Most people in the North Country understand this double stan_Blazed trail stories, and Stories of the wild life

Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

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BLAZED TRAIL STORIES

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OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Blazed Trail, The Silent Places, Conjuror's House The

Westerners, The Claim Jumpers The Magic Forest, The Forest The

Mountains

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[Illustration: Thomas Fogarty "FOR A MOMENT HE POISED ERECT IN THE

GREAT CALM OF THE PUBLIC PERFORMER." (Page 6)]

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BLAZED TRAIL STORIES

AND

STORIES OF THE WILD LIFE

STEWART EDWARD WHITE

NEW YORK McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.

MCMIV

Published September, 1904

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The Century Company. Copyright 1899, 1900, by J. B. Lippincott Company.

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CONTENTS

PART I

BLAZED TRAIL STORIES

PAGE

The Riverman 3

The Foreman 22

The Scaler 39

The River-Boss 58

The Fifth Way 73

The Life of the Winds of Heaven 83

PART II

STORIES OF THE WILD LIFE

The Girl Who Got Rattled 111

Billy's Tenderfoot 132

The Two Cartridges 153

The Race 180

The Saving Grace 198

The Prospector 222

The Girl in Red 246

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BLAZED TRAIL STORIES

AND

STORIES OF THE WILD LIFE

THE RIVERMAN

I first met him one Fourth of July afternoon in the middle eighties. The

sawdust streets and high board sidewalks of the lumber town were filled

to the brim with people. The permanent population, dressed in the

stiffness of its Sunday best, escorted gingham wives or sweethearts; a

dozen outsiders like myself tried not to be too conspicuous in a city

smartness; but the great multitude was composed of the men of the woods.

I sat, chair-tilted by the hotel, watching them pass. Their heavy

woollen shirts crossed by the broad suspenders, the red of their sashes

or leather shine of their belts, their short kersey trousers "stagged"

off to leave a gap between the knee and the heavily spiked "cork

boots"--all these were distinctive enough of their class, but most

interesting to me were the eyes that peered from beneath their little

round hats tilted rakishly askew. They were all subtly alike, those

eyes. Some were black, some were brown, or gray, or blue, but all were

steady and unabashed, all looked straight at you with a strange humorous

blending of aggression and respect for your own business, and all

without exception wrinkled at the corners with a suggestion of dry

humor. In my half-conscious scrutiny I probably stared harder than I

knew, for all at once a laughing pair of the blue eyes suddenly met mine

full, and an ironical voice drawled,

"Say, bub, you look as interested as a man killing snakes. Am I your

long-lost friend?"

The tone of the voice matched accurately the attitude of the man, and

that was quite non-committal. He stood cheerfully ready to meet the

emergency. If I sought trouble, it was here to my hand; or if I needed

help he was willing to offer it.

"I guess you are," I replied, "if you can tell me what all this outfit's

headed for."

He thrust back his hat and ran his hand through a mop of closely cropped

light curls.

"Birling match," he explained briefly. "Come on."

I joined him, and together we followed the crowd to the river, where we

roosted like cormorants on adjacent piles overlooking a patch of clear

water among the filled booms.

"Drive's just over," my new friend informed me. "Rear come down last

night. Fourther July celebration. This little town will scratch fer th'

tall timber along about midnight when the boys goes in to take her

apart."

A half-dozen men with peavies rolled a white-pine log of about a foot

and a half diameter into the clear water, where it lay rocking back and

forth, three or four feet from the boom piles. Suddenly a man ran the

length of the boom, leaped easily into the air, and landed with both

feet square on one end of the floating log. That end disappeared in an

ankle-deep swirl of white foam, the other rose suddenly, the whole

timber, projected forward by the shock, drove headlong to the middle of

the little pond. And the man, his arms folded, his knees just bent in

the graceful nervous attitude of the circus-rider, stood upright like a

statue of bronze.

A roar approved this feat.

"That's Dickey Darrell," said my informant, "Roaring Dick. He's hell

_and_ repeat. Watch him."

The man on the log was small, with clean beautiful haunches and

shoulders, but with hanging baboon arms. Perhaps his most striking

feature was a mop of reddish-brown hair that overshadowed a little

triangular white face accented by two reddish-brown quadrilaterals that

served as eyebrows and a pair of inscrutable chipmunk eyes.

For a moment he poised erect in the great calm of the public performer.

Then slowly he began to revolve the log under his feet. The lofty gaze,

the folded arms, the straight supple waist budged not by a hair's

breadth; only the feet stepped forward, at first deliberately, then

faster and faster, until the rolling log threw a blue spray a foot into

the air. Then suddenly _slap! slap!_ the heavy caulks stamped a

reversal. The log came instantaneously to rest, quivering exactly like

some animal that had been spurred through its paces.

"Magnificent!" I cried.

"Hell, that's nothing!" my companion repressed me, "anybody can birl a

log. Watch this."

Roaring Dick for the first time unfolded his arms. With some appearance

of caution he balanced his unstable footing into absolute immobility.

Then he turned a somersault.

This was the real thing. My friend uttered a wild yell of applause which

was lost in a general roar.

