A FORETASTE OF THINGS TO COME
Half an hour later she sat down with her brother at one end of a table
that was but a long bench covered with oilcloth. Chairs there were none.
A narrow movable bench on each side of the fixed table furnished seating
capacity for twenty men, provided none objected to an occasional nudging
from his neighbor's elbow. The dishes, different from any she had ever
eaten from, were of enormously thick porcelain, dead white, variously
chipped and cracked with fine seams. But the food, if plain, was of
excellent quality, tastily cooked. She discovered herself with an
appetite wholly independent of silver and cut glass and linen. The tin
spoons and steel knives and forks harrowed her aesthetic sense without
impairing her ability to satisfy hunger.
They had the dining room to themselves. Through a single shiplap
partition rose a rumble of masculine talk, where the logging crew loafed
in their bunkhouse. The cook served them without any ceremony, putting
everything on the table at once,--soup, meat, vegetables, a bread
pudding for dessert, coffee in a tall tin pot. Benton introduced him to
his sister. He withdrew hastily to the kitchen, and they saw no more of
him.
"Charlie," the girl said plaintively, when the man had closed the door
behind him, "I don't quite fathom your social customs out here. Is one
supposed to know everybody that one encounters?"
"Just about," he grinned. "Loggers, Siwashes, and the natives in
general. Can't very well help it, Sis. There's so few people in this
neck of the woods that nobody can afford to be exclusive,--at least,
nobody who lives here any length of time. You can't tell when you may
have to call on your neighbor or the fellow working for you in a matter
of life and death almost. A man couldn't possibly maintain the same
attitude toward a bunch of loggers working under him that would be
considered proper back where we came from. Take me, for instance, and my
case is no different from any man operating on a moderate scale out
here. I'd get the reputation of being swell-headed, and they'd put me in
the hole at every turn. They wouldn't care what they did or how it was
done. Ten to one I couldn't keep a capable working crew three weeks on
end. On the other hand, take a bunch of loggers on a pay roll working
for a man that meets them on an equal footing--why, they'll go to hell
and back again for him. They're as loyal as soldiers to the flag.
They're a mighty self-sufficient, independent lot, these lumberjacks,
and that goes for most everybody knocking about in this
country,--loggers, prospectors, miners, settlers, and all. If you're
what they term 'all right,' you can do anything, and they'll back you
up. If you go to putting on airs and trying to assert yourself as a
superior being, they'll go out of their way to hand you packages of
trouble."
"I see," she observed thoughtfully. "One's compelled by circumstances to
practice democracy."
"Something like that," he responded carelessly and went on eating his
supper.
"Don't you think we could make this place a lot more homelike, Charlie?"
she ventured, when they were back in their own quarters. "I suppose it
suits a man who only uses it as a place to sleep, but it's bare as a
barn."
"It takes money to make a place cosy," Benton returned. "And I haven't
had it to spend on knickknacks."
"Fiddlesticks!" she laughed. "A comfortable chair or two and curtains
and pictures aren't knickknacks, as you call them. The cost wouldn't
amount to anything."
Benton stuffed the bowl of a pipe and lighted it before he essayed
reply.
"Look here, Stella," he said earnestly. "This joint probably strikes you
as about the limit, seeing that you've been used to pretty soft
surroundings and getting pretty nearly anything you wanted whenever you
expressed a wish for it. Things that you've grown into the way of
considering necessities _are_ luxuries. And they're out of the question
for us at present. I got a pretty hard seasoning the first two years I
was in this country, and when I set up this camp it was merely a place
to live. I never thought anything about it as being comfortable or
otherwise until you elected to come. I'm not in a position to go in for
trimmings. Rough as this camp is, it will have to go as it stands this
summer. I'm up against it for ready money. I've got none due until I
make delivery of those logs in September, and I have to have that
million feet in the water in order to make delivery. Every one of these
men but the cook and the donkey engineer are working for me with their
wages deferred until then. There are certain expenses that must be met
with cash--and I've got all my funds figured down to nickels. If I get
by on this contract, I'll have a few hundred to squander on house
things. Until then, it's the simple life for us. You can camp for three
or four months, can't you, without finding it completely unbearable?"
"Why, of course," she protested. "I wasn't complaining about the way
things are. I merely voiced the idea that it would be nice to fix up a
little cosier, make these rooms look a little homelike. I didn't know
you were practically compelled to live like this as a matter of
economy."
