At daylight next morning began Toppy's initiation as a blacksmith's
helper. For the next four days he literally earned his bread in the
sweat of his brow, as Campbell had warned him he would. The dour old
Scot took it as his religious duty to give his helper a severe
introduction to the world of manual labour, and circumstances aided him
in his aim.
Two dozen huge wooden sleighs had come from the "wood-butcher"--the camp
carpenter-shop--to be fitted with cross-rods, brace-irons and runners.
Out in the woods the ice-roads, carefully sprinkled each night, were
alternately freezing and thawing, gradually approaching the solid
condition which would mean a sudden call for sleighs to haul the logs,
which lay mountain-high at the rollways, down to the river. One cold
night and day now, and the call would come, and David Campbell was not
the man to be found wanting--even if handicapped by a helper with hands
as soft as a woman's.
Toppy had no knowledge or skill in the trade, but he had strength and
quickness, and the thoughts of Reivers' masterfulness, and the "nice
boy" in the mouth of the girl, spurred him to the limit. The heavy
sledgework fell to his lot as a matter of course. A twenty-pound sledge
was a plaything in Toppy's hand--for the first fifteen minutes.
After that the hammer seemed to increase progressively in weight, until
at the end of the first day's work Toppy would gladly have credited the
statement that it weighed a ton. Likewise the heavy runner-irons, which
he lifted with ease on the anvil in the morning, seemed to grow heavier
as the day grew older. Had Toppy been in the splendid condition that had
helped him to win his place on the All-American eleven four years
before, he might have gone through the cruel period of breaking-in
without faltering. But four years of reckless living had taken their
toll. The same magnificent frame and muscles were there; the great heart
and grit and sand likewise. But there was something else there, too; the
softening, weakening traces of decomposed alcohol in organs and tissues,
and under the strain of the terrific pace which old Campbell set for
Toppy, abused organs, fibres and nerves began to creak and groan, and
finally called out, "Halt!"
It was only Toppy's grit--the "great heart" that had made him a
champion--and the desire to prove his strength before Reivers that kept
him at work after the first day. His body had quit cold. He had never
before undergone such expenditure of muscular energy, not even in the
fiercest game of his career. That was play; this was torture. On the
second morning his body shrank involuntarily from the spectacle of the
torturing sledge, anvil and irons, but pride and grit drove him on with
set jaw and hard eyes. Quit? Well, hardly. Reivers walked around the
camp and smiled as he saw Toppy sweating, and Toppy swore and went on.
On the third day old Campbell looked at him with curiosity.
"Well, lad, have ye had enough?" he asked, smiling pityingly. "Ye can
get a job helping the cookee if you find man's work too hard for ye."
Toppy, between clenched teeth, swore savagely. He was so tired that he
was sick. The toxins of fatigue, aided and abetted by the effects of
hard living, had poisoned him until his feet and brain felt as heavy as
lead. It hurt him to move and it hurt him to think. He was groggy, all
but knocked out; but something within him held him doggedly at the tasks
which were surely mastering him.
That night he dragged himself to bed without waiting for supper. In the
morning Campbell was amazed to see him tottering toward his accustomed
place in the shop; for old Campbell had set a pace that had racked his
own iron, work-tried body, and he had allowed Toppy two days in which to
cry enough.
"Hold up a little, lad," he grumbled. "We're away ahead of our job.
There's no need laying yourself up. Take you a rest."
"You go to ----!" exploded the overwrought Toppy. "Take a rest yourself if
you need one; I don't."
He was working on his nerve now, flogging his weary arms and body to do
his bidding against their painful protests; and he worked like a madman,
fearing that if he came to a halt the run-down machinery would refuse to
start afresh.
It was near evening when a teamster drove up with a broken sleigh from
which Campbell and the man strove in vain to tear the twisted runner.
Reivers from the steps of the store looked on, sneering. Toppy, his lips
drawn back with pain and weariness, laughed shrilly at the efforts of
the pair.
"Yank it off!" he cried contemptuously. "Yank it off--like this."
He drove a pry-iron under the runner and heaved. It refused to budge.
Toppy gathered himself under the pry and jerked with every ounce of
energy in him. The runner did not move. His left ankle felt curiously
weak under the awful strain. Across the way he heard Reivers laugh
shortly. Furiously Toppy jerked again; the runner flew into the air.
Toppy felt the weak ankle sag under him in unaccountable fashion, and he
fell heavily on his side and lay still.
"Sprained his ankle," grunted the teamster, as they bore him to his
bunk. "I knew something had to give. No man ever was made to stand up
under that lift."
"But I yanked it off!" groaned Toppy, half wild with pain. "I didn't
quit--I yanked the darn thing off!"
"Aye," said old Campbell, "you yanked it off, lad. Lay still now till we
have off your shoe."
"And holy smoke!" said the teamster. "What a yank! Hey! Whoap! Holy,
red-roaring--he's gone and fainted!"
This latter statement was not precisely true. Toppy had not fainted; he
had suddenly succumbed to the demands of complete exhaustion. The
overdriven, tired-out organs, wrenched and abused tissues, and
fatigue-deadened nerves suddenly had cried, "Stop!" in a fashion that
not all of Toppy's will-power could deny. One instant he lay flat on his
back on the blankets of his bunk, wide awake, with Campbell tugging at
the laces of his shoes; the next--a mighty sigh of peace heaved his big
chest. Toppy had fallen asleep.
It was not a natural sleep, nor a peaceful one. The racked muscles
refused to be still; the raw nerve-centres refused to soothe themselves
in the peace of complete senselessness. His whole body twitched. Toppy
tossed and groaned. He awoke some time in the night with his stomach
crying for food.
"Drink um," said a voice somewhere, and a sturdy arm went under his head
and a bowl containing something savoury and hot was held against his
lips.
"Hello, Tilly," chuckled Toppy deliriously. It was quite in keeping with
things that Tilly, the squaw, should be holding his head and feeding him
in the middle of the night. He drank with the avidity of a man parched
and starving, and the hot broth pleasantly soothed him as it ran down
his throat.
"More!" he said, and Tilly gave him more.
"Good fellow, Tilly," he murmured. "Good medicine. Who told you?"
"Snow-Burner," grunted Tilly, laying his head on the pillow. "He send
me. Sleep um now."
"Sure," sighed Toppy, and promptly fell back into his moaning, feverish
slumber.