondered whether I should ever be so fortunate as to find a clean,
dry section on a towel, or come early to the much-used comb.
The last man had barely completed his toilet when the door in the
partition opened, and a woman's voice announced supper. Instantly there
was loud shuffling of heavy boots on the bare floor, and a momentary
press about the door, and then we were soon seated at one of the two
long tables in the mess-room of the cabin, and there arose a clatter of
hungry men feeding, and the hubbub of their talk.
The meal was excellent. Its chief dish was corned beef and cabbage, and
there were boiled potatoes and boiled beans besides, with abundance of
home-made white bread, and strong hot tea.
My seat was last in the row on one side of the table. The end seat was
unoccupied, and my nearest neighbor ignored me; I was free to satisfy a
well-developed appetite, and grow more familiar with my surroundings.
First of all I ate a very hearty supper. The food was admirably cooked,
and was served with a high degree of cleanness. The oil-cloth, of
marble design, which covered the table was spotless, and the rude,
coarse service, befitting a camp, had all been thoroughly washed. It
is true that the men were without their coats, most of them with their
waistcoats off, but these are men whose work is of the cleanest, and
there was nothing in all the setting of the supper to mar a healthy
appetite; there was much, I thought, that really heightened the
pleasure of eating.
The conversation ran on as it had begun in the lobby. There was much
talk about the progress of the work, and gossip about neighboring
camps, and proposals for the disposing of Sunday; and it struck me with
swift terror that the presence of the three young women, who waited
on the table, was no least check to profanity. The talk never rose to
the pitch of excitement, it was the mere give and take of ordinary
conversation, and yet there mingled in it the blackest oaths. With a
curse of eternal perdition upon his lips, a man would speak to his
neighbor of some casual incident of the day, and would end his sentence
with a volley of nameless insults and hideous blasphemies. This was
their common language. With no realization of what they did, they flung
eternal curses and foul insults at one another in lightest banter.
Half an hour later we had all returned to the lobby. The teamsters lit
their lanterns, and went to care for the horses. Some of the men went
up into the loft. Four had soon started a game of cards at the table,
while most of the others filled the bench near the stove, or drew empty
beer-kegs and old soap-boxes from their hiding, and completed the
circle around the fire. Everyone was smoking, and all seemed highly
content.
I was crowded in between a lank young fellow with dark hair and eyes,
and a long, lean nose, who was swearing comfortably at a gawky youth
across the stove, and an older man, of heavier build, who had fine
black eyes and a black mustache, a very pale complexion, and long black
hair that lay in pasty ringlets about his face and on his neck.
Soon I came to know these two as "Long-nosed Harry" and "Fred the
Barber." I should explain at once that the camps have a curious
nomenclature of their own. As among other workingmen whom I have known,
so here, only a man's Christian name is used, but it is nearly always
accompanied with an explanatory phrase. A new-comer in the camp is
called "Buddy" until his name is learned, and some appropriate epithet
is found, or until a nickname springs complete from the mysterious
source of those appellatives.
I knew that Fred the Barber was making ready to speak to me, and I was
on my guard, when, while the talk was running high, I heard a voice
close to my ear:
"Say, Buddy, you ain't a pedler, are you?"
"No."
"I thought you warn't." And Fred the Barber settled farther down upon
his seat, and folded his arms, and puffed in silence on his pipe, with
the air of a man who finds deep satisfaction in his own sagacity. Soon
he returned to the cross-examination.
"Say, Buddy, are you going to work in the woods?"
"Yes, the boss took me on this evening."
"Ain't you never worked in the woods before?" His pipe was out of his
mouth now, and his eyes shone with a livelier interest.
"No."
"How's that?"
"Why, I'm working my way out West, and my money gave out in
Williamsport; and when I went looking for a job, I was told that I
could get work in the woods. So I came up here."
"Well, you ain't struck a soft snap, Buddy. Jim the Boss is a square
man, but he can beat the devil at work, and he don't go easy on a new
hand. This is my tenth season in the woods, and I earn two dollars a
day right along; but I'm going to quit, it's too rough."
