CONNIE DELIVERS HIS LOGS
The following days were busy ones in the two camps in Dogfish. Connie
worked day and night to catch up on his books, and while Saginaw
superintended the building of the huge bateau, and the smoothing out of
the rollways, Hurley and Slue Foot kept the rest of the crew at work
hauling logs to the landings. Spring came on with a rush, and the fast
softening snow made it necessary for the hauling to be done at night.
The thud of axes, the whine of saws, and the long crash of falling
trees, was heard no more in the camps, while all night long the woods
resounded to the calls of teamsters and swampers, as huge loads of logs
were added to the millions of feet already on the rollways.
Then came a night when the thermometer failed to drop to the freezing
point. The sky hung heavy with a thick grey blanket of clouds, a steady
drenching rain set in, and the loggers knew that so far as the woods
were concerned, their work was done. Only a few logs remained to be
hauled, and Hurley ordered these peeled and snaked to the skidways to
await the next season.
The men sang and danced in the bunkhouse that night to the wheeze of an
accordion and the screech of an old fiddle. They crowded the few
belongings which they would take out of the woods with them into
ridiculously small compass, and talked joyfully and boisterously of the
drive--for, of all the work of the woods it is the drive men most love.
And of all work men find to do, the log drive on a swollen, quick-water
river is the most dangerous, the most gruelling, and the most torturing,
when for days and nights on end, following along rough shores, fighting
underbrush, rocks, and backwater, clothing half torn from their bodies,
and the remnants that remain wet to their skin, sleeping in cat-naps
upon the wet ground, eating out of their hands as they follow the logs,
cheating death by a hair as they leap from log to log, or swarm out to
break a jam--of all work, the most gruelling, yet of all work the most
loved by the white-water birlers of the north.
Next morning water was flowing on top of the ice on Dogfish, and the big
bateau was man-hauled to the bank and loaded with supplies and a
portable stove. Strong lines were loaded into her, and extra axes,
pickpoles, and peavys, and then, holding themselves ready to man the
river at a moment's notice, the crew waited.
And that morning, also appeared John Grey, worn out and wet to the
middle by his all night's battle with the deep, saturated slush of the
tote road. He had started from Dogfish with a horse and a side-bar
buggy, but after a few miles, he had given up the attempt to drive
through, and had unharnessed the horse and turned it loose to find its
way back, while he pushed on on foot. After a prodigious meal, the
sheriff turned in and slept until noon. When he awoke, his eyes rested
for a moment on Connie, and he turned to Hurley: "Quite some of a clerk
you got holt of, this season, Jake," he said, with a twinkle in his eye.
"Yeh," replied Hurley, drily. "He's done fairly good--for a greener. I
mistrusted, after he'd be'n in here a spell, that he wasn't just a
pick-up of a kid--but, I didn't hardly think he'd turn out to be the
owner."
"Owner?"
"Yup. Him an' his pardner owns this timber, an' the kid come down to
find out what the trouble was----"
"Y'ain't tellin' me a kid like him----"
"Yup--they come that way--up in Alasky. He's put in a year with the
Canady Mounted, too. I ain't a-braggin' him up none, but I'm right here
to tell you that what that there kid don't know ain't in the books--an'
he kin put over things that makes the smartest men me an' you ever
heer'd of look like pikers."
John Grey smiled, and the boss continued: "Oh, you needn't laff! Old
Heinie Metzger busted _you_, didn't he? An' he busted a-many another
good man. But this here kid slipped down an' put a contrack over on him
that'll cost him between three an' four hundred thousand dollars of his
heart's blood. The contrack is all signed and delivered, an' when
Dogfish lets go tonight or tomorrow, the logs'll start."
"Where is Slue Foot?" asked the sheriff, after listening to Hurley's
explanation.
"Up to Camp Two, we'll be goin' up there now. Me an' you an' the kid
an' Lon'll go long. An' a crew of men with paint buckets and brushes.
Saginaw, he'll have to stay here to boss the breakin' out of the
rollways, in case she let's go before we git back."