"Well, in a sense, I am," he replied. "And then again, making a place
away out here homelike never struck me as being anything but an
inconsequential detail. I'm not trying to make a home here. I'm after a
bundle of money. A while ago, if you had been here and suggested it, you
could have spent five or six hundred, and I wouldn't have missed it. But
this contract came my way, and gave me a chance to clean up three
thousand dollars clear profit in four months. I grabbed it, and I find
it's some undertaking. I'm dealing with a hard business outfit, hard as
nails. I might get the banks or some capitalist to finance me, because
my timber holdings are worth money. But I'm shy of that. I've noticed
that when a logger starts working on borrowed capital, he generally goes
broke. The financiers generally devise some way to hook him. I prefer to
sail as close to the wind as I can on what little I've got. I can get
this timber out--but it wouldn't look nice, now, would it, for me to be
buying furniture when I'm standing these boys off for their wages till
September?"
"I should have been a man," Miss Estella Benton pensively remarked.
"Then I could put on overalls and make myself useful, instead of being a
drone. There doesn't seem to be anything here I can do. I could keep
house--only you haven't any house to keep, therefore no need of a
housekeeper. Why, who's that?"
Her ear had caught a low, throaty laugh, a woman's laugh, outside. She
looked inquiringly at her brother. His expression remained absent, as of
one concentrated upon his own problems. She repeated the question.
"That? Oh, Katy John, I suppose, or her mother," he answered. "Siwash
bunch camping around the point. The girl does some washing for us now
and then. I suppose she's after Matt for some bread or something."
Stella looked out. At the cookhouse door stood a short, plump-bodied
girl, dark-skinned and black-haired. Otherwise she conformed to none of
Miss Benton's preconceived ideas of the aboriginal inhabitant. If she
had been pinned down, she would probably have admitted that she
expected to behold an Indian maiden garbed in beaded buckskin and brass
ornaments. Instead, Katy John wore a white sailor blouse, a brown
pleated skirt, tan shoes, and a bow of baby blue ribbon in her hair.
"Why, she talks good English," Miss Benton exclaimed, as fragments of
the girl's speech floated over to her.
"Sure. As good as anybody," Charlie drawled. "Why not?"
"Well--er--I suppose my notion of Indians is rather vague," Stella
admitted. "Are they all civilized and educated?"
"Most of 'em," Benton replied. "The younger generation anyhow. Say,
Stell, can you cook?"
"A little," Stella rejoined guardedly. "That Indian girl's really
pretty, isn't she?"
"They nearly all are when they're young," he observed. "But they are old
and tubby by the time they're thirty."
Katy John's teeth shone white between her parted lips at some sally from
the cook. She stood by the door, swinging a straw hat in one hand.
Presently Matt handed her a parcel done up in newspaper, and she walked
away with a nod to some of the loggers sitting with their backs against
the bunkhouse wall.
"Why were you asking if I could cook?" Stella inquired, when the girl
vanished in the brush.
"Why, your wail about being a man and putting on overalls and digging in
reminded me that if you liked you may have a chance to get on your apron
and show us what you can do," he laughed. "Matt's about due to go on a
tear. He's been on the water-wagon now about his limit. The first man
that comes along with a bottle of whisky, Matt will get it and quit and
head for town. I was wondering if you and Katy John could keep the gang
from starving to death if that happened. The last time I had to get in
and cook for two weeks myself. And I can't run a logging crew from the
cook shanty very well."
"I daresay I could manage," Stella returned dubiously. "This seems to be
a terrible place for drinking. Is it the accepted thing to get drunk at
all times and in public?"
"It's about the only excitement there is," Benton smiled tolerantly. "I
guess there is no more drinking out here than any other part of this
North American continent. Only a man here gets drunk openly and
riotously without any effort to hide it, and without it being considered
anything but a natural lapse. That's one thing you'll have to get used
to out here, Stell--I mean, that what vices men have are all on the
surface. We don't get drunk secretly at the club and sneak home in a
taxi. Oh, well, we'll cross the bridge when we come to it. Matt may not
break out for weeks."
He yawned openly.
"Sleepy?" Stella inquired.
"I get up every morning between four and five," he replied. "And I can
go to sleep any time after supper."
"I think I'll take a walk along the beach," she said abruptly.
"All right. Don't hike into the woods and get lost, though."
She circled the segment of bay, climbed a low, rocky point, and found
herself a seat on a fallen tree. Outside the lake heaved uneasily, still
dotted with whitecaps whipped up by the southerly gale. At her feet
surge after surge hammered the gravelly shore. Far through the woods
behind her the wind whistled and hummed among swaying tops of giant fir
and cedar. There was a heady freshness in that rollicking wind, an odor
resinous and pungent mingled with that elusive smell of green growing
stuff along the shore. Beginning where she sat, tree trunks rose in
immense brown pillars, running back in great forest naves, shadowy
always, floored with green moss laid in a rich, soft carpet for the
wood-sprites' feet. Far beyond the long gradual lower slope lifted a
range of saw-backed mountains, the sanctuary of wild goat and bear, and
across the rolling lake lifted other mountains sheer from the water's
edge, peaks rising above timber-line in majestic contour, their pinnacle
crests grazing the clouds that scudded before the south wind.
