THE HOME-MAKERS OF ENCHANTED
"The clank of the press and the scream of the saws,
The grunt of the grinder that slavers and chaws
At the fibre o' pulp-wood, the purr of the plane,
Sing only one song to the big woods o' Maine.
So here's for a billion down race-way and sluice--
Hell for the hemlock, the pine, and the spruce."
--Off for the Woods.
John Barrett was first to break the embarrassed silence that fell upon
the four men left at the camp. Rodburd Ide's brows were wrinkled, and
his lips were parting to ask the questions that his curiosity urged.
Britt was wrathfully gazing after the insolent Larry. Dwight Wade had
taken up his pack and calipers, and was waiting for Ide with some
impatience.
"Mr. Wade," began the Umcolcus baron, nervously, "I hope you will
understand my position in this matter, and see why it was necessary to
make some change in the plan we discussed on Jerusalem."
"I sha'n't try to understand it," snapped Wade. "You volunteered
promises. I took those promises to the person most interested, and
you've seen fit to drop out from under. That ends our business--all the
business we had in common, Mr. Barrett."
But the baron was anxious to placate. He began guarded explanations, to
which Ide was listening intently, but Wade cut them short with a scorn
there was no mistaking.
"The only sort of interest I took in that unfortunate girl has been
maliciously misinterpreted, Mr. Barrett. She was thrown on my hands in a
way that you thoroughly understand. Mr. Ide, as a plantation officer,
has relieved me of the responsibility. You can talk with him hereafter."
"But what--what are you going to say to him?" faltered Barrett, forced
to show his anxious fear, since Wade was moving away.
In his physical weakness, in the illness that was sapping his nerve, he
became wistfully paltering.
"Nothing," replied the young man, curtly, but with a decisiveness there
was no misunderstanding. "The matter has ceased to be any business of
mine. My business hereafter--and I say this to my partner--is concerned
wholly and entirely with certain lumbering operations on Enchanted
township."
He went away, following the crew. Rodburd Ide, eager to be gone, and
seeing in the affair thus flatly dropped by Wade only a phase of the
older animosity between Britt and the young man--a quarrel that might
seek any avenue for expression, even a State pauper--demanded of
Barrett:
"Do you lay any special claim to the girl?" His tone was that of an
official only.
"Of course he doesn't," broke in Britt, seeing that his associate was
groping for a reply. "We did think of trying to help her, but what's the
use? There isn't any more gratitude in that sculch than there is in a
pine knot. Send her back to the tribe."
The little Castonia magnate looked relieved.
"She's all right with my girl till I get home," he said. "Then the
affair will take care of itself, like all those things do."
Barrett had picked up one of the discarded bludgeons and was supporting
himself on it. His legs trembled visibly when he walked to Ide's side.
"Rodburd," he said, appealingly, "I can see that you think this thing
strange. I don't want you to have wrong ideas. You and I have known each
other too long to get into quarrels. You have seen that I have been
trying to smooth matters here to-day. I can't talk it over with you now.
I'm sick--I'm a sick man, Rodburd! I've been through a dreadful
experience up here."
"You don't look well," returned Ide, solicitously, his ever-ready
sympathy enlisted.
Barrett's face was haggard and his eyes were bloodshot. He wavered on
his feet, tipping from heel to toe like a drunken man.
"You ought to get out of these woods as quick as you can," the Castonia
man went on.
Even Britt saw now that his associate was in a bad way. He gave a keen
glance at him, and shouted to MacLeod, who was waiting at the edge of
the woods, "Send back four of my men!"
"I feel dreadfully," mourned Barrett. His grit and his excitement had
been keeping him up. Now, like most strong men who have to confess that
they are conquered, he gave way to his illness with utter abandonment of
courage.
"Mr. Barrett," said Ide, surveying him pityingly, "I can see that you're
a sick man. I don't want to say that to frighten you, but because you
ought to know it. You'd better only try to make Castonia, and have a
doctor sent there. My girl will be there as soon as you are. You go to
my house, and get doctored up before you tackle the trip down-river.