At the edge of Camp Two's clearing Hurley called a halt: "We'll wait
here 'til the kid gits Slue Foot's signature to them vouchers. When ye
git 'em kid, open the door an' spit out into the snow--then we'll come."
"I'll just keep out these," grinned Slue Foot, as he selected the false
vouchers from the sheaf of good ones, "so them birds don't git no chanct
to double-cross me. You've done yer part first rate, kid. There's a
little better than three million feet on the rollways that'll be wearin'
the green triple X again they hit the sortin' gap. Von Kuhlmann was up
here hisself to make sure, an' they's goin' to be a bunch of coin in it
fer us--because he says how the owner is down to Minneapolis an'
contracted fer the whole cut, an' old Heinie Metzger made a contrack
that'll bust this here Alasky gent. He'll be so sick of the timber game,
he'll run every time he hears the word log spoke. An' Hurley--he's broke
fer good an' all. I be'n layin' to git him good--an' I done it, an' at
the same time, I made a stake fer myself."
Connie nodded, and opening the door, spat into the snow. A moment later
there was a scraping of feet. The door opened, and John Grey, closely
followed by Hurley and Lon Camden, entered the office.
"Hullo, John," greeted Slue Foot. "Huntin' someone, er be ye up here
tryin' to git some pointers on how to make money loggin'?"
The sheriff flushed angrily at the taunt: "A little of both, I guess,"
he answered evenly.
"Who you huntin'?"
"You."
"Me! What d'you want of me? What I be'n doin'?"
"Oh, nothin' to speak of. Countin' the four warrants the kid, here,
swore out, I only got nine agin ye--the other five is on information
swore to by yer three friends down in jail."
With a roar of hate, Slue Foot sprang straight at Connie, but Hurley who
had been expecting just such a move, met him half way--met his face with
a huge fist that had behind it all the venom of the big boss's pent-up
wrath. Slue Foot crashed into a corner, and when he regained his feet
two steel bracelets coupled with a chain encircled his wrists. The man
glared in sullen defiance while the sheriff read the warrants arising
out of the information of the three I. W. W.'s. But when he came to the
warrants Connie had sworn out, the man flew into a fury of impotent
rage--a fury that gradually subsided as the enormity of the offences
dawned on him and he sank cowering into a chair, wincing visibly as he
listened to the fateful words. "So you see," concluded the sheriff, "the
State of Minnesota is mighty interested in you, Slue Foot, so much
interested that I shouldn't wonder if it would decide to pay yer board
and lodgin' fer the rest of yer natural life."
"If I go over the road there'll be others that goes too. There's them in
Minneapolis that holds their nose pretty high that's into this as deep
as me. An' if I kin knock a few years offen my own time, by turnin'
State's evidence, yer kin bet yer life I'll spill a mouthful." Suddenly
he turned on Connie: "An' you," he screamed, "you dirty little
double-crosser! What be you gittin' out of this?"
"Well," answered the boy, "as soon as the crew out there on the rollways
get the red block-and-ball in good honest paint on the ends of those
logs, I'll get quite a lot out of it. You see I own the timber."
[Illustration: HURLEY HAD REMAINED AT THE UPPER CAMP, AND AS THE DRIVE
AT LAST BEGAN TO THIN OUT, HE CAME FLOATING DOWN, STANDING ERECT UPON A
HUGE LOG.]
Just at daylight the following morning the Dogfish River burst its
prison of ice and "let go" with a rush and a grind of broken cakes;
breakfast was bolted, and the men of the drive swarmed to the bank where
they stood by to break-out the rollways as soon as the logs from the
upper Camp began to thin out. Connie stood beside the big bateau with
the cook and John Grey and watched Camp Two's drive rush past--a
floating floor of logs that spanned the river from bank to bank. Hurley
had remained at the upper Camp and as the drive at last began to thin
out, he came floating down, standing erect upon a huge log. When
opposite the camp the big boss leaped nimbly from log to log until he
reached the bank, where Saginaw stood ready to order out the breaking
out of the first rollway. Many of the men of the upper drive had passed,
riding as Hurley had done upon logs--others straggled along the shore,
watching to see that no trouble started at the bends, and still others
formed the rear drive whose business it was to keep the stranded logs
and the jill-pokes moving.