A long pike-pole shot out, bit the end of the timber, and towed it to

the boom pile. Another man stepped on the log with Darrell. They stood

facing each other, bent-kneed, alert. Suddenly with one accord they

commenced to birl the log from left to right. The pace grew hot. Like

squirrels treading a cage their feet twinkled. Then it became apparent

that Darrell's opponent was gradually being forced from the top of the

log. He could not keep up. Little by little, still moving desperately,

he dropped back to the slant, then at last to the edge, and so off into

the river with a mighty splash.

"Clean birled!" commented my friend.

One after another a half-dozen rivermen tackled the imperturbable Dick,

but none of them possessed the agility to stay on top in the pace he set

them. One boy of eighteen seemed for a moment to hold his own, and

managed at least to keep out of the water even when Darrell had

apparently reached his maximum speed. But that expert merely threw his

entire weight into two reversing stamps of his feet, and the young

fellow dove forward as abruptly as though he had been shied over a

horse's head.

The crowd was by now getting uproarious and impatient of volunteer

effort to humble Darrell's challenge. It wanted the best, and at once.

It began, with increasing insistence, to shout a name.

"Jimmy Powers!" it vociferated, "Jimmy Powers."

And then by shamefaced bashfulness, by profane protest, by muttered and

comprehensive curses I knew that my companion on the other pile was

indicated.

A dozen men near at hand began to shout. "Here he is!" they cried. "Come

on, Jimmy." "Don't be a high banker." "Hang his hide on the fence."

Jimmy, still red and swearing, suffered himself to be pulled from his

elevation and disappeared in the throng. A moment later I caught his

head and shoulders pushing toward the boom piles, and so in a moment he

stepped warily aboard to face his antagonist.

This was evidently no question to be determined by the simplicity of

force or the simplicity of a child's trick. The two men stood

half-crouched, face to face, watching each other narrowly, but making no

move. To me they seemed like two wrestlers sparring for an opening.

Slowly the log revolved one way; then slowly the other. It was a mere

courtesy of salute. All at once Dick birled three rapid strokes from

left to right as though about to roll the log, leaped into the air and

landed square with both feet on the other slant of the timber. Jimmy

Powers felt the jar, and acknowledged it by the spasmodic jerk with

which he counterbalanced Darrell's weight. But he was not thrown.

As though this daring and hazardous manoeuvre had opened the combat,

both men sprang to life. Sometimes the log rolled one way, sometimes the

other, sometimes it jerked from side to side like a crazy thing, but

always with the rapidity of light, always in a smother of spray and

foam. The decided _spat, spat, spat_ of the reversing blows from the

caulked boots sounded like picket firing. I could not make out the

different leads, feints, parries, and counters of this strange method of

boxing, nor could I distinguish to whose initiative the various

evolutions of that log could be described. But I retain still a vivid

mental picture of two men nearly motionless above the waist, nearly

vibrant below it, dominating the insane gyrations of a stick of pine.

The crowd was appreciative and partisan--for Jimmy Powers. It howled

wildly, and rose thereby to ever higher excitement. Then it forgot its

manners utterly and groaned when it made out that a sudden splash

represented its favourite, while the indomitable Darrell still trod the

quarter-deck as champion birler for the year.

I must confess I was as sorry as anybody. I climbed down from my

cormorant roost, and picked my way between the alleys of aromatic piled

lumber in order to avoid the press, and cursed the little gods heartily

for undue partiality in the wrong direction. In this manner I happened

on Jimmy Powers himself seated dripping on a board and examining his

bared foot.

"I'm sorry," said I behind him. "How did he do it?"

He whirled, and I could see that his laughing boyish face had become

suddenly grim and stern, and that his eyes were shot with blood.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" he growled disparagingly. "Well, that's how he

did it."

He held out his foot. Across the instep and at the base of the toes ran

two rows of tiny round punctures from which the blood was oozing. I

looked very inquiring.

"He corked me!" Jimmy Powers explained. "Jammed his spikes into me!

Stepped on my foot and tripped me, the----" Jimmy Powers certainly could

swear.

"Why didn't you make a kick?" I cried.

"That ain't how I do it," he muttered, pulling on his heavy woollen

sock.

"But no," I insisted, my indignation mounting. "It's an outrage! That

crowd was with you. All you had to do was to _say_ something----"

He cut me short. "And give myself away as a damn fool--sure Mike. I

ought to know Dickey Darrell by this time, and I ought to be big enough

to take care of myself." He stamped his foot into his driver's shoe and

took me by the arm, his good humour apparently restored. "No, don't you

lose any hair, bub; I'll get even with Roaring Dick."

That night, having by the advice of the proprietor moved my bureau and

trunk against the bedroom door, I lay wide awake listening to the taking

of the town apart. At each especially vicious crash I wondered if that

might be Jimmy Powers getting even with Roaring Dick.

The following year, but earlier in the season, I again visited my little

lumber town. In striking contrast to the life of that other midsummer

day were the deserted streets. The landlord knew me, and after I had

washed and eaten approached me with a suggestion.

"You got all day in front of you," said he; "why don't you take a horse

and buggy and make a visit to the big jam? Everybody's up there more or

less."

In response to my inquiry, he replied:

"They've jammed at the upper bend, jammed bad. The crew's been picking

at her for near a week now, and last night Darrell was down to see about

some more dynamite. It's worth seein'. The breast of her is near thirty

foot high, and lots of water in the river."

"Darrell?" said I, catching at the name.

"Yes. He's rear boss this year. Do you think you'd like to take a look

at her?"

