filled with horrible straw and worse blankets jumbled here and there,
old and dirty clothes drying fetidly. He saw an unkempt row of
hard-faced men along the deacon-seat, reckless in bearing, with the
light of the dare-devil in their eyes.
"Where is the boss?" asked FitzPatrick, steadily.
The Rough Red lurched his huge form toward the intruder.
"I am your scaler," explained the latter. "Where is the office?"
"You can have the bunk beyand," indicated the Rough Red, surlily.
"You have no office then?"
"What's good enough fer th' men is good enough for a boss; and what's
good enough fer th' boss is good enough fer any blank blanked scaler."
"It is not good enough for this one," replied FitzPatrick, calmly. "I
have no notion of sleepin' and workin' in no such noise an' dirt. I need
an office to keep me books and th' van. Not a log do I scale for ye,
Jimmy Bourke, till you give me a fit place to tally in."
And so it came about, though the struggle lasted three days. The Rough
Red stormed restlessly between the woods and the camp, delivering
tremendous broadsides of oaths and threats. FitzPatrick sat absolutely
imperturbable on the deacon-seat, looking straight in front of him, his
legs stretched comfortably aslant, one hand supporting the elbow of the
other, which in turn held his short brier pipe.
"Good-mornin' to ye, Jimmy Bourke," said he each morning, and after that
uttered no word until the evening, when it was, "Good-night to ye,
Jimmy Bourke," with a final _rap, rap, rap_ of his pipe.
The cook, a thin-faced, sly man, with a penchant for the _Police
Gazette_, secretly admired him.
"Luk' out for th' Rough Red; he'll do ye!" he would whisper hoarsely
when he passed the silent scaler.
But in the three days the Rough Red put his men to work on a little
cabin. FitzPatrick at once took his scaling-rule from the corner and set
out into the forest.
His business was, by measuring the diameter of each log, to ascertain
and tabulate the number of board feet put in by the contractor. On the
basis of his single report James Bourke would be paid for the season's
work. Inevitably he at once became James Bourke's natural enemy, and so
of every man in the crew with the possible exception of the cook.
Suppose you log a knoll which your eye tells you must grow at least a
half-million; suppose you work conscientiously for twelve days; suppose
your average has always been between forty and fifty thousand a day. And
then suppose the scaler's sheets credit you with only a little over the
four hundred thousand! What would you think of it? Would you not be
inclined to suspect that the scaler had cheated you in favour of his
master? that you had been compelled by false figures to work a day or so
for nothing?
FitzPatrick scaled honestly, for he was a just man, but exactitude and
optimism of estimate never have approximated, and they did not in this
case. The Rough Red grumbled, accused, swore, threatened. FitzPatrick
smoked "Peerless," and said nothing. Still it was not pleasant for him,
alone there in the dark wilderness fifty miles from the nearest
settlement, without a human being with whom to exchange a friendly word.
The two men early came to a clash over the methods of cutting. The Rough
Red and his crew cut anywhere, everywhere, anyhow. The easiest way was
theirs. Small timber they skipped, large timber they sawed high, tops
they left rather than trim them into logs. FitzPatrick would not have
the pine "slaughtered."
"Ye'll bend your backs a little, Jimmy Bourke," said he, "and cut th'
stumps lower to th' ground. There's a bunch of shingles at least in
every stump ye've left. And you must saw straighter. And th' contract
calls for eight inches and over; mind ye that. Don't go to skippin' th'
little ones because they won't scale ye high. 'Tis in the contract so.
And I won't have th' tops left. There's many a good log in them, an' ye
trim them fair and clean."
"Go to hell, you--" shouted the Rough Red. "Where th' blazes did ye
learn so much of loggin'? I log th' way me father logged, an' I'm not to
be taught by a high-banker from th' Muskegon!"
Never would he acknowledge the wrong nor promise the improvement, but
both were there, and both he and FitzPatrick knew it. The Rough Red
chafed frightfully, but in a way his hands were tied. He could do
nothing without the report; and it was too far out to send for another
scaler, even if Daly would have given him one.
Finally in looking over a skidway he noticed that one log had not been
blue-pencilled across the end. That meant that it had not been scaled;
and that in turn meant that he, the Rough Red, would not be paid for his
labour in cutting and banking it. At once he began to bellow through the
woods.
"Hey! FitzPatrick! Come here, you blank-blanked-blank of a blank! Come
here!"
The sealer swung leisurely down the travoy trail and fronted the other
with level eyes.