Beauty? Yes. A wild, imposing grandeur that stirred some responsive
chord in her. If only one could live amid such surrounding with a
contented mind, she thought, the wilderness would have compensations of
its own. She had an uneasy feeling that isolation from everything that
had played an important part in her life might be the least depressing
factor in this new existence. She could not view the rough and ready
standards of the woods with much equanimity--not as she had that day
seen them set forth. These things were bound to be a part of her daily
life, and all the brief span of her years had gone to forming habits of
speech and thought and manner diametrically opposed to what she had so
far encountered.
She nursed her chin in her hand and pondered this. She could not see how
it was to be avoided. She was there, and perforce she must stay there.
She had no friends to go elsewhere, or training in the harsh business of
gaining a livelihood if she did go. For the first time she began dully
to resent the manner of her upbringing. Once she had desired to enter
hospital training, had been properly enthusiastic for a period of months
over a career in this field of mercy. Then, as now, marriage, while
accepted as the ultimate state, was only to be considered through a haze
of idealism and romanticism. She cherished certain ideals of a possible
lover and husband, but always with a false sense of shame. The really
serious business of a woman's life was the one thing to which she made
no attempt to apply practical consideration. But her parents had had
positive ideas on that subject, even if they were not openly expressed.
Her yearnings after a useful "career" were skilfully discouraged,--by
her mother because that worthy lady thought it was "scarcely the thing,
Stella dear, and so unnecessary"; by her father because, as he bluntly
put it, it would only be a waste of time and money, since the chances
were she would get married before she was half through training, and
anyway a girl's place was at home till she did get married. That was his
only reference to the subject of her ultimate disposition that she
could recall, but it was plain enough as far as it went.
It was too late to mourn over lost opportunities now, but she did wish
there was some one thing she could do and do well, some service of value
that would guarantee self-support. If she could only pound a typewriter
or keep a set of books, or even make a passable attempt at sewing, she
would have felt vastly more at ease in this rude logging camp, knowing
that she could leave it if she desired.
So far as she could see things, she looked at them with measurable
clearness, without any vain illusions concerning her ability to march
triumphant over unknown fields of endeavor. Along practical lines she
had everything to learn. Culture furnishes an excellent pair of wings
wherewith to soar in skies of abstraction, but is a poor vehicle to
carry one over rough roads. She might have remained in Philadelphia, a
guest among friends. Pride forbade that. Incidentally, such an
arrangement would have enabled her to stalk a husband, a moneyed
husband, which did not occur to her at all. There remained only to join
Charlie. If his fortunes mended, well and good. Perhaps she could even
help in minor ways.
But it was all so radically different--brother and all--from what she
had pictured that she was filled with dismay and not a little foreboding
of the future. Sufficient, however, unto the day was the evil thereof,
she told herself at last, and tried to make that assurance work a change
of heart. She was very lonely and depressed and full of a futile wish
that she were a man.
Over across the bay some one was playing an accordeon, and to its
strains a stout-lunged lumberjack was roaring out a song, with all his
fellows joining strong in the chorus:
"Oh, the Saginaw Kid was a cook in a camp, way up on the Ocon-to-o-o.
And the cook in a camp in them old days had a damn hard row to hoe-i-oh!
Had a damn hard row to hoe."
There was a fine, rollicking air to it. The careless note in their
voices, the jovial lilt of their song, made her envious. They at least
had their destiny, limited as it might be and cast along rude ways,
largely under their own control.
Her wandering gaze at length came to rest on a tent top showing in the
brush northward from the camp. She saw two canoes drawn up on the beach
above the lash of the waves, two small figures playing on the gravel,
and sundry dogs prowling alongshore. Smoke went eddying away in the
wind. The Siwash camp where Katy John hailed from, Miss Benton supposed.
She had an impulse to skirt the bay and view the Indian camp at closer
range, a notion born of curiosity. She debated this casually, and just
as she was about to rise, her movement was arrested by a faint crackle
in the woods behind. She looked away through the deepening shadow among
the trees and saw nothing at first. But the sound was repeated at odd
intervals. She sat still. Thoughts of forest animals slipped into her
mind, without making her afraid. At last she caught sight of a man
striding through the timber, soundlessly on the thick moss, coming
almost straight toward her.
He was scarcely fifty yards away. Across his shoulders he bore a
reddish-gray burden, and in his right hand was a gun. She did not move.