"I think I should," I assented.

The horse and I jogged slowly along a deep sand road, through wastes of

pine stumps and belts of hardwood beautiful with the early spring, until

finally we arrived at a clearing in which stood two huge tents, a

mammoth kettle slung over a fire of logs, and drying racks about the

timbers of another fire. A fat cook in the inevitable battered derby

hat, two bare-armed cookees, and a chore "boy" of seventy-odd summers

were the only human beings in sight. One of the cookees agreed to keep

an eye on my horse. I picked my way down a well-worn trail toward the

regular _clank, clank, click_ of the peavies.

I emerged finally to a plateau elevated some fifty or sixty feet above

the river. A half-dozen spectators were already gathered. Among them I

could not but notice a tall, spare, broad-shouldered young fellow

dressed in a quiet business suit, somewhat wrinkled, whose square,

strong, clean-cut face and muscular hands were tanned by the weather to

a dark umber-brown. In another moment I looked down on the jam.

The breast, as my landlord had told me, rose sheer from the water to the

height of at least twenty-five feet, bristling and formidable. Back of

it pressed the volume of logs packed closely in an apparently

inextricable tangle as far as the eye could reach. A man near informed

me that the tail was a good three miles up stream. From beneath this

wonderful _chevaux de frise_ foamed the current of the river,

irresistible to any force less mighty than the statics of such a mass.

A crew of forty or fifty men were at work. They clamped their peavies to

the reluctant timbers, heaved, pushed, slid, and rolled them one by one

into the current, where they were caught and borne away. They had been

doing this for a week. As yet their efforts had made but slight

impression on the bulk of the jam, but some time, with patience, they

would reach the key-logs. Then the tangle would melt like sugar in the

freshet, and these imperturbable workers would have to escape suddenly

over the plunging logs to shore.

My eye ranged over the men, and finally rested on Dickey Darrell. He was

standing on the slanting end of an upheaved log dominating the scene.

His little triangular face with the accents of the quadrilateral

eyebrows was pale with the blaze of his energy, and his chipmunk eyes

seemed to flame with a dynamic vehemence that caused those on whom their

glance fell to jump as though they had been touched with a hot poker. I

had heard more of Dickey Darrell since my last visit, and was glad of

the chance to observe Morrison & Daly's best "driver" at work.

The jam seemed on the very edge of breaking. After half an hour's

strained expectation it seemed still on the very edge of breaking. So I

sat down on a stump. Then for the first time I noticed another

acquaintance, handling his peavie near the very person of the rear boss.

"Hullo," said I to myself, "that's funny. I wonder if Jimmy Powers got

even; and if so, why he is working so amicably and so near Roaring

Dick."

At noon the men came ashore for dinner. I paid a quarter into the cook's

private exchequer and so was fed. After the meal I approached my

acquaintance of the year before.

"Hello, Powers," I greeted him, "I suppose you don't remember me?"

"Sure," he responded heartily. "Ain't you a little early this year?"

"No," I disclaimed, "this is a better sight than a birling match."

I offered him a cigar, which he immediately substituted for his corn-cob

pipe. We sat at the root of a tree.

"It'll be a great sight when that jam pulls," said I.

"You bet," he replied, "but she's a teaser. Even old Tim Shearer would

have a picnic to make out just where the key-logs are. We've started her

three times, but she's plugged tight every trip. Likely to pull almost

any time."

We discussed various topics. Finally I ventured:

"I see your old friend Darrell is rear boss."

"Yes," said Jimmy Powers, dryly.

"By the way, did you fellows ever square up on that birling match?"

"No," said Jimmy Powers; then after an instant, "Not yet."

I glanced at him to recognise the square set to the jaw that had

impressed me so formidably the year before. And again his face relaxed

almost quizzically as he caught sight of mine.

"Bub," said he, getting to his feet, "those little marks are on my foot

yet. And just you tie into one idea: Dickey Darrell's got it coming."

His face darkened with a swift anger. "God damn his soul!" he said,

deliberately. It was no mere profanity. It was an imprecation, and in

its very deliberation I glimpsed the flare of an undying hate.

About three o'clock that afternoon Jimmy's prediction was fulfilled.

Without the slightest warning the jam "pulled." Usually certain

premonitory _cracks_, certain sinkings down, groanings forward,

grumblings, shruggings, and sullen, reluctant shiftings of the logs give

opportunity for the men to assure their safety. This jam, after

inexplicably hanging fire for a week, as inexplicably started like a

sprinter almost into its full gait. The first few tiers toppled smash

into the current, raising a waterspout like that made by a dynamite

explosion; the mass behind plunged forward blindly, rising and falling

as the integral logs were up-ended, turned over, thrust to one side, or

forced bodily into the air by the mighty power playing jack-straws with

them.

The rivermen, though caught unaware, reached either bank. They held

their peavies across their bodies as balancing-poles, and zig-zagged

ashore with a calmness and lack of haste that were in reality only an

indication of the keenness with which they fore-estimated each chance.

Long experience with the ways of saw-logs brought them out. They knew

the correlation of these many forces just as the expert billiard-player

knows instinctively the various angles of incident and reflection

between his cue-ball and its mark. Consequently they avoided the centres

of eruption, paused on the spots steadied for the moment, dodged moving

logs, trod those not yet under way, and so arrived on solid ground. The

jam itself started with every indication of meaning business, gained

momentum for a hundred feet, and then plugged to a standstill. The

"break" was abortive.