That buckboard ride will kill you if you try it in the shape you're in
now."
"You'd better do as he says, John," advised Britt, checking the timber
baron's feeble protests. "I'm going to have these four men make a litter
for you and lug you. You can stand that sort of ridin', but unless you
are in better shape when you get to Castonia you wouldn't be good for
that stage ride. Use common-sense, and rest up at Rodburd's house."
"Give the men their orders," whispered the little Castonia magnate in an
aside to Britt. "It's fever, and a bad one if I ain't mistaken. By the
time he's got to my place he'll probably be too sick to give any orders
of his own. I never saw a man grow sick so fast. Tell the men to leave
him there." He talked impatiently, for his crew had disappeared up the
trail. "I've got to be hurryin'," he added. "Mr. Barrett, make my home
yours!" he cried over his shoulder, as he trotted off. "I'll be back in
a few days--as soon as I get this crew of mine located."
The four men were already at work securing poles and boughs for the
litter.
Barrett sat down upon a tussock, and held his throbbing head in his
hands. He began weakly to complain that Britt had made a mistake in
bringing his men and insisting on possession of the girl.
The Honorable Pulaski promptly checked the incoherent expostulations of
the stumpage baron.
"No, I haven't committed you, either," he blurted. "Bluff it out! It's
the only way to do. It's the way I advised you to do in the first place.
The thing looks big to you here in the woods. You're down on the level
with it. Get back into the city, and get your tail-coat on and your
dignity, and sit up on top of that governor's boom of yours, and the
story will only be political blackmail if they try it on you. But they
won't. That Wade fellow is one of those righteous sort of asses that
like to read moral lessons to other people, and especially to you, so
he can work out his grudge. But he's all done. I know the sort. The
thing began to scorch his fingers and he chucked it. He's got enough to
attend to in these woods. Don't you worry."
"But I do worry," mourned Barrett. "And there's the girl to consider.
God save me, Pulaski, she's mine! Her looks show it. I can't sleep
nights after this, unless she is taken care of in a decent way."
"There'll be a dozen methods of doin' it when the time is ripe," urged
the other, consolingly. "As it is now, you get out of these woods and
stay out, and attend to your business--which is my business, too, when
it comes to the governor matter. By ----, you've seen enough in this
trip to understand that we haven't got any too safe timber laws as it
is. If the farmers get control next trip it means trouble for such of us
as take to the tall timber. Buck up, man! Don't believe for a minute
that we're goin' to let a college dude and a State pauper queer you. The
thing will work itself out."
He uttered a sudden snort of disgust, gazing over Barrett's shoulder.
"Foolish Abe" of the Skeets had edged out of the bush, the silence after
the uproar of voices and conflict encouraging him. He seemed pitifully
bewildered. An instinct almost canine prompted him to take the trail to
the south, for his only friend, the girl of the tribe, had gone that
way. But a strange female had gone with her, and of strange females he
entertained unspeakable fear.
"Here, you cross-eyed baboon," called the Honorable Pulaski, "go!
Scoot!" He pointed north in the direction in which the Enchanted crew
had disappeared. "Young man want you. Follow him. Stay with him. Run!"
He picked up his discarded sled-stake, and the fool hurried away towards
the Notch. "I'd like to see that human nail-keg plastered onto the
Enchanted crew for the winter," remarked Britt, with malice. "There's no
fillin' him up. He'll eat as much as three men, and that Wade is just
enough of a soft thing not to turn him out. If I can't bore an enemy
with a pod-auger, John, I'll do it with a gimlet--a gimlet will let more
or less blood."
Five minutes later Barrett was borne on his way south, his courage
braced by some final arguments from his iron associate, his mind made up
to adopt the course of indignant bluff suggested by the belligerent
Britt.
And Britt was stumping north, driving the blubbering Abe before him with
sundry hoots and missiles.