Bowed slightly under the weight, the man passed within twenty feet of
her, so close that she could see the sweat-beads glisten on that side of
his face, and saw also that the load he carried was the carcass of a
deer.
Gaining the beach and laying the animal across a boulder, he
straightened himself up and drew a long breath. Then he wiped the sweat
off his face. She recognized him as the man who had thrown the logger
down the slip that day at noon,--presumably Jack Fyfe. A sturdily built
man about thirty, of Saxon fairness, with a tinge of red in his hair and
a liberal display of freckles across nose and cheek bones. He was no
beauty, she decided, albeit he displayed a frank and pleasing
countenance. That he was a remarkably strong and active man she had seen
for herself, and if the firm round of his jaw counted for anything, an
individual of considerable determination besides. Miss Benton conceived
herself to be possessed of considerable skill at character analysis.
He put away his handkerchief, took up his rifle, settled his hat, and
strode off toward the camp. Her attention now diverted from the
Siwashes, she watched him, saw him go to her brother's quarters, stand
in the door a minute, then go back to the beach accompanied by Charlie.
In a minute or so he came rowing across in a skiff, threw his deer
aboard, and pulled away north along the shore.
She watched him lift and fall among the waves until he turned a point,
rowing with strong, even strokes. Then she walked home. Benton was
poring over some figures, but he pushed aside his pencil and paper when
she entered.
"You had a visitor, I see," she remarked.
"Yes, Jack Fyfe. He picked up a deer on the ridge behind here and
borrowed a boat to get home."
"I saw him come out of the woods," she said. "His camp can't be far from
here, is it? He only left the Springs as you came in. Does he hunt deer
for sport?"
"Hardly. Oh, well, I suppose it's sport for Jack, in a way. He's always
piking around in the woods with a gun or a fishing rod," Benton
returned. "But we kill 'em to eat mostly. It's good meat and cheap. I
get one myself now and then. However, you want to keep that under your
hat--about us fellows hunting--or we'll have game wardens nosing around
here."
"Are you not allowed to hunt them?" she asked.
"Not in close season. Hunting season's from September to December."
"If it's unlawful, why break the law?" she ventured hesitatingly. "Isn't
that rather--er--"
"Oh, bosh," Charlie derided. "A man in the woods is entitled to venison,
if he's hunter enough to get it. The woods are full of deer, and a few
more or less don't matter. We can't run forty miles to town and back and
pay famine prices for beef every two or three days, when we can get it
at home in the woods."
Stella digested this in silence, but it occurred to her that this mild
sample of lawlessness was quite in keeping with the men and the
environment. There was no policeman on the corner, no mechanism of law
and order visible anywhere. The characteristic attitude of these
woodsmen was of intolerance for restraint, of complete self-sufficiency.
It had colored her brother's point of view. She perceived that whereas
all her instinct was to know the rules of the game and abide by them,
he, taking his cue from his environment, inclined to break rules that
proved inconvenient, even to formulate new ones to apply.
"And suppose," said she, "that a game warden should catch you or Mr.
Jack Fyfe killing deer out of season?"
"We'd be hauled up and fined a hundred dollars or so," he told her. "But
they don't catch us."
He shrugged his shoulders, and smiling tolerantly upon her, proceeded to
smoke.
Dusk was falling now, the long twilight of the northern seasons
gradually deepening, as they sat in silence. Along the creek bank arose
the evening chorus of the frogs. The air, now hushed and still, was
riven every few minutes by the whir of wings as ducks in evening flight
swept by above. All the boisterous laughter and talk in the bunkhouse
had died. The woods ranged gloomy and impenetrable, save only in the
northwest, where a patch of sky lighted by diffused pink and gray
revealed one mountain higher than its fellows standing bald against the
horizon.
"Well, I guess it's time to turn in." Benton muffled a yawn. "Pleasant
dreams, Sis. Oh, here's your purse. I used part of the bank roll. You
won't have much use for money up here, anyway."
He flipped the purse across to her and sauntered into his bedroom.
Stella sat gazing thoughtfully at the vast bulk of Mount Douglas a few
minutes longer. Then she too went into the box-like room, the bare
discomfort of which chilled her merely to behold.
With a curious uncertainty, a feeling of reluctance for the proceeding
almost, she examined the contents of her purse. For a little time she
stood gazing into it, a queer curl to her full red lips. Then she flung
it contemptuously on the bed and began to take down her hair.
"'A rich, rough, tough country, where it doesn't do to be finicky about
anything,'" she murmured, quoting a line from one of Charlie Benton's
letters. "It would appear to be rather unpleasantly true. Particularly
the last clause."
In her purse, which had contained one hundred and ten dollars, there now
reposed in solitary state a twenty-dollar bill.