There was a sudden commotion just then, for the outer door had opened
to the touch of a young woodsman, who, standing sharply defined against
the black night, regarded the company with a radiant smile. He was
the finest specimen of them all; not much over twenty, I should say,
and grown to a good six feet of height, and as straight as the trees
among which he worked. Through the covering of rough clothes you felt
with delight the curves of his splendid figure, and the sinewy muscles
in symmetrical development. And then the lines of his throat and neck
were so clean and strong, and his face charmed you with its fresh
beauty, and its expression of frank joyousness. No wonder that he was
a favorite in the camp. The men were rising from their seats, and the
air was full of welcome, while he stood there for a moment, his teeth
gleaming as he smiled, and his eyes shining with delight.
[Illustration: THE MEN WERE RISING FROM THEIR SEATS, AND THE AIR WAS
FULL OF WELCOME.]
There rose a tumult of loud voices:
"I'm eternally lost, if it ain't Dick the Kid!" "Dickie, me boy, you
God-forsaken whelp, are ye drunk?" "You ain't spent it all in two days,
have you, Dick?" "Shut that lost door, and sit down by this condemned
fire, you ill-begotten cur, and eternal torment be your lot!" "Tell us
what hellish thing brings you here, you blessed boy, and why--ripe for
endless misery as you are--why ain't you in Williamsport?"
The smile did not fade from Dick's face, as with easy deliberation
he took a seat on a beer-keg and looked at the crew with answering
affection in his eyes.
"I'm forever lost if I've been to Williamsport," he began. "And I
ain't drunk a drop, you perjured hell-hounds of shameless begetting.
I've got all my reprobate stuff with me except the two God-condemned
dollars that it's cost me to live at the Temperance House in English
Centre, where you can get for a quarter the best meal that any of you
unveracious ones, you food for unquenchable fire, ever ate."
God help us! it was like that, only a great deal worse, until the
blessed stillness of the night fell upon the camp.
For an hour or more Dick the Kid sat talking to the other men. A
stranger in English Centre had fired his ambition for the lumber-camps
in the mountains somewhere in West Virginia, and Dick was freely
imparting his plans--how he meant to beat his way to Harrisburg and
then to Pittsburg, and so on to his destination, hoarding, the while,
his savings of about sixty-five dollars, as capital to launch him in a
new enterprise, where he was sure that more money could be made than
here.
The men listened in rapt attention, knowing perfectly that Williamsport
was the destined end of Dick's journey, and that the dram-shops there
and brothels would get every dollar to the last; yet charmed by his
fresh enthusiasm, which touched a hidden memory, or gave momentary
flight to some new-fledged hope that fluttered in their breasts. He was
so young and strong and handsome, so full of life, so rich in native
gifts that win and hold affection with no thought of effort! One knew
it from the clear, keen joyance of the man, and the power which he
had to hold the others, and to draw out their hardy sympathy. I could
endure the sight no longer; I went out to the mountain-road, and
waited where I thought that Dick would pass.
He was startled when I stopped him, and instinctively he clenched his
fists. For a moment I had a vivid sense of my physical insignificance,
as I realized how easily, with a single blow, he could smash in my
countenance and make swift end of me.
"I'm a new man in the camp," I began. "The boss took me on this
evening. I was interested in what you said about going to West
Virginia, and I wanted to ask you more about it. Have you ever been
there?"
"No."
"You are sure that there's a good chance for a man there?"
"It's all straight, Buddy, if that's what you mean."
I told him frankly what I meant, but he was still on his guard, and
presently he broke in abruptly with
"Say, Buddy, you're a sky-pilot, ain't you?"
We walked on together for a mile or more, and Dick grew friendly, and
I lost my heart to him completely. Only once Dick warmed a little at a
question from me. Perhaps I had no right to ask it upon so slight an
acquaintance; but as there was little prospect of my ever seeing him
again, I asked him if he felt no sense of wrong in using lightly the
name of the Almighty.
I can see him now as he stood against the blackness of the forest under
the clear, still stars, and answered me, with protest in his eyes and
in his voice:
"By the Eternal, Buddy, I ain't swore for a month! May the Infinite
consign me to the tortures of all fiends, if I've swore for a month!
