IN THE LUMBER CAMP
“Who is that man?” asked the boys, as they returned to their supper.
“Steve Anderson, the camp foreman,” replied Peleg.
“But Jonson was a great deal the bigger,” declared Ted.
“Sartain, but without the heart. Steve has the heart, his muscles are
steel, and every lumberjack west of the Rockies knows it. There ain’t a
foreman from British Columby to ole Mex can git so much work outen his
men, and never have no shootin’, as Steve.”
“And he’s jest as kind as he is brave,” added Jennie. “He never goes to
the city that he don’t bring me back suthin’, candy or a dress.”
“I should think you would rather have books in a lonesome place like
this,” observed Phil.
“I would, only,” and the girl flushed, “I can’t read.”
In amazement the young homesteaders looked at Jennie, for, though they
had heard of people who could not read or write, she was the first one
they had ever seen.
“Then I’ll teach you,” said Ted, impulsively.
“Honest?” And Jennie’s face shone with delight.
“We’ll begin this very night.”
“I’m afraid we can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I haven’t any books.” Then her face brightened as an idea came
to her and she said:
“Perhaps Steve has one he’ll lend me.”
“You need not bother to ask him, I have plenty,” smiled Ted. “Now let’s
hurry up with the dishes, so we can begin.”
Neither Jennie nor her father would listen to their guests helping in
such work, however, and the boys passed through the store with Peleg and
seated themselves on the steps while the storekeeper filled his pipe and
smoked.
“It was kind in you to take Jennie’s part, but I wouldn’t do it again,”
he observed.
“Why not?” asked Phil and Ted, almost in the same breath.
“Because you ain’t big enough to back it up. If it hadn’t been for
Steve, I don’t know what would have happened. I was getting my gun, but
if you’d mixed it, ’twould have been hard work telling which was which
to shoot.”
“There wouldn’t have been any need to use it,” said the same quiet voice
that had terminated the threatened trouble in the store.
“You back, Steve? I ain’t heered any train,” declared Peleg.
“I sent the jacks down on the engine with Jim.” Then, with the freedom
of the woods, he turned to the boys. “So long as you looked Jonson in
the eye, you had him. He saw you had the heart to face him and it funked
him. Men like him are more animal than human, and I suppose you know
that if you ever get into a tight place with an animal, the thing to do
is to stare it straight in the eyes.”
“Will that work with b’ars, Steve?” inquired the storekeeper.
“Sure, even with grizzlies. But you must keep perfectly still. Once you
move, you’ve got to act lively. You chaps going to be here long?”
“Several days,” replied Phil.
“They’re friends of Si. Come in on 64,” explained Peleg.
“And our name is Porter; that’s Phil and I am Ted,” supplemented the
latter.
“Glad to know you, especially after this evening. If you have time, you
must come up to camp, if you’d like to see how we get out logs in
Washington.”
“Indeed we should,” exclaimed both boys.
“Then why not go up with me in the morning?”
Eagerly the young homesteaders accepted the invitation, and after
talking awhile, Ted went into the store to instruct Jennie in the
mysteries of the alphabet, while the foreman went to his cabin,
promising to call for them at five in the morning.
“What’s that, a fog-horn?” cried Ted, rousing suddenly from his sleep at
a series of staccato toots.
“We’re not on the Admiral now, stupid! I should think you would know
that from the bed,” returned his brother.
“Then what was it I heard?”
Before Phil could express an opinion, there came a timid knocking at
their door, and Jennie called:
“Breakfast is ready and Steve is waiting for you on the engine.”
“That is your fog-horn,” Phil flashed at his brother; then asked: “Why
didn’t you call us before?”
“I did, sir, twice.”
“Guess this bed isn’t so hard, after all,” commented Ted.
“Are you up _now_, Mr. Porters?” inquired the girl.
“We are,” chorused the boys, and in quick order they descended to the
kitchen, ate their breakfasts, and boarded the engine.
“Hang on tight, this is no ordinary roadbed,” cautioned the foreman, as
the engineer pulled open the throttle. And the young homesteaders soon
learned that he spoke the truth.
More like a dory at the mercy of a high sea than a locomotive did the
engine seem as it pitched and tossed over the rails, first one side,
then the other, sinking sharply, in many cases taking a curve before it
righted itself.
“How in the world can you pull a train over this track?” Phil asked the
engineer, as the locomotive struck a comparatively level stretch.
“This is nothing, what, Steve?” grinned the man at the throttle.
“Not for us, Jim.” Then, turning to his guests, the foreman continued:
“We can’t take the time to lay much of a roadbed, we move too often.
We’ve only been hauling over this course two days, and tomorrow will see
us through with it.”
