THE MAKING OF A "CHANEY MAN"
"We're bound for the choppin's at Chamberlain Lake,
And we're lookin' for trouble and suthin' to take.
We reckon we'll manage this end of the train,
And we'll leave a red streak up the centre of Maine."
--Murphy's "Come-all-ye."
A company of reserves posted in a thicket, after valiantly withstanding
the hammering of a battery, were suddenly routed by wasps. They broke
and ran like the veriest knaves.
Dwight Wade had determined to face John Barrett's battery of
persecution. But at the end of a week he realized that the little city
of Stillwater was looking askance at him. He knew that gossip attended
his steps and stood ever at his shoulders, as one from the tail of the
eye sees shadowy visions and, turning suddenly, finds them gone.
That John Barrett would deliberately start stories in which his
daughter's affairs were concerned seemed incredible to the lover who,
for the sake of her fair fame and her peace of mind, had resolved to
make fetish of duty, realizing even better than she herself that Elva
Barrett's sense of justice would weigh well her duties as daughter
before she could be won to the duties of wife.
Yet Wade could hardly tell why he determined to stay in Stillwater. He
wanted to console himself with the belief that a sudden departure would
give gossip the proof it wanted. For gossip, as he caught its vague
whispers, said that John Barrett had kicked--actually and violently
kicked--the principal of the Stillwater high-school out of his mansion.
Wade did not like to think that Barrett, by himself or a servant,
started that story. Yet the thought made Wade suspect that the
bitterness of the night at "Oaklands" still rankled, and that he was
remaining in Stillwater for the sake of defying John Barrett, and was
not simply crucifying his spirit for the sake of the peace of John
Barrett's daughter.
For he confessed that his stay there would be martyrdom. He had resolved
that he would not try to see her; that would only mean grief for her and
humiliation for him. He was proud of his love for Elva Barrett, in spite
of her father's contempt and insults. He found no reproach for himself
because he had loved her and had told her so. But for the role of a
Lochinvar his New England nature had no taste. He realized, without
arguing the question with himself, that Elva Barrett was not to be won
by the impetuous folly that demanded blind sacrifice of name and
position and father and friends.
There was no cowardice in this realization. It was rather a pathetic
sacrifice on the part of simple loyalty and a love that was absolute
devotion. In deciding to remain in Stillwater he kept his love alight
like a flame before a shrine. But beyond his daily work and the
unflinching purpose of his great love he could not see his way.
It was because his way was so obscure that the wasps found him an easier
victim.
He heard the buzzings at street corners as he passed. There were stings
of glances and of half-heard words.
Like the pastor of a church in a small place, the principal of
a high-school is one in whom the community feels a sense of
proprietorship, with full right to canvass his goings and comings
and liberty to circumscribe and control. For is he not the one that
should "set example"?
The wasps would not accept his silent surrender. They suspected
something hidden, and their imaginings saw the worst. They buzzed more
busily every day. That they would not allow him the peace and the
pathetic liberty of renunciation drove Wade frantic. With all the
courage of his conscience, he still faced John Barrett's battery. But
the wasps he could not face.
And he fled. In the end it was nothing but that--he was put to flight!
The people of Stillwater accepted it as flight, for he placed his
resignation in the hands of the school board barely a week before the
date for the opening of the autumn term. And on the train on which he
fled was the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt, still unconscious that the word
of gossip he had dropped was the match that lighted a fuse, and that the
fuse was briskly burning.
Above the rumble of the starting car-wheels Wade heard the mills of
Stillwater screaming their farewell taunt at him.
Then the Honorable Pulaski Britt came and sat down in his seat, penning
him next to the window.
"Yes, sir," said Britt, with keen memory as to where he had left off in
his previous conversation and with dogged determination to have his say
out, "a man that reads a book written by a perfesser that don't know the
difference between a ramdown and a dose of catnip tea, and then thinks
he understands forestry of the kind that there's a dollar in, needs to
have his head examined for hollows. Do you find anything in them books
about how to get the best figgers on dressed beef?--and when you are
buyin' it in fifty-ton lots for a dozen camps a half a cent on a pound
means something! Is there anything about hirin' men and makin' 'em stay
and work, gettin' cooks and saw-filers that know their business, chasin'
thieves away from depot-camps, keepin' crews from losin' half the
tools? Forestry! Making trees grow! Gawd-amighty, young man, Nature will
attend to the tree-growin'. That's all Nature has got to do. She was
doin' it before we got here, and doin' it well, and do you reckon we
have any right to set up and tell Nature her business? I've got
something else to think of besides tellin' Nature how to run her end.
I'd like to know how to grow men instead of trees. My Jerusalem boss,
MacLeod, writes me he has been two weeks getting together his hundred
men for that operation. He'll meet me at the Umcolcus junction, up the
line here a hundred miles. And I've been tryin' most of that time to get
hold of the right sort of a 'chaney man.'"
Wade, in his resentment at Britt's intrusion on his thoughts, was in no
mood for philological research, but sudden and rather idle curiosity
impelled him to ask what a "chaney man" was.
"Why, a clerk--a camp clerk, time-keeper, wangan store overseer, supply
accountant, and all that," snapped Britt, with small patience for the
young man's ignorance.
At that instant it came more plainly to Wade that he was a fugitive.