That? Oh, that ain't nothing; that's the way that us fellows talks. If
you live in the camp long enough, Buddy, you'll hear a man swear."
His face was even more attractive in its expression of manly
seriousness when we stood on the roadside at parting, and he put a firm
hand on my shoulder, and fixed clear eyes on mine, as he told me, in
his frank, open way, that he wanted to make a man of himself and not
be a drunken sot, and that, in this new venture before him, he would
honestly try, and would ask for help.
The men were going to bed when I got back to camp. I took my pack and
followed them into the loft, where I found three long rows of beds,
reaching nearly the length of the cabin. At my knock the boss came out
of his room, which is a lightly boarded-in corner of the loft, and
gave me a bed next to that occupied by "Old Man Toler."
I had noticed Old Man Toler in the lobby as being markedly older than
most of the others. He was about fifty-five, I thought, of slender,
slightly stooping figure, and with gray hair. What had impressed me was
his exceedingly intelligent and agreeable face, and I had wondered at
sight of him as being apparently an ordinary hand in the crew. He gave
me a friendly greeting when the boss consigned me to his care, and then
resumed his conversation with a neighbor, while I made ready for bed.
The beds are simple arrangements, admirably suited to the ends which
they serve. A mattress and a bolster stuffed with straw lie upon a
rough wooden frame without springs, and on top of these are four or
five thicknesses of coarse blankets and tow "comforters." The men
creep under as many strata of bed-clothing as their individual tastes
prompt in a given temperature. And the temperature varies in the loft
in nearly exact conformity with its variations out of doors, for the
boards in the gables have sprung apart, and there are rifts even
between the logs, and the winds sweep with much freedom from end to end
of our large bedroom.
I soon became interested, too, in the varying tastes of the men in the
manner of their dress for bed. Some go so far on warmer nights as to
take off their boots and trousers, and even their coats and waistcoats.
Others stop at their boots and coats; and on the coolest nights not a
few go top-coated and booted to bed, and make a complete toilet in the
morning by putting on their hats.
There was more than one surprise for me that night, in the considerate,
well-bred manners of the men; and the whole experience of my stay in
camp has only served to deepen my appreciation. Young Arthur met, at
Rugby, the fate which a merely casual acquaintance with Sunday-school
literature would lead one to imagine as being unfailingly in store
for those who prefer to maintain their private habits in the company
of unsympathetic associates. It will be remembered that Arthur
became, while kneeling at his bedside on the evening of his first
day at school, a target for boots and unkind remarks, until Tom
Brown interfered. Schools have improved since those days, and it has
been gratifying to observe that a like improvement has spread among
workingmen, even so far as to embrace the lumber-camps. The momentary
expectation of a boot in violent contact with one's head is not a
devotion-fostering emotion, and it was a distinct relief to find no
least objection offered to a course of conduct however out of keeping
with the customs of the place.
There was another surprise in the comfort and the wholesome cleanliness
of my bed, notwithstanding its roughness. But in spite of physical
ease, I lay awake until after midnight, and when I slept at last,
troubled dreams pursued me; I awoke unrested, feeling sick at heart,
and little inclined to further acquaintance with a lumber camp.
But the morning brought a glorious day, clear and much warmer than
Saturday; and after a late breakfast (seven o'clock) I took a book into
the forest, found a comfortable seat, and read until nightfall, with
time enough for dinner taken out.
The men scattered widely soon after breakfast. Many visited neighboring
camps, or went shooting; some walked to English Centre; but it was a
perfectly sober crew that reassembled at the supper-table, and a much
cleaner-looking set than on the night before; for after breakfast, for
two hours or more, Fred the Barber had thriftily plied his trade.
We all went early to bed. The men hailed the day's end as bringing
welcome relief in release from intolerable restraint. When it grew
too dark to read, and I had returned to the cabin, I found in the
lobby several of the men who had loafed about the camp all day. They
were in vicious humor. They fretted like children long shut in by the
rain. They could not sit still in comfort, and their restlessness grew
upon them as they waited for supper, and the movement of time was slow
torture; and so they swore at one another and at the other men who were
returning to the camp, and who seemed in but little better humor than
themselves.