The event of that summer, the only one that counted for him, was a long,
timber-cruising trip which he took, as chain-boy and camp-helper, up
into the mountains of southern Vermont. Grandfather's whole life had
been spent in handling timber in one way and another and all his old
friends and associates were in that world. Every one had the greatest
respect for old Mr. Crittenden's "timber-sense" even now when he was so
old that he could do no more cruising, engage in no more active
speculation. Sitting around on the lumber-piles at the mill, or on the
porch of the Crittenden house, Grandfather somehow had a finger in many
a timber deal. People came to consult him, and to get him to go halves
on buys bigger than they had capital for. From the time he had been a
little boy, Neale had been the unconsidered witness of innumerable such
interviews, and had laughed inwardly with considerable family pride to
see how completely Grandfather in his baggy old country clothes held his
own and better against the smartly-dressed younger men who came to talk
business with him.
The summer after Neale's Freshman year, the proposition was a big buy of
wild land from which Grandfather himself had skimmed the cream thirty
years ago and sold for nothing afterwards, but which old Mr. Crittenden
opined, cocking a shrewd old eye in reflection, must have again come to
some exploitable value. Three men were to go up unobtrusively, and
timber-cruise through it, back and forth, zig-zag, till they could make
a fair report on what was there. The plans were being made, one evening,
out on the porch where they all sat in the long, clear summer twilight.
Grandfather had not seemed to notice Neale's half-wistful interest in
the talk of camp outfits and compasses and packs, but suddenly, looking
down to where the boy stretched his long, gaunt body on the
porch-floor, he said, "What say, Neale? How'd you like to go along? You
could carry chain when they had to run a line, and I guess you're smart
enough to keep a fire going and help make camp, ain't you?"
* * * * *
That had been a great month; full of discomfort and hardship and fatigue
and deep, deep satisfaction. Neale was the only boy with three men,
hardened, wiry woodsmen, who had spent their lives in forests, not at
all in the loafing irregular manner of sportsmen, with occasional spurts
of nervous effort, and with long periods, in unfavorable weather, of
idling around a camp-fire. Neale's three companions had always worked in
the woods as regularly as his father worked in his office. Rain and heat
and cold and insect-plagues were nothing to them. The main business of
every day was work: and camp-life was organized sketchily (without much
regard for comfort), not to interfere with work. Neale found that his
gymnasium-practice, athletic-sports, college-life had left him as soft
as dough beside these lean, iron-like men. He doggedly sweated himself
into a hardness that made it possible for him to keep pace with them. At
first when they turned