"Well?" said he.
"Why ain't that log marked?"
"I culled it."
"Ain't it sound and good? Is there a mark on it? A streak of punk or
rot? Ain't it good timber? What the hell's th' matter with it? You tried
to do me out of that, you damn skunk."
A log is culled, or thrown out, when, for any reason, it will not make
good timber.
"I'll tell you, Jimmy Bourke," replied FitzPatrick, calmly, "th' stick
is sound and good, or was before your murderin' crew got hold of it, but
if ye'll take a squint at the butt of it ye'll see that your gang has
sawed her on a six-inch slant. They've wasted a good foot of th' log. I
spoke of that afore; an' now I give ye warnin' that I cull every log,
big or little, punk or sound, that ain't sawed square and true across
th' butt."
"Th' log is sound and good, an' ye'll scale it, or I'll know th' reason
why!"
"I will not," replied FitzPatrick.
The following day he culled a log in another and distant skidway whose
butt showed a slant of a good six inches. The day following he culled
another of the same sort on still another skidway. He examined it
closely, then sought the Rough Red.
"It is useless, Jimmy Bourke," said he, "to be hauling of the same poor
log from skidway to skidway. You can shift her to every travoy trail in
th' Crother tract, but it will do ye little good. I'll cull it wherever
I find it, and never will ye get th' scale of that log."
The Rough Red raised his hand, then dropped it again; whirled away with
a curse; whirled back with another, and spat out:
"By God, FitzPatrick, ye go too far! Ye've hounded me and harried me
through th' woods all th' year! By God, 'tis a good stick, an' ye shall
scale it!"
"Yo' and yore Old Fellows is robbers alike!" cried one of the men.
FitzPatrick turned on his heel and resumed his work. The men ceased
theirs and began to talk.
That night was Christmas Eve. After supper the Rough Red went directly
from the cook-camp to the men's camp. FitzPatrick, sitting lonely in the
little office, heard the sounds of debauch rising steadily like
mysterious storm winds in distant pines. He shrugged his shoulders, and
tallied his day's scaling, and turned into his bunk wearily, for of
holidays there are none in the woods, save Sunday. About midnight
someone came in. FitzPatrick, roused from his sleep by aimless
blunderings, struck a light, and saw the cook looking uncertainly toward
him through blood-clotted lashes. The man was partly drunk, partly hurt,
but more frightened.
"They's too big fer me, too big fer me!" he repeated, thickly.
FitzPatrick kicked aside the blankets and set foot on the floor.
"Le' me stay," pleaded the cook, "I won't bother you; I won't even make
a noise. I'm skeered!"
"Course you can stay," replied the scaler. "Come here."
He washed the man's forehead, and bound up the cut with surgeon's
plaster from the van. The man fell silent, looking at him in wonderment
for such kindness.
Four hours later, dimly, through the mist of his broken sleep,
FitzPatrick heard the crew depart for the woods in the early dawn. On
the crest of some higher waves of consciousness were borne to him
drunken shouts, maudlin blasphemies. After a time he arose and demanded
breakfast.
The cook, pale and nervous, served him. The man was excited, irresolute,
eager to speak. Finally he dropped down on the bench opposite
FitzPatrick, and began.
"Fitz," said he, "don't go in th' woods to-day. The men is fair wild wid
th' drink, and th' Rough Red is beside hi'self. Las' night I heerd them.
They are goin' to skid the butt log again, and they swear that if you
cull it again, they will kill you. They mean it. That's all why they
wint to th' woods this day."
FitzPatrick swallowed his coffee in silence. In silence he arose and
slipped on his mackinaw blanket coat. In silence he thrust his beechwood
tablets into his pocket, and picked his pliable scaler's rule from the
corner.
"Where are ye goin'?" asked the cook, anxiously.
"I'm goin' to do th' work they pay me to do," answered FitzPatrick.
He took his way down the trail, his face set straight before him, the
smoke of his breath streaming behind. The first skidway he scaled with
care, laying his rule flat across the face of each log, entering the
figures on his many-leaved tablets of beech, marking the timbers swiftly
with his blue crayon.
The woods were empty. No ring of the axe, no shout of the driver, no
fall of the tree broke the silence. FitzPatrick comprehended. He knew
that at the next skidway the men were gathered, waiting to see what he
would do; gathered openly at last in that final hostility which had been
maturing all winter. He knew, besides, that most of them were partly
drunk and wholly reckless, and that he was alone. Nevertheless, after
finishing conscientiously skidway number one, he moved on to skidway
number two.