When the poor creature came crawling to the fire on hands and knees at
dusk that evening, hairy, pitiable, and drooling with hunger, Rodburd
Ide accepted him with resignation, though he recognized Britt's petty
malice; for unless he were driven, Abe Skeet would never have come past
a well-stocked lumber-camp to follow wanderers into the wilderness.
That night the Enchanted crew camped on Attean Stream, a short day's
journey from their destination. The tired men snatched supper from their
packs and fell back snoring, their heads on their dunnage-bags.
They were away in the first flush of the morning, Rodburd Ide leading
with his partner. Wade welcomed the little man's absorbed interest in
the business ahead of them. Ide asked no questions about the incident at
Durfy's. Wade put the hideous topic as far behind other thoughts as he
could, and soon other thoughts crowded it out.
As they passed from the zone of striped maple, round-wood, witch-hobble,
and mountain holly that Mother Nature had drawn across her naked breast
after the rude hand of Pulaski Britt had stripped the virgin growth,
his heart lifted. Under the great spruces of Enchanted the town's
bricks, streets, and human passions seemed very far away.
Before he slept that night he had had an experience that thrilled the
sense of the primitive self hidden within him, as it is hidden in all
men, and covered by conventions.
He had staked the metes and bounds, the corners, the frontage, all the
dimensions of a new home, where no roof except the crowns of trees had
ever shut sunlight off the earth.
Mankind in general opens eyes within walls that the hands of those
coming before have built.
Many have no occasion to seek ever for other quarters than those their
fathers have given them. With most the limit of exploration is the quest
for a new rental. Mankind who build, build along settled streets, first
taking note that sewers and water systems have been installed.
Even in the woods most crews come up to find that the advance
skirmishers have builded main camp, meal camp, horse-hovels, and wangan.
Owing to the sudden forming of Rodburd Ide's partnership with the young
man whom Fate threw in his way, and his equally sudden determination to
operate on virgin Enchanted, there had been no time for preliminaries.
Even the tote teams with the first of the winter's supplies were miles
away down the trail, for in the woods the human two-foot outclasses the
equine four-foot.
Therefore, Wade, perspiring in the forefront of the toilers, saw the
first tree topple, heard it crash outward from the site of the camp, and
tugged with the others when it was set into place as the sill. When he
stood back and wiped his forehead and gazed on that one lonesome log it
made roofless out-doors seem bigger and more threatening. The rain was
pattering from a cold sky. The thrall of centuries of housed ancestors
was on him. Roof and walls had attached themselves to his sentiency,
even as the shell of the snail is attached to its pulp.
But the next moment Larry Gorman started a song, and the rollicking
hundred men about him took it up and toiled with merry thoughtlessness
of all except that God's good greenwood was about them and God's sky
above them, and Wade bent again to labor, ashamed that he had counted
shingles and plaster as standing for so much.
They put up eight-log walls for the main camp, notching the ends. A
hundred willing men made the buildings grow like toadstools. While the
walls were going up men laid floors of poles shaved flat on one side.
Others brought moss and chinked the spaces between the logs of the
walls. The first team up brought tarred paper and the few boards needed
for tables and like uses. The tarred paper and cedar splints roofed all
comfortably.
The second team brought stove, tin dishes, and raw staples--and cook and
cookee walked behind.
And when old Christopher Straight came at the tail of the procession as
fast as he could hurry back from Castonia settlement, the camps stood
nearly complete under the frown of Enchanted Mountain, Enchanted Stream
gurgling over brown rocks at the door.
The distant whick-whack of axes told where the swampers were clearing
the way, and the tearing crash of trees punctuated the ceaseless "ur-r
rick-raw!" of the cross-cut saws. The only axe scarf on Ide's trees was
the nick necessary to direct their fall. They were felled by the saw.
Two days of exploration on the spruce benches straight back from the
stream showed up several million feet of black growth easily available
for a first season's operation.