Now we all had leisure to notice two things. First, the movement had not

been of the whole jam, as we had at first supposed, but only of a block

or section of it twenty rods or so in extent. Thus between the part that

had moved and the greater bulk that had not stirred lay a hundred feet

of open water in which floated a number of loose logs. The second fact

was, that Dickey Darrell had fallen into that open stretch of water and

was in the act of swimming toward one of the floating logs. That much we

were given just time to appreciate thoroughly. Then the other section of

the jam rumbled and began to break. Roaring Dick was caught between two

gigantic millstones moving to crush him out of sight.

An active figure darted down the tail of the first section, out over the

floating logs, seized Darrell by the coat-collar, and so burdened began

desperately to scale the very face of the breaking jam.

Never was a more magnificent rescue. The logs were rolling, falling,

diving against the laden man. He climbed as over a treadmill, a

treadmill whose speed was constantly increasing. And when he finally

gained the top, it was as the gap closed splintering beneath him and the

man he had saved.

It is not in the woodsman to be demonstrative at any time, but here was

work demanding attention. Without a pause for breath or congratulation

they turned to the necessity of the moment. The jam, the whole jam, was

moving at last. Jimmy Powers ran ashore for his peavie. Roaring Dick,

like a demon incarnate, threw himself into the work. Forty men attacked

the jam at a dozen places, encouraging the movement, twisting aside the

timbers that threatened to lock anew, directing pigmy-like the titanic

forces into the channel of their efficiency. Roaring like wild cattle

the logs swept by, at first slowly, then with the railroad rush of the

curbed freshet. Men were everywhere, taking chances, like cowboys before

the stampeded herd. And so, out of sight around the lower bend swept the

front of the jam in a swirl of glory, the rivermen riding the great boom

back of the creature they subdued, until at last, with the slackening

current, the logs floated by free, cannoning with hollow sound one

against the other. A half-dozen watchers, leaning statuesquely on the

shafts of their peavies, watched the ordered ranks pass by.

One by one the spectators departed. At last only myself and the

brown-faced young man remained. He sat on a stump, staring with

sightless eyes into vacancy. I did not disturb his thoughts.

The sun dipped. A cool breeze of evening sucked up the river. Over near

the cook-camp a big fire commenced to crackle by the drying frames. At

dusk the rivermen straggled in from the down-river trail.

The brown-faced young man arose and went to meet them. I saw him return

in close conversation with Jimmy Powers. Before they reached us he had

turned away with a gesture of farewell.

Jimmy Powers stood looking after him long after his form had

disappeared, and indeed even after the sound of his wheels had died

toward town. As I approached, the riverman turned to me a face from

which the reckless, contained self-reliance of the woods-worker had

faded. It was wide-eyed with an almost awe-stricken wonder and

adoration.

"Do you know who that is?" he asked me in a hushed voice. "That's

Thorpe, Harry Thorpe. And do you know what he said to me just now, _me_?

He told me he wanted me to work in Camp One next winter, Thorpe's One.

And he told me I was the first man he ever hired straight into One."

His breath caught with something like a sob.

I had heard of the man and of his methods. I knew he had made it a

practice of recruiting for his prize camp only from the employees of his

other camps, that, as Jimmy said, he never "hired straight into One." I

had heard, too, of his reputation among his own and other woodsmen. But

this was the first time I had ever come into personal contact with his

influence. It impressed me the more in that I had come to know Jimmy

Powers and his kind.

"You deserve it, every bit," said I. "I'm not going to call you a hero,

because that would make you tired. What you did this afternoon showed

nerve. It was a brave act. But it was a better act because you rescued

your enemy, because you forgot everything but your common humanity when

danger----"

I broke off. Jimmy was again looking at me with his ironically quizzical

grin.

"Bub," said he, "if you're going to hang any stars of Bethlehem on my

Christmas tree, just call a halt right here. I didn't rescue that

scalawag because I had any Christian sentiments, nary bit. I was just

naturally savin' him for the birling match next Fourther July."

THE FOREMAN

A man is one thing: a man _plus_ his work is another, entirely

different. You can learn this anywhere, but in the lumber woods best of

all.

Especially is it true of the camp boss, the foreman. A firm that knows

its business knows this, and so never considers merely what sort of a

character a candidate may bear in town. He may drink or abstain, may

exhibit bravery or cowardice, strength or weakness--it is all one to the

lumbermen who employ him. In the woods his quality must appear.

So often the man most efficient and trusted in the especial environment

of his work is the most disreputable outside it. The mere dignifying

quality of labour raises his value to the _nth_ power. In it he

discovers the self-respect which, in one form or another, is absolutely

necessary to the man who counts. His resolution to succeed has back of

it this necessity of self-respect, and so is invincible. A good boss

gives back before nothing which will further his job.

Most people in the North Country understand this double standard; but

occasionally someone, either stupid or inexperienced or unobservant,

makes the mistake of concluding that the town-character and the

woods-character are necessarily the same. If he acts in accordance with

that erroneous idea, he gets into trouble. Take the case of Silver Jack

and the walking boss of Morrison & Daly, for instance. Silver Jack

imagined his first encounter with Richard Darrell in Bay City indicated

the certainty of like results to his second encounter with that

individual in Camp Thirty. His mistake was costly; but almost anybody

could have told him better. To understand the case, you must first meet

Richard Darrell.