There, as he had expected, the men were waiting in ominous silence,
their eyes red with debauch and hate. FitzPatrick paid them no heed, but
set about his business.
Methodically, deliberately, he did the work. Then, when the last
pencil-mark had been made, and the tablets had been closed with a snap
of finality, the Rough Red stepped forward.
"Ye have finished with this skidway?" asked the foreman in soft
cat-tones.
"I have," answered FitzPatrick, briefly.
"Yo' have forgot to scale one stick."
"No."
"There is a stick still not marked."
"I culled it."
"Why?"
"It was not sawed straight."
FitzPatrick threw his head back proudly, answering his man at ease, as
an accomplished swordsman. The Rough Red shifted his feet, almost awed
in spite of himself. One after another the men dropped their eyes and
stood ill at ease. The scaler turned away; his heel caught a root; he
stumbled; instantly the pack was on him, for the power of his eye was
broken.
Mad with rage they kicked and beat and tore at FitzPatrick's huddled
form long after consciousness had left it. Then an owl hooted from the
shadow of the wood, or a puff of wind swept by, or a fox barked, or some
other little thing happened, so that in blind unreasoning panic they
fled. The place was deserted, save for the dark figure against the
red-and-white snow.
FitzPatrick regained his wits in pain, and so knew he was still on
earth. Every movement cost him a moan, and some agency outside himself
inflicted added torture. After a long time he knew it was the cook, who
was kindly kneading his limbs and knuckling his hair. The man proved to
be in a maze of wonderment over his patient's tenacity of life.
"I watched ye," he murmured soothingly, "I did not dare interfere. But
I kem to yo' 's soon as I could. See, here's a fire that I built for ye,
and some tea. Take a little. And no bones broke! True for ye, ye're a
hearty man, and strong with th' big muscles on ye fit to fight th' Rough
Red man to man. Get th' use of yere legs, darlint, an' I'll tak' ye to
camp, for its fair drunk they are by now. Sure an' I tole ye they'd kill
ye!"
"But they didn't," muttered FitzPatrick with a gleam of humour.
"Sure 'twas not their fault--nor yer own!"
Hours later, as it seemed, they moved slowly in the direction of camp.
The cold had stiffened FitzPatrick's cuts and bruises. Every step shot a
red wave of torture through his arteries to his brain. They came in
sight of camp. It was silent. Both knew that the men had drunk
themselves into a stupor.
"I'd like t' kill th' whole lay-out as she sleeps," snarled the cook,
shaking his fist.
"So would I," replied FitzPatrick.
Then as they looked, a thin wreath of smoke curled from under the open
doorway and spread lazily in the frosty air. Another followed; another;
still another. The cabin was afire.
"They've kicked over th' stove again," said FitzPatrick, seating
himself on a stump. His eyes blazed with wrath and bitterness.
"What yo' goin' to do?" asked the cook.
"Sit here," replied FitzPatrick, grimly.
The cook started forward.
"Stop!" shouted the scaler, fiercely; "if you move a step, I'll break
your back!"
The cook stared at him through saucer eyes.
"But they'd be burnt alive!" he objected, wildly.
"They ought to be," snarled the scaler; "it ain't their fault I'm here
to help them. 'Tis their own deed that I'm now lyin' beyant there in th'
forest, unable to help myself. Do you understand? I'm yet out there in
th' woods!"
"Ah, wirra, wirra!" wailed the cook, wringing his hands. "Th' poor
lads!" He began to weep.
FitzPatrick stared straight in front of him for a moment. Then he struck
his forehead, and with wonderful agility, considering the injuries he
had but just received, tore down the hill in the direction of the
smouldering cabin. The cook followed him joyfully. Together they put out
the fire. The men snored like beasts, undisturbed by all the tumult.
"'Tis th' soft heart ye have after all, Fitz," said the cook,
delightedly, as the two washed their hands in preparation for a lunch.
"Ye could not bear t' see th' lads burn."
FitzPatrick glowered at him for an instant from beneath his square
brows.
"They can go to hell for all of me," he answered, finally, "but my
people want these logs put in this winter, an' there's nobody else to
put them in."
IV
THE RIVER-BOSS
"Obey orders if you break owners" is a good rule, but a really efficient
river-boss knows a better. It runs, "Get the logs out. Get them out
peaceably if you can, but _get them out_." He does not need a
field-telephone to headquarters to teach him how to live up to the
spirit of this rule. That might involve headquarters.