Ide, Wade, and old Christopher cruised, pacing parallels and counting
trees. And when they sat down on an outcropping of ledge the young man
made so many sagacious observations that Ide's eyes opened in amazement.
"Where did you learn lumberin'?" he demanded.
"I wasn't aware that I knew it--not as it is viewed from a practical
stand-point," replied Wade, humbly. "I was going to ask you in a moment
if you wouldn't like to have me keep still so that you and Christopher
could talk sense."
"I never heard better opinions on a stand of timber and a lay of land,"
affirmed his partner. "It looks as though you'd been holdin' out on me,"
he added, with a grim smile.
The young man smiled back. There was a certain grateful pride in his
expression.
"I know how old woodsmen look at book-learned chaps, Mr. Ide. Pulaski
Britt told me once. I was simply trying on you a bit of an experiment
with my little knowledge of books. I was waiting to have you and
Christopher pull me up short. I'm rather surprised to find that you
think what I said was good sense. But after a book-fellow has bumped
against practical men like--like Mr. Britt for a time, he begins to
distrust his books. It's simply this way, Mr. Ide: I had a few young men
in my high-school who were interested in forestry of the modern sort,
and I worked with them to encourage them as much as I could. It is
almost impossible for a reading-man in these days not to take an
interest in the protection of our forests, for the folks at Washington
are making it the great topic of the times."
"Well," remarked Ide, with a sigh of appreciation, "I never read a book
on forestry in my life, and I never heard of a lumberman in these parts
who ever had. But if you can get facts like those you've stated out of
books, I reckon some of us better spend our winter evenin's readin'
instead of playin' pitch pede." He got up and gave the young man a
complimenting palm. "Wade," he said, earnestly, "I'll own up that I've
been a little prejudiced against book-fellows myself. Instead of givin'
an ignorant man the contents of the book--the juice of it, as you might
say---in a way that won't hurt, they are so anxious to have him know
that it's book-learnin' they've got, they'll bang him across the face
with it, book-covers and all. I like your knowledge, because it's goin'
to help us in handlin' this thing we've bit off up here. But I'll be
blamed if I don't like your modesty best of all."
He picked up his calipers, stuck them under his arm, and started for
camp with a haste that showed full confidence in his partner's ability.
And the next morning he buttoned the camp letters in his coat, and
started south for Castonia with the outgoing tote team.
"I don't worry about this end," he said, at parting, "and you needn't
worry about mine. Don't be afraid of going hungry. There's nothin' like
full stomachs to make axes and saws run well. It will have to be
hand-to-mouth till snow flies, then I'll slip you in stores enough to
fill that wangan to the roof. Good heart, my boy! We're goin' to make
some money."
Wade followed him to the edge of the clearing with his first sense of
loneliness tugging within him.
"Safe home to you, Mr. Ide," he said, "and my respectful regards to Miss
Nina, if you will take them. I suppose--she will--probably--the girl she
took away--" he stammered.
"By thunder mighty!" cried the Castonia magnate, whirling on him, "I'd
forgotten all about that Skeet girl, or Arden girl, or whatever they
call her."
He eyed the young man with a dawning of his old curiosity, but Wade met
his gaze frankly.
"The affair of the girl is not mine at all," he said. "Simply because
she seemed superior to the tribe she was with, I hoped Mr. Barrett would
do as he partly promised--use a few dollars of his money to help her
from the muck. Such cases appeal to me, because I'm not accustomed to
seeing them, perhaps."
"If my girl is interested in that poor little wildcat, you needn't think
twice about her bein' taken good care of," cried the admiring father.
And gazing into the wholesome eyes and candid face of the little man,
Wade reflected that perhaps Fate had handled a problem better for John
Barrett's abandoned daughter than he himself, in his resentful zeal, had
planned.
He shook Ide's hand hard, and, with the picture of John Barrett's other
daughter in his dimming eyes and the love of John Barrett's other
daughter burning in his lonely heart, he turned back towards the woods,
whose fronded arms, tossing in the October wind, beckoned him to his
duty.