The latter was a man about five feet six inches in height, slenderly

built, yet with broad, hanging shoulders. His face was an exact

triangle, beginning with a mop of red-brown hair, and ending with a

pointed chin. Two level quadrilaterals served him as eyebrows, beneath

which a strong hooked nose separated his round, brown, chipmunk's eyes.

When he walked, he threw his heavy shoulders slightly forward. This, in

turn, projected his eager, nervous countenance. The fact that he was

accustomed to hold his hands half open, with the palms square to the

rear, lent him a peculiarly ready and truculent air. His name, as has

been said, was Richard Darrell; but men called him Roaring Dick.

For upward of fifteen years he had been woods foreman for Morrison &

Daly, the great lumber firm of the Beeson Lake district. That would make

him about thirty-eight years old. He did not look it. His firm thought

everything of him in spite of the fact that his reputation made it

exceedingly difficult to hire men for his camps. He had the name of a

"driver." But this little man, in some mysterious way of his own, could

get in the logs. There was none like him. About once in three months he

would suddenly appear, worn and haggard, at Beeson Lake, where he would

drop into an iron bed, which the Company maintained for that especial

purpose. Tim Brady, the care-taker, would bring him food at stated

intervals. After four days of this, he would as suddenly disappear into

the forest, again charged with the vital, restless energy which kept him

on his feet fourteen hours a day until the next break down. When he

looked directly at you, this nerve-force seemed to communicate itself to

you with the physical shock of an impact.

Richard Darrell usually finished banking his season's cut a month

earlier than anybody else. Then he drew his pay at Beeson Lake, took the

train for Bay City, and set out to have a good time. Whiskey was its

main element. On his intensely nervous organisation it acted like

poison. He would do the wildest things. After his money was all spent,

he started up river for the log-drive, hollow-eyed, shaking. In

twenty-four hours he was himself again, dominant, truculent, fixing his

brown chipmunk eyes on the delinquents with the physical shock of an

impact, coolly balancing beneath the imminent ruin of a jam.

Silver Jack, on the other hand, was not nervous at all, but very tall

and strong, with bronze-red skin, and flaxen white hair, mustache and

eyebrows. The latter peculiarity earned him his nickname. He was at all

times absolutely fearless and self-reliant in regard to material

conditions, but singularly unobservant and stupid when it was a question

of psychology. He had been a sawyer in his early experience, but later

became a bartender in Muskegon. He was in general a good-humoured

animal enough, but fond of a swagger, given to showing off, and

exceedingly ugly when his passions were aroused.

His first hard work, after arriving in Bay City, was, of course, to

visit the saloons. In one of these he came upon Richard Darrell. The

latter was enjoying himself noisily by throwing wine-glasses at a beer

advertisement. As he always paid liberally for the glasses, no one

thought of objecting.

"Who's th' bucko?" inquired Silver Jack of a man near the stove.

"That's Roaring Dick Darrell, walkin' boss for M. & D.," replied the

other.

Silver Jack drew his flax-white eyebrows together.

"Roaring Dick, eh? Roaring Dick? Fine name fer a bad man. I s'pose he

thinks he's perticular all hell, don't he?"

"I do'no. Guess he is. He's got th' name fer it."

"Well," said Silver Jack, drawing his powerful back into a bow, "I ain't

much; but I don't like noise--'specially roaring."

With the words he walked directly across the saloon to the foreman.

"My name is Silver Jack," said he, "I come from Muskegon way. I don't

like noise. Quit it."

"All right," replied Dick.

The other was astonished. Then he recovered his swagger and went on:

"They tell me you're the old he-coon of this neck of th' woods. P'r'aps

you _were_. But I'm here now. Ketch on? I'm th' boss of this shebang

now."

Dick smiled amiably. "All right," he repeated.

This second acquiescence nonplussed the newcomer. But he insisted on his

fight.

"You're a bluff!" said he, insultingly.

"Ah! go to hell!" replied Dick with disgust.

"What's that?" shouted the stranger, towering with threatening bulk over

the smaller man.

And then to his surprise Dick Darrell began to beg.

"Don't you hit me!" he cried, "I ain't done nothing to you. You let me

alone! Don't you let him touch me!" he called beseechingly to the

barkeeper. "I don't want to get hurt. Stop it! Let me be!"

Silver Jack took Richard Darrell by the collar and propelled him rapidly

to the door. The foreman hung back like a small boy in the grasp of a

schoolmaster, whining, beseeching, squirming, appealing for help to the

barkeeper and the bystanders. When finally he was energetically kicked

into the gutter, he wept a little with nervous rage.

"Roaring Dick! Rats!" said Silver Jack. "Anybody can do him proper. If

that's your 'knocker,' you're a gang of high bankers."

The other men merely smiled in the manner of those who know.

Incidentally Silver Jack was desperately pounded by Big Dan, later in

the evening, on account of that "high-banker" remark.

Richard Darrell, soon after, went into the woods with his crew, and

began the tremendous struggle against the wilderness. Silver Jack and

Big Dan took up the saloon business at Beeson Lake, and set themselves

to gathering a clientele which should do them credit.