Jimmy was such a river-boss. Therefore when Mr. Daly, of the firm of
Morrison & Daly, unexpectedly contracted to deliver five million feet of
logs on a certain date, and the logs an impossible number of miles up
river, he called in Jimmy.
Jimmy was a small man, changeless as the Egyptian sphinx. A number of
years ago a French comic journal published a series of sketches supposed
to represent the Shah of Persia influenced by various emotions. Under
each was an appropriate caption, such as Surprise, Grief, Anger, or
Astonishment. The portraits were identically alike, and uniformly
impassive.
Well, that was Jimmy. He looked always the same. His hair, thick and
black, grew low on his forehead; his beard, thick and black, mounted
over the ridge of his cheek-bones; and his eyebrows, thick and black,
extended in an uninterrupted straight line from one temple to the other.
Whatever his small, compact, muscular body might be doing, the mask of
his black and white imperturbability remained always unchanged.
Generally he sat clasping one knee, staring directly in front of him,
and puffing regularly on a "meerschaum" pipe he had earned by saving the
tags of Spearhead tobacco. Whatever you said to him sank without splash
into this almost primal calm and was lost to your view forever. Perhaps
after a time he might do something about it, but always without
explanation, calmly, with the lofty inevitability of fate. In fact, he
never explained himself, even to his employers.
Daly swung his bulk back and forth in the office chair. Jimmy sat bolt
upright, his black hat pendant between his knees.
"I want you to take charge of the driving crew, Jimmy," said the big
man; "I want you to drive those logs down to our booms as fast as you
can. I give you about twenty days. It ought to be done in that. Sanders
will keep time for you, and Merrill will cook. You can get a pretty good
crew from the East Branch, where the drive is just over."
When Daly had quite finished his remarks, Jimmy got up and went out
without a word. Two days later he and sixty men were breaking rollways
forty-five miles up-stream.
Jimmy knew as well as Daly that the latter had given him a hard task.
Twenty days was too brief a time. However, that was none of his
business.
The logs, during the winter, had been piled in the bed of the stream.
They extended over three miles of rollways. Jimmy and his crew began at
the down-stream end to tumble the big piles into the current. Sometimes
only two or three logs would rattle down; at others the whole deck would
bulge outward, hover for a moment, and roar into the stream like grain
from an elevator. Shortly the narrows below the rollways jammed. Twelve
men were detailed as the jam crew. Their business was to keep the stream
free in order that the constantly increasing supply from the rollways
might not fill up the river. It was not an easy business, nor a very
safe. As the "jam" strung out over more and more of the river, the jam
crew was constantly recruited from the men on the rollways. Thus some of
the logs, a very few, the luckiest, drifted into the dam pond at Grand
Rapids within a few days; the bulk jammed and broke and jammed again at
a point a few miles below the rollways, while a large proportion
stranded, plugged, caught, and tangled at the very rollways themselves.
Jimmy had permitted himself two days in which to "break out" the
rollways. It was done in two. Then the "rear" was started. Men in the
rear crew had to see that every last log got into the current. When a
jam broke, the middle of it shot down-stream in a most spectacular
fashion, but along the banks "winged out" most distressingly. Sometimes
the heavy sticks of timber had been forced right out on the dry land.
The rear crew lifted them back. When an obstinate log grounded, they
jumped cheerfully into the water--with the rotten ice swirling around
them--and pried the thing off bottom. Between times they stood upright
on single, unstable logs and pushed mightily with poles, while the
ice-water sucked in and out of their spiked river shoes.
As for the compensations, naturally there was a good deal of rivalry
between the men on the right and left banks of the river as to which
"wing" should advance the fastest; and one experiences a certain
physical thrill in venturing under thirty feet of jammed logs for the
sole purpose of teasing the whole mass to cascade down on one, or of
shooting a rapid while standing upright on a single timber. I believe,
too, it is considered the height of glory to belong to a rear crew.
Still, the water is cold and the hours long, and you have to sleep in a
tent.
It can readily be seen that the progress of the "rear" measures the
progress of the drive. Some few logs in the "jam" may run fifty miles a
day--and often do--but if the sacking has gone slowly at the rear, the
drive may not have gained more than a thousand yards. Therefore Jimmy
stayed at the rear.