“My eye! but it must use up a lot of rails to change so often,”
commented Ted.
“It would if we didn’t move them with us. As fast as we finish one
course, we pull up the track and lay it in a different direction. That’s
why it doesn’t pay to spend much time over the roadbed. But, as Jim
says, this course is nothing. In some places the inclines are so steep
that we are obliged to use cog-wheel tracks. When we stop, you can look
at the cog-wheels under the engine. All our cars are equipped with them.
They hold the train on the track, no matter how sharp the grade, or
steep the pitch.”
Three piercing blasts from the whistle drowned the comment on Phil’s
lips, and with a grinding of brakes, the engine stopped.
“That’s the camp,” announced Steve, nodding toward half a dozen cabins
from which men of all sizes and descriptions were pouring, ready to
begin their day’s work.
“There’s the Black Swede,” suddenly exclaimed Ted, who had been watching
the lumber-jacks as they emerged from their log houses. “I’d recognize
him anywhere.”
“I thought he’d be here, but I wanted to make sure,” smiled the foreman.
“Jim, run up the branches and pick up your train. If we are not here
when you are ready, don’t wait. We’ll walk; the boys can see more.” And
descending from the engine, Steve and his young guests set off among the
huge tree stumps.
“How many ‘branches’ do you have?” inquired Phil.
“Four, two on each side. In that way we can clear a tract two thousand
feet wide and four thousand feet long with each course of track.”
“What’s that? It sounds like the whir of an airship?” suddenly asked the
younger boy.
“That’s the drums unwinding the cables.”
“Cables?” exclaimed both young homesteaders, together.
“Exactly. We haul the logs by cable, they are too big to handle in any
other way. But you will see how it’s done in a few minutes.” For several
rods the trio advanced in silence, when they were halted by a lusty
“Stand clear!”
“Tree falling,” explained the foreman, and with his words there sounded
a creaking and snapping, then a sharp crackling followed quickly by a
mighty crash, as an enormous tree fell to the earth with a shock that
made the ground tremble.
“We’ll go on now,” said Steve, and in a few minutes they were in sight
of the tree just felled, a monster some hundred and twenty feet long and
fifteen feet through the butt.
Already the lumberjacks were swarming like ants about it, some sawing
the trunk into thirty-foot lengths, others trimming off branches.
“Why, there’s a platform around that stump,” observed Phil, in surprise.
“That is for the sawyers. It would take too long to chop these trees
down, so we saw them.”
“But why build a platform? Why not stand on the ground?” inquired the
boy.
“Because the bases of these trees are often rotted so that the timber is
worthless for five, sometimes ten, feet,” explained the foreman.
“Oh, look, there comes the cable,” cried Ted, pointing to where several
men were pulling on a lead-wire to which was attached a three-inch
twisted steel rope.
Quickly the jacks seized the cable and made it fast to a log near the
tree just felled.
“Ready?” called one of them.
“Ready!” replied the others.
Putting a tin whistle to his lips, the first man blew three times. From
the distance came an answering toot, followed by the mighty whirring.
With a sharp hum the cable tightened, and then the huge log, weighing
many tons, started through the woods, hurdling everything in its path as
it was drawn along with irresistible power.
“We’ll follow the log,” said Steve, but so fast did it travel that the
boys were obliged to trot to keep pace with it.
After scrambling along for some seven hundred feet, the young
homesteaders beheld a donkey engine, puffing, snorting, and rocking on
its skids from the exertion, close beside a spur of track upon which
stood several flat cars.
When the log was abreast of one of them, the hauling cable was released.
Others were adjusted, again the “donkey” puffed, and the section of tree
trunk was pulled aboard.
“Only think of bringing in a log from where that one lay and loading it
on a car without a man’s lifting a pound!” exclaimed Phil. “Wouldn’t it
make the Eastern lumbermen open their eyes, though! There, you know, Mr.
Anderson, the logs are handled by hand and horses in the woods.”
“We couldn’t afford to do that here, it would take too many men and too
much time. But if you think it would surprise them to see how we handle
logs, what would they say when they saw our donkey load itself?”
“There is a limit even to our credulity, Mr. Anderson,” smiled Ted.
“But I’m telling you the truth. You notice the ends of the donkey’s
skids are hewed like sled-runners, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s so the engine can be pulled along. We simply hitch the
cables to trees, the drums wind up, and the donkey pulls itself over the
ground. When it is opposite the car on which it is to be loaded, we
readjust the cables around other trees and it pulls itself aboard.”
“It’s wonderful,” exclaimed Ted. “You Westerners can certainly show the
rest of the country how to do things in a big way.”