When he had left Elva Barrett behind he had let go the strongest cable
of hope. A day before--the day after--his manly spirit probably would
not have allowed him to become a clerk for Pulaski Britt. This day the
impetuous desire to hide in the woods, to escape the wasps of humanity,
to be in some place where sneers and false pity and taunt could not
reach him--that desire was coined into performance.
"Wouldn't I fit into a job of that sort, Mr. Britt?" he asked, blurting
the question. And when the lumberman stared at him with as much
astonishment as Pulaski Britt ever allowed himself to display, Wade
added, "I have given up school-teaching because--well, I want to get
into the woods for my health!"
"It will be healthy, all right, but it won't be dude work," said Britt.
"You'll have to hump 'round on snow-shoes or a jumper to five camps.
Board and thirty-five a month! What's the particular ailment with you?"
he demanded, rather suspiciously. "You look rugged enough."
The young man did not reply, and the Honorable Pulaski stared at him,
his eyes narrowing shrewdly. Mr. Britt had no very delicate notions of
repressing an idea when it occurred to him "Say, look here, young man,"
he cried, "I reckon I understand! The Barrett girl, hey? And John got
after you! Well, he can make it hot for any one he takes a niff at."
"Can't I have that job, Mr. Britt, without a general discussion of my
affairs?" asked Wade, with temper.
"You're hired!" There was the click of business in Britt's tone, but his
gossip's nature showed itself in the somewhat humorous drawl in which he
added: "I'm glad to know that it's only love that ails you. Outside of
that, you strike me as bein' a pretty rugged chap, and it's rugged chaps
we're lookin' for in 'Britt's Busters.' If it's only love that ails you,
I reckon we won't have any trouble about sendin' you out cured in the
spring."
But noting the glitter in Wade's eyes, Mr. Britt chuckled amiably and
took himself off down the car to talk business with a man.
During the long ride to Umcolcus Junction, Wade sat revelling in the
bitterness of his thoughts. He was not disturbed because he had given up
his school. There was a relief in escaping from meddlesome backbiters.
The school had been only a means to an end: it afforded revenue to
attain certain cherished professional plans that loomed large in Wade's
prospects. Money earned honorably in any other fashion would count for
as much. But the fact remained that he was fleeing, was hiding. Britt's
rough and somewhat contemptuous proprietorship, so instantly displayed,
wounded his pride. When he had passed the station to which he had
purchased his ticket before he met Britt, he offered more pay to the
conductor. He had seen Britt talking with the conductor a moment before,
brandishing a hairy hand in his direction.
"It's all settled by Mr. Britt," the train officer stated, passing on.
"You're one of his men, he says."
He growled under his breath as he accepted that label--"One of Britt's
men."
There were one hundred more waiting for them at Umcolcus Junction, where
they changed to the spur line that ran north.
Most of the men were in a state of social inebriety. A few fighters
were sitting apart on their dunnage-bags, nursing bruises and grudges.
Mindful of the State law that forbade the wearing of calked boots on
board a railroad train, the men who owned only that sort of footgear
were in their stocking feet. They carried their boots strung about
their necks by lacings. Many were bareheaded, having thrown away their
hats in their enthusiasm. Wade was not in a frame of mind to see any
picturesqueness in that frowsy crowd. He was one of them; he walked
dutifully behind his master, the Honorable Pulaski Britt.
A little man, with neck wattled blue and red with queer suggestion of
a turkey's characteristics, lurched out of a group and came at Pulaski
Britt with a meek and watery smile of welcome. His knees doubled with
a drunkard's limpness, and he had to run to keep from falling. Britt
evidently did not propose to serve as dock for this human derelict. He
stepped to one side with an oath, and the man made a dizzy whirl and
dove headforemost under the train on the main track, and at that moment
the train started. The man rolled over twice, and lay, serenely
indifferent to death, on the outer rail.
* * * * *
After it was all over Wade sourly told himself that he acted as he did
simply to avoid witnessing a hideous spectacle.
For, in spite of Britt's yells of protest, he went under the car, missed
the grinding wheels by an inch, and rolled out on the other side with
the drunken man in his arms.
And when the train had drawn out of the station he came back across the
track, lugging the little man as he would carry a gripsack, tossed him
into the open door of the baggage-car of the waiting train, spatted the
dust off his own clothes, and went into the coach, casting surly looks
at the sputtering inebriates who attempted to shake hands with him.
When the train started Britt came again and penned the young man in his
seat against the window-casing.
"You've started in makin' yourself worth while, even if you are only the
chaney man," vouchsafed his employer. "You did an infernal fool trick,
but you've saved me Tommy Eye, the best teamster on the Umcolcus waters.
As he lies there now he ain't worth half a cent a pound to feed to cats;
when he's on a load with the webbin's in his hands I wouldn't take ten
thousand dollars for him."
"Is he a sort of personal property of yours?" asked Wade, sullenly. He
was venting his own resentment at Pulaski Britt's airs of general
proprietorship over men.
"Just the same as that," replied Britt, complacently. "I've had him more
than twenty years, and I'd like to see him try to go to work for any one
else, or any one else try to hire him away." He struck his hand on the
young man's knee. "Up this way, if you don't make men know you own 'em,
you're missin' one of the main points of forestry!" He sneered this
word every time he used it in his talk with Wade. The new chaney man
began to wonder how much longer he could endure the Honorable Pulaski D.
Britt without rising and cuffing those puffy cheeks.