Jimmy was a mighty good riverman. Of course he had nerve, and could do
anything with a log and a peavy, and would fight at the drop of a
hat--any "bully boy" would qualify there--but also he had judgment. He
knew how to use the water, how to recognise the key log of jams, where
to place his men--in short, he could get out the logs. Now Jimmy also
knew the river from one end to the other, so he had arranged in his
mind a sort of schedule for the twenty days. Forty-eight hours for the
rollways; a day and a half to the upper rapids; three days into the dam
pond; one day to sluice the drive through the Grand Rapids dam; three
days for the Crossing; and so on. If everything went well, he could do
it, but there must be no hitches in the programme.
Even from this imperfect fragment of the schedule the inexperienced
might imagine Jimmy had allowed an altogether disproportionate time to
cover the mile or so from the rapids to the dam pond. As it turned,
however, he found he had not allowed enough, for at this point the river
was peculiar and very trying.
The backwater of the dam extended up-stream a half mile; then occurred a
rise of four feet, down the slope of which the water whirled and
tumbled, only to spread out over a broad fan of gravel shallows. These
shallows did the business. When the logs had bumped through the
tribulations of the rapids, they seemed to insist obstinately on resting
in the shallows, like a lot of wearied cattle. The rear crew had to wade
in. They heaved and pried and pushed industriously, and at the end of it
had the satisfaction of seeing a single log slide reluctantly into the
current. Sometimes a dozen of them would clamp their peavies on either
side, and by sheer brute force carry the stick to deep water. When you
reflect that there were some twenty thousand pieces in the drive, and
that a good fifty per cent. of them balked below the rapids, you can see
that a rear crew of thirty men had its work cut out for it. Jimmy's
three days were three-fourths gone, and his job not more than a third
finished. McGann, the sluice boss, did a little figuring.
"She'll hang over thim twinty days," he confided to Jimmy. "Shure!"
Jimmy replied not a word, but puffed piston-like smoke from his pipe.
McGann shrugged in Celtic despair.
But the little man had been figuring, too, and his arrangements were
more elaborate and more nearly completed than McGann suspected. That
very morning he sauntered leisurely out over the rear logs, his hands in
his pockets. Every once in a while he stopped to utter a few low-voiced
words to one or another of the men. The person addressed first looked
extremely astonished; then shouldered his peavy and started for camp,
leaving the diminished rear a prey to curiosity. Soon the word went
about. "Day and night work," they whispered, though it was a little
difficult to see the difference in ultimate effectiveness between a half
crew working all the time and a whole crew working half the time.
About now Daly began to worry. He took the train to Grand Rapids,
anxiety written deep in his brows. When he saw the little inadequate
crew pecking in a futile fashion at the logs winged out over the
shallows, he swore fervidly and sought Jimmy.
Jimmy appeared calm.
"We'll get them out all right, Mr. Daly," said he.
"Get them out!" growled Daly. "Sure! But when? We ain't _got_ all the
summer this season. Those logs have got to hit our booms in fourteen
days or they're no _good_ to us!"
"You'll have 'em," assured Jimmy.
Such talk made Daly tired, and he said so.
"Why, it'll take you a week to get her over those confounded shallows,"
he concluded. "You got to get more men, Jimmy."
"I've tried," answered the boss. "They ain't no more men to be had."
"Suffering Moses!" groaned the owner. "It means the loss of a
fifty-thousand-dollar contract to me. You needn't tell _me_! I've been
on the river all my life. I _know_ you can't get them off inside of a
week."
"I'll have 'em off to-morrow morning, but it may cost a little
something," asserted Jimmy, calmly.
Daly took one look at the mass of logs, and the fifteen men pulling out
an average of one a minute. Then he returned in disgust to the city,
where he began to adjust his ideas to a loss on his contract.
At sundown the rear crew quit work, and swarmed to the encampment of
white tents on the river-bank. There they hung wet clothes over a big
skeleton framework built around a monster fire, and ate a dozen eggs
apiece as a side dish to supper, and smoked pipes of strong "Peerless"
tobacco, and swapped yarns, and sang songs, and asked questions. To the
latter they received no satisfactory replies. The crew that had been
laid off knew nothing. It appeared they were to go to work after supper.
After supper, however, Jimmy told them to turn in and get a little more
sleep. They did turn in, and speedily forgot to puzzle.
At midnight, however, Jimmy entered the big tent quietly with a lantern,
touching each of the fresh men on the shoulder. They arose without
comment, and followed him outside. There they were given tools. Then the
little band filed silently down river under the stars.