So busy were all hands watching the logs that nobody noticed the
manacled Slue Foot crawl stealthily from the bateau and slip to the
river's brink. A big log nosed into shore and the former boss of Camp
Two leaped onto it, his weight sending it out into the current. The plan
might have worked, for the next bend would have thrown Slue Foot's log
to the opposite bank of the river before any one could possibly have
interfered, but luck willed otherwise, for the moment the unfortunate
Slue Foot chose as the moment of his escape was the same moment Saginaw
Ed gave the word for the breaking-out of the first rollway. There was a
sharp order, a few well-directed blows of axes, a loud snapping of
toggle-pins, and with a mighty roar the towering pile of logs shot down
the steep bank and took the river with a splash that sent a wave of
water before it.
Then it was that the horrified spectators saw Slue Foot, his log caught
in the wave, frantically endeavouring to control, with his calked boots,
its roll and pitch. For a moment it seemed as if he might succeed, but
the second rollway let go and hurtled after the first, and then the
third, and the fourth--rolling over each other, forcing the tumbling,
heaving, forefront farther and farther into the stream, and nearer and
nearer to Slue Foot's wildly pitching log. By this time word had passed
to the men at the rollways and the fifth was held, but too late to save
Slue Foot, for a moment later the great brown mass of rolling tumbling
logs reached him, and before the eyes of the whole crew, the boss of
Camp Two disappeared for ever, and the great brown mass rolled on.
"Mebbe ut's best," said Hurley, as with a shudder he turned away, "'tis
a man's way to die--in the river--an' if they's an-ny wan waitin' fer
him um back there, they'll think he died loike a man." In the next
breath he bellowed an order and the work of the rollways went on.
It was at the first of his cleverly planned obstructions that Hurley
overtook the head of the drive, and it was there that he encountered
Long Leaf Olson and the men of the Syndicate crew.
Long Leaf was ranting and roaring up and down the bank, vainly ordering
his men to break the jam, and calling malediction upon the logs, the
crew, river, and every foot of land its water lapped. Hurley had ordered
Saginaw to the rear drive, promising to hold the waters back with his
jams, and now he approached the irate Long Leaf, a sack of dynamite over
his shoulder and a hundred picked men of his two crews at his back.
"Call yer men off thim logs!" he bellowed, "Thim's my logs on the head
end, an' I want 'em where they're at."
"Go on back to the rear end where you belong!" screeched Long Leaf;
"I'll learn you to git fresh with a Syndicate drive! Who d'you think you
be, anyhow?"
"Oi'll show ye who I be, ye Skanjehoovyan Swade! An' Oi'll show ye who's
runnin' this drive! Oi'm bossin' th' head ind mesilf an' Saginaw Ed's
bossin' the rear, an' av ye've fouled our drive, ye'll play the game our
way! What do Oi care fer yer Syndicate? Ye ain't boss of nawthin' on
this river this year--ye' ain't aven boss of the bend-watchers!"
Long Leaf, who's river supremacy had heretofore been undisputed, for the
simple reason that no outfit had dared to incur the wrath of the
Syndicate, stared at the huge Irishman in astonishment. Then placing his
fingers to his lips he gave a peculiar whistle, and instantly men
swarmed from the jam, and others appeared as if by magic from the woods.
In a close-packed mob, they centred about their boss. "Go git 'em!"
roared Long Leaf, beside himself with rage. "Chase the tooth-pickers off
the river!"
"Aye, come on!" cried Hurley. "Come on yez spalpeens! Come on, chase us
off th' river--an' whoilst yer chasin' ye bether sind wan av ye down to
Owld Heinie fer to ship up a big bunch av long black boxes wid shiney
handles, er they'll be a whole lot of lumberjacks that won't go out av
the woods at all, this spring!"
As the men listened to the challenge they gazed uneasily toward the crew
at Hurley's back. One hundred strong they stood and each man that did
not carry an axe or a peavy, had thoughtfully provided himself with a
serviceable peeled club of about the thickness of his wrist.