The winter was a bad one for everybody. Deep snows put the job behind;

frequent storms undid the work of an infinitely slow patience. When the

logging roads were cut through, the ground failed to freeze because of

the thick white covering that overlaid it. Darrell in his mysterious

compelling fashion managed somehow. Everywhere his thin eager triangle

of a face with the brown chipmunk eyes was seen, bullying the men into

titanic exertions by the mere shock of his nervous force. Over the thin

crust of ice cautious loads of a few thousand feet were drawn to the

banks of the river. The road-bed held. Gradually it hardened and

thickened. The size of the loads increased. Finally Billy O'Brien drew

up triumphantly at the rollway.

"There's a rim-racker!" he exclaimed. "Give her all she'll stand,

Jimmy."

Jimmy Hall, the sealer, laid his flexible rule over the face of each

log. The men gathered, interested in this record load.

"Thirteen thousand two hundred and forty," announced the scaler at last.

"Whoopee!" crowed Billy O'Brien, "that'll lay out Rollway Charley by two

thousand feet!"

The men congratulated him on his victory over the other teamster,

Rollway Charley. Suddenly Darrell was among them, eager, menacing,

thrusting his nervous face and heavy shoulders here and there in the

crowd, bullying them back to the work which they were neglecting. When

his back was turned they grumbled at him savagely, threatening to

disobey, resolving to quit. Some of them did quit: but none of them

disobeyed.

Now the big loads were coming in regularly, and the railways became

choked with the logs dumped down on them from the sleighs. There were

not enough men to roll them down to the river, nor to "deck" them there

in piles. Work accumulated. The cant-hook men became discouraged. What

was the use of trying? They might as well take it easy. They did take it

easy. As a consequence the teamsters had often to wait two, three hours

to be unloaded. They were out until long after dark, feeling their way

homeward through hunger and cold.

Dick Darrell, walking boss of all the camps, did the best he could. He

sent message after message to Beeson Lake demanding more men. If the

rollways could be definitely cleared once, the work would lighten all

along the line. Then the men would regain their content. More help was

promised, but it was slow in coming. The balance hung trembling. At any

moment the foreman expected the crisis, when the men, discouraged by the

accumulation of work, would begin to "jump," would ask for their "time"

and quit, leaving the job half finished in the woods. This catastrophe

must not happen. Darrell himself worked like a demon until dark, and

then, ten to one, while the other men rested, would strike feverishly

across to Camp Twenty-eight or Camp Forty, where he would consult with

Morgan or Scotty Parsons until far into the night. His pale, triangular

face showed the white lines of exhaustion, but his chipmunk eyes and his

eager movements told of a determination stronger than any protests of a

mere nature.

Now fate ordained that Silver Jack for the purposes of his enlightenment

should select just this moment to drum up trade. He was, in his way, as

anxious to induce the men to come out of the woods as Richard Darrell

was to keep them in. Beeson Lake at this time of year was very dull.

Only a few chronic loafers, without money, ornamented the saloon walls.

On the other hand, at the four camps of Morrison & Daly were three

hundred men each with four months' pay coming to him. In the ordinary

course of events these men would not be out for sixty days yet, but

Silver Jack and Big Dan perfectly well knew that it only needed the

suggestion, the temptation, to arouse the spirit of restlessness. That a

taste or so of whiskey will shiver the patience of men oppressed by long

monotony is as A B C to the north-country saloon-keeper. Silver Jack

resolved to make the rounds of the camps sure that the investment of a

few jugs of whiskey would bring down to Beeson Lake at least thirty or

forty woods-wearied men.

Accordingly he donned many clothes, and drove out into the wilderness a

cutter containing three jugs and some cigars in boxes. He anticipated

trouble. Perhaps he would even have to lurk in the woods, awaiting his

opportunity to smuggle his liquor to the men.

However, luck favoured him. At Camp Twenty-eight he was able to dodge

unseen into the men's camp. When Morgan, the camp foreman, finally

discovered his presence, the mischief had been done. Everybody was

smoking cigars, everybody was happily conscious of a warm glow at the

pit of the stomach, everybody was firmly convinced that Silver Jack was

the best fellow on earth. Morgan could do nothing. An attempt to eject

Silver Jack, an expostulation even, would, he knew, lose him his entire

crew. The men, their heads whirling with the anticipated delights of a

spree, would indignantly champion their new friend. Morgan retired

grimly to the "office." There, the next morning, he silently made out

the "time" of six men, who had decided to quit. He wondered what would

become of the rollways.

Silver Jack, for the sake of companionship, took one of the "jumpers" in

the cutter with him. He was pleased over his success, and intended now

to try Camp Thirty, Darrell's headquarters. In regard to Morgan he had

been somewhat uneasy, for he had never encountered that individual; but

Darrell he thought he knew. The trouble at Bay City had inspired him

with a great contempt for the walking boss. That is where his mistake

came in.

It was very cold. The snow was up to the horses' bellies, so Silver Jack

had to drive at a plunging walk. Occasionally one or the other of the

two stood up and thrashed his arms about. At noon they ate sandwiches of

cold fried bacon, which the frost rendered brittle as soon as it left

the warmth of their inside pockets. Underfoot the runners of the cutter

shrieked loudly. They saw the tracks of deer and wolves and partridge,

and encountered a few jays, chickadees, and woodpeckers. Otherwise the

forest seemed quite empty. By half-past two they had made nine miles,

and the sun, in this high latitude, was swinging lower. Silver Jack

spoke angrily to his struggling animals. The other had fallen into the

silence of numbness.