"Git at 'em!" roared Long Leaf, jumping up and down in his tracks. But
the men hesitated, moved forward a few steps, and stopped.
"They hain't nawthin' in my contrack calls fer gittin' a cracked bean,"
said one, loud enough to be heard by the others. "Ner mine," "ner mine,"
"ner mine." "Let old Metzger fight his own battles, he ain't never done
nawthin' to me but skinned me on the wanagan." "What would we git if we
did risk our head?" "Probably git docked fer the time we put in
fightin'." Rapidly the mutiny spread, each man taking his cue from the
utterance of his neighbour, and a few minutes later they all retired,
threw themselves upon the wet ground, and left Long Leaf to face Hurley
alone.
"Git out av me road," cried the big Irishman, "befoor Oi put a shtick av
giant in under ye an' blow ye out!" Long Leaf backed away and,
proceeding to a point opposite the jam, Hurley seated himself upon a
log, and calmly filled his pipe.
"If you think you're bossin' this drive, why in tarnation ain't you
busted this jam," growled Long Leaf, as he came up a few minutes later.
"They ain't no hurry, me b'y, not a bit of a hurry. They'll be another
wan just a moile above th' mouth. Ut's a way good river-min has got to
let the rear drive ketch up."
"You wait 'til Metzger hears of this!" fumed Long Leaf.
Hurley laughed: "Oi'll be there at th' tellin'. An' you wait 'til
Metzger sees eight er noine million feet av my logs slidin' t'rough his
sortin' gap--an' him havin' to pay fifty dollars a thousand fer um. D'ye
think he'll doie av a stroke, er will he blow up?"
"What do you mean--eight million--fifty dollars----"
Hurley laughed tantalizingly: "Wait an' see. 'Twill be worth th' proice
av admission." And not another word could Long Leaf get out of him.
During the previous summer Hurley had studied his ground well. For
several miles above the jam the river flowed between high banks, and it
was that fact that made his scheme practicable, for had the land
extended back from the river in wide flats or meadows, the backwater
from the jam would have scattered his drive far and wide over the
country. It was mid-afternoon when the rear-drive crew came up and then
it was that Hurley, bearing a bundle of yellow cylinders, crept out
along the face of the jam. A quarter of an hour later he came crawling
back and joined the men who watched from the edge of the timber. Five
minutes passed and the silence of the woods was shattered by a dull
boom. The whole mass of logs that had lain, heaped like jack-straws in
the bed of the river, seemed to lift bodily. A few logs in the forefront
were hurled into the air to fall with a noisy splash into the river, or
with a crash upon the trembling mass that settled slowly into the stream
again. For an instant the bristling wall quivered uncertainly, moved
slowly forward, hesitated, and then with a roar, the centre shot
forward, the sides tumbled in upon the logs that rushed through from
behind, and the great drive moved.
The breaking of the second jam was a repetition of the first, and when
the drive hit the big river there were left on the bars and rock-ledges
of the Dogfish only a few stragglers that later could be dry-rolled by a
small crew into the stream and rafted down.
The crew worked indefatigably. Lumbermen said it was as pretty a drive
as ever took water. In the cook's bateau Connie and Steve worked like
Trojans to serve the men with hot coffee and handouts that were kept on
tap every minute of the day and night.
At the various dams along the great river the boy never tired of
standing beside Hurley and watching the logs sluiced through, and at
last, with Anoka behind them, it was with a wildly beating heart that he
stepped into a skiff and took his place in the stern beside Hurley,
while the brawny men of the sorting crew worked their way to the front
of the drive.
As the black smudge that hovered over the city of mills deepened, the
boy gazed behind him at the river of logs--his logs, for the most part;
a mighty pride of achievement welled up within him--the just pride of a
winter's work well done.
News of the drive had evidently preceded them, for when the skiff
reached the landing of the Syndicate's sorting gap, the first persons
the boy saw, standing at the end of the platform, apart from the men of
the sorting crew, were Metzger and von Kuhlmann.
The former greeting Connie with his oily smile. "Ah, here we have the
youthful financier, himself," he purred. "He has accompanied his logs
all the way down the river, counting them and putting them to bed each
night, like the good mother looks after the children. I am prepared to
believe that he has even named each log."
"That's right," answered the boy evenly. "The first log to come through
is named Heinie, and the last log is named Connie--and between the two
of them there are four hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of
assorted ones--you're going to pay for them--so I left the naming to
you."
Metzger shot him a keen glance: "How many logs have you brought down?"
"About nine million feet of mine, and about three million and a half of
yours--from your Dogfish Camp--at least that's what we estimated when we
sluiced through at Anoka."
Von Kuhlmann had turned white as paper: "Where's Hurley?" he asked in a
shaky voice.
[Illustration: CONNIE PLACED HIS HAND AFFECTIONATELY UPON THE ARM OF THE
BIG BOSS WHO STOOD AT HIS SIDE GRINNING BROADLY.]
Connie placed his hand affectionately upon the arm of the big boss who
stood at his side grinning broadly: "This is Jake Hurley--my foreman,"
he announced, and then to the boss: "The old one is Heinie Metzger, and
the shaky one's von Kuhlmann."
"But," faltered von Kuhlmann--"there iss some mistake! Hurley I haff
seen--I know him. I say he iss not Hurley! There iss a mistake!"
"Yes, there's a mistake all right--and you made it," laughed the boy.
"And it's a mistake that cost your boss, there, dearly. The man you
have been dealing with was not Hurley at all. He passed himself off for
Hurley, and last year he got away with it. Your game is up--you crooks!
The three million feet that Slue Foot Magee, alias Hurley, branded with
your disappearing paint, have all been repainted with good, honest,
waterproof paint--and, _here they come!_" As the boy spoke, a log
scraped along the sheer-boom, and for a moment all eyes rested upon the
red block-and-ball, then instantly lifted to the thousands of logs that
followed it.
Several days later when the boom scale had been verified, Connie again
presented himself at the office of the Syndicate and was shown
immediately to Metzger's private room. The magnate received him with
deference, even placing a chair for him with his own hands. "I hardly
know how to begin, _Herr_ Morgan----"
"_Connie Morgan_," snapped the boy. "And as far as I can see you can
begin by dating a check for four hundred and forty-eight thousand, three
hundred and twenty dollars--and then you can finish by signing it, and
handing it over."
"But, my dear young man, the price is exorbitant--my stockholders in
Germany--they will not understand. It will be my ruin."
"Why did you agree to it then? Why did you sign the contract?"
"Ah, you do not understand! Allow me----"
"I understand this much," said Connie, his eyes flickering with wrath,
"that you'd have held me to my bargain and taken my logs for ten dollars
a thousand, and ruined me, if I hadn't been wise to your dirty game."
"Ah, no! We should have adjusted--should have compromised. I would
have been unwilling to see you lose! And yet, you would see me
lose--everything--my position--my friends in Germany--surely your heart
is not so hard. There should be fellowship among lumbermen----"
"Is that the reason you ruined John Grey, and Lige Britton, and Lafe
Weston, and poor old Jim Buck? Every one of them as square a man as ever
lived--and every one of them an independent logger, 'til you ruined
them! What did you answer when they sat right in this office and begged
for a little more time--a little more credit--a little waiver of toll
here and there? Answer me that! You bloodsucking weasel!" The cowardly
whine of the beaten German made the boy furious. He was upon his feet,
now, pounding the desk with his fist.