They did not know that across the reaches of the forest a man was

hurrying to intercept them, a man who hastened to cope with this new

complication as readily as he would have coped with the emergency of a

lack of flour or the sickness of horses. They drove confidently.

Suddenly from nowhere a figure appeared in the trail before them. It

stood, silent and impassive, with forward-drooping, heavy shoulders,

watching the approaching cutter through inscrutable chipmunk eyes. When

the strangers had approached to within a few feet of this man, the

horses stopped of their own accord.

"Hello, Darrell," greeted Silver Jack, tugging at one of the stone jugs

beneath the seat, "you're just the man I wanted to see."

The figure made no reply.

"Have a drink," offered the big man, finally extricating the whiskey.

"You can't take that whiskey into camp," said Darrell.

"Oh, I guess so," replied Silver Jack, easily, hoping for the peaceful

solution. "There ain't enough to get anybody full. Have a taster,

Darrell; it's pretty good stuff."

"I mean it," repeated Darrell. "You got to go back." He seized the

horses' bits and began to lead them in the reversing circle.

"Hold on there!" cried Silver Jack. "You let them horses alone! You damn

little runt! Let them alone I say!" The robe was kicked aside, and

Silver Jack prepared to descend.

Richard Darrell twisted his feet out of his snow-shoe straps. "You can't

take that whiskey into camp," he repeated simply.

"Now look here, Darrell," said the other in even tones, "don't you make

no mistake. I ain't selling this whiskey; I'm _giving_ it away. The law

can't touch me. You ain't any right to say where I'll go, and, by God,

I'm going where I please!"

"You got to go back with that whiskey," replied Darrell.

Silver Jack threw aside his coat, and advanced. "You get out of my way,

or I'll kick you out, like I done at Bay City."

In an instant two blows were exchanged. The first marked Silver Jack's

bronze-red face just to the left of his white eyebrow. The second sent

Richard Darrell gasping and sobbing into the snow-bank ten feet away. He

arose with the blood streaming from beneath his mustache. His eager,

nervous face was white; his chipmunk eyes narrowed; his great hands,

held palm backward, clutched spasmodically. With the stealthy motion of

a cat he approached his antagonist, and sprang. Silver Jack stood

straight and confident, awaiting him. Three times the aggressor was

knocked entirely off his feet. The fourth he hit against the cutter

body, and his fingers closed on the axe which all voyagers through the

forest carry as a matter of course.

"He's gettin' ugly. Come on, Hank!" cried Silver Jack.

The other man, with a long score to pay the walking boss, seized the

iron starting-bar, and descended. Out from the inscrutable white forest

murder breathed like a pestilential air. The two men talked about it

easily, confidently.

"You ketch him on one side, and I'll come in on the other," said the man

named Hank, gripping his short, heavy bar.

The forest lay behind; the forest, easily penetrable to a man in

moccasins. Richard Darrell could at any moment have fled beyond the

possibility of pursuit. This had become no mere question of a bar-room

fisticuff, but of life and death. He had begged abjectly from the pain

of a cuff on the ear; now he merely glanced over his shoulder toward the

safety that lay beyond. Then, with a cry, he whirled the axe about his

head and threw it directly at the second of his antagonists. The flat

of the implement struck heavily, full on the man's forehead. He fell,

stunned. Immediately the other two precipitated themselves on the

weapons. This time Silver Jack secured the axe, while Darrell had to

content himself with the short, heavy bar. The strange duel recommenced,

while the horses, mildly curious, gazed through the steam of their

nostrils at their warring masters.

Overhead the ravens of the far north idled to and fro. When the three

men lay still on the trampled snow, they stooped, nearer and nearer.

Then they towered. One of the men had stirred.

Richard Darrell painfully cleared his eyes and dragged himself to a

sitting position, sweeping the blood of his shallow wound from his

forehead. He searched out the axe. With it he first smashed in the

whiskey jugs. Then he wrecked the cutter, chopping it savagely until it

was reduced to splinters and twisted iron. By the time this was done,

his antagonists were in the throes of returning consciousness. He stood

over them, dominant, menacing.

"You hit th' back trail," said he, "damn quick! Don't you let me see you

'round these diggings again."

Silver Jack, bewildered, half stunned, not understanding this little

cowardly man who had permitted himself to be kicked from the saloon,

rose slowly.

"You stand there!" commanded Darrell. He opened a pocket-knife, and cut

the harness to bits, leaving only the necessary head-stalls intact.

"Now git!" said he. "Pike out!--fer Beeson Lake. Don't you stop at no

Camp Twenty-eight!"

Appalled at the prospect of the long journey through the frozen forest,

Silver Jack and his companion silently led the horses away. As they

reached the bend in the trail, they looked back. The sun was just

setting through the trees, throwing the illusion of them gigantic across

the eye. And he stood there huge, menacing, against the light--the

dominant spirit, Roaring Dick of the woods, the incarnation of

Necessity, the Man defending his Work, the Foreman!