A crafty gleam shot from Metzger's eyes, and abruptly he changed his
tactics: "Let us not abuse each other. It is probable we can come to an
agreement. You are smart. Come in with us. I can use you--in von
Kuhlmann's place. I paid von Kuhlmann eighteen-hundred a year. Make a
concession to me on the contract and I will employ you with a ten year
contract, at ten thousand a year. We are a big corporation; we will
crush out the little ones! I can even offer you stock. We will tighten
our grip on the timber. We will show these Americans----"
"Yes," answered the boy, his voice trembling with fury, "we'll show
these Americans--we'll show 'em what _fools_ they are to allow a lot of
wolves from across the water to come over here and grab off the best
we've got. I'm an American! And I'm proud of it! And what's more, I'll
give you just five minutes to write that check, Metzger, and if it isn't
in my hands when the time's up, I'll get out an attachment that'll tie
up every dollar's worth of property you own in the State, from the mills
to your farthest camp. I'll tie up your logs on the rollways--and by the
time you get the thing untangled you won't have water enough to get
them to the river. You've got three minutes and a half left."
Slowly, with shaking fingers, Metzger drew the check, and without a
word, passed it over to Connie, who studied it minutely, and then thrust
it into his pocket. At the door he turned and looked back at Metzger who
had sloughed low in his chair.
"If you'd listened to those other men--John Grey and the others you've
busted, when they were asking for favours that meant nothing to you, but
meant ruin to them if you withheld them--if you'd played the game square
and decent--you wouldn't be busted now. And, when you get back to
Germany, you might tell your friends over there that unless they change
their tactics, someday, something is going to happen that will wake
America up! And if you're a fair specimen of your kind, when America
does wake up, it will be good-bye Germany!" And as the door slammed upon
the boy's heels, Metzger for a reason unaccountable to himself
shuddered.
THE END
Connie Morgan with the Mounted
By
James B. Hendryx
Author of "Connie Morgan in Alaska"
_Illustrated._
It tells how "Sam Morgan's Boy," well known to readers of Mr. Hendryx's
"Connie Morgan in Alaska," daringly rescued a man who was rushing
to destruction on an ice floe and how, in recognition of his
quick-wittedness and nerve, he was made a Special Constable in the
Northwest Mounted Police, with the exceptional adventures that fell to
his lot in that perilous service. It is a story of the northern
wilderness, clean and bracing as the vigorous, untainted winds that
sweep over that region; the story of a boy who wins out against the
craft of Indians and the guile of the bad white man of the North; the
story of a boy who succeeds where men fail.
Connie Morgan in Alaska
By
James B. Hendryx
Author of "The Promise," "The Law of the Woods," etc.
_12°. Over twenty illustrations_
Mr. Hendryx, as he has ably demonstrated in his many well-known tales,
knows his Northland thoroughly, but he has achieved a reputation as a
writer possibly "too strong" for the younger literary digestion. It is a
delight, therefore, to find that he can present properly, in a capital
story of a boy, full of action and adventure, and one in whom boys
delight, the same thorough knowledge of people and customs of the North.
The Quest of the Golden Valley
By
Belmore Browne
Author of "The Conquest of Mount McKinley"
_12°. Eight full-page illustrations_
The story of a search for treasure which lies guarded by the fastnesses
of nature in the ragged interior of Alaska. The penetration of these
wilds by the boys who are the heroes of the story is a thrilling
narrative of adventure, and with every step of the journey the lore of
the open is learned. The reader follows them through the mountains
wreathed in misty enchantment, over swollen rivers, into inviting
valleys, until the great discovery of gold is made, and then the
adventure does not close but may be said to reach its height, for a wily
good-for-nothing, who, under false pretenses, has inveigled in his
scheme some men innocent of wicked intent, attempts to steal the prize,
and there follows a race of days through the northland, involving
innumerable dangers and culminating in a splendid rescue.
The White Blanket
By
Belmore Brown
Author of "The Quest of the Golden Valley," etc.
_12°. Illustrated_
A sequel to _The Quest of the Golden Valley_, this time taking the chums
through the vicissitudes of an Alaskan winter. They trap the many
fur-bearing animals, hunt the big game, camp with the Indians, do
dog-driving, snow-shoeing, etc. With the coming of spring they descend
one of the wilderness rivers on a raft and at the eleventh hour, after
being wrecked in a dangerous canyon, they discover a fabulous quartz
lode, and succeed in reaching the sea coast.
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York London
Transcriber's Notes:
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected.
Illustrations have been moved closer to the relevant text.