III

THE SCALER

Once Morrison & Daly, of Saginaw, but then lumbering at Beeson Lake,

lent some money to a man named Crothers, taking in return a mortgage on

what was known as the Crothers Tract of white pine. In due time, as

Crothers did not liquidate, the firm became possessed of this tract.

They hardly knew what to do with it.

The timber was situated some fifty miles from the railroad in a country

that threw all sorts of difficulties across the logger's path, and had

to be hauled from nine to fifteen miles to the river. Both Morrison and

Daly groaned in spirit. Supplies would have to be toted in to last the

entire winter, for when the snow came, communication over fifty miles of

forest road would be as good as cut off. Whom could they trust among the

lesser foremen of their woods force? Whom could they spare among the

greater?

At this juncture they called to them Tim Shearer, their walking boss

and the greatest riverman in the State.

"You'll have to 'job' her," said Tim, promptly.

"Who would be hired at any price to go up in that country on a ten-mile

haul?" demanded Daly, sceptically.

"Jest one man," replied Tim, "an' I know where to find him."

He returned with an individual at the sight of whom the partners glanced

toward each other in doubt and dismay. But there seemed no help for it.

A contract was drawn up in which the firm agreed to pay six dollars a

thousand, merchantable scale, for all saw-logs banked at a rollway to be

situated a given number of miles from the forks of Cass Branch, while on

his side James Bourke, better known as the Rough Red, agreed to put in

at least three and one-half million feet. After the latter had scrawled

his signature he lurched from the office, softly rubbing his hairy

freckled hand where the pen had touched it.

"That means a crew of wild Irishmen," said Morrison.

"And _that_ means they'll just slaughter the pine," added Daly. "They'll

saw high and crooked, they'll chuck the tops--who are we going to send

to scale for 'em?"

Morrison sighed. "I hate to do it: there's only Fitz can make it go."

So then they called to them another of their best men, named

FitzPatrick, and sent him away alone to protect the firm's interests in

the depths of the wilderness.

The Rough Red was a big broad-faced man with eyes far apart and a bushy

red beard. He wore a dingy mackinaw coat, a dingy black-and-white

checked-flannel shirt, dingy blue trousers, tucked into high socks and

lumberman's rubbers. The only spot of colour in his costume was the

flaming red sash of the _voyageur_ which he passed twice around his

waist. When at work his little wide eyes flickered with a baleful,

wicked light, his huge voice bellowed through the woods in a torrent of

imprecations and commands, his splendid muscles swelled visibly even

under his loose blanket-coat as he wrenched suddenly and savagely at

some man's stubborn cant-hook stock. A hint of reluctance or opposition

brought his fist to the mark with irresistible impact. Then he would

pluck his victim from the snow, and kick him to work with a savage jest

that raised a laugh from everybody--excepting the object of it.

At night he stormed back through the forest at the head of his band,

shrieking wild blasphemy at the silent night, irreverent, domineering,

bold, with a certain tang of Irish good-nature that made him the beloved

of Irishmen. And at the trail's end the unkempt, ribald crew swarmed

their dark and dirty camp as a band of pirates a galleon.

In the work was little system, but much efficacy. The men gambled,

drank, fought, without a word of protest from their leader. With an

ordinary crew such performances would have meant slight accomplishment,

but these wild Irishmen, with their bloodshot eyes, their ready jests,

their equally ready fists, plunged into the business of banking logs

with all the abandon of a carouse--and the work was done.

Law in that wilderness was not, saving that which the Rough Red chose to

administer. Except in one instance, penalty more severe than a beating

there was none, for the men could not equal their leader in breaking the

greater and lesser laws of morality. The one instance was that of young

Barney Mallan, who, while drunk, mishandled a horse so severely as to

lame it. Him the Rough Red called to formal account.

"Don't ye know that horses can't be had?" he demanded, singularly

enough without an oath. "Come here."

The man approached. With a single powerful blow of a starting-bar the

Rough Red broke one of the bones of his tibia.

"Try th' lameness yerself," said the Rough Red, grimly. He glared about

through the dimness at his silent men, then stalked through the door

into the cook-camp. Had he killed Barney Mallan outright, it would have

been the same. No one in the towns would have been a word the wiser.

On Thanksgiving Day the entire place went on a prolonged drunk. The

Rough Red distinguished himself by rolling the round stove through the

door into the snow. He was badly burned in accomplishing this delicate

jest, but minded the smart no more then he did the admiring cheers of

his maudlin but emulative mates. FitzPatrick extinguished a dozen little

fires that the coals had started, shifted the intoxicated Mallan's leg

out of the danger of someone's falling on it, and departed from that

roaring hell-hole to the fringe of the solemn forest. And this brings us

to FitzPatrick.

FitzPatrick was a tall, slow man, with a face built square. The lines of

his brows, his mouth, and his jaw ran straight across; those of his

temples, cheeks, and nose straight up and down. His eye was very quiet

and his speech rare. When he did talk, it was with deliberation. For

days, sometimes, he would ejaculate nothing but monosyllables, looking

steadily on the things about him.

He had walked in ahead of the tote-team late one evening in the autumn,

after the Rough Red and his devils had been at work a fortnight. The

camp consisted quite simply of three buildings, which might have been

identified as a cook-camp, a sleeping-camp, and a stable. FitzPatrick

entered the sleeping-camp, stood his slender scaling-rule in the corner,

and peered about him through the dusk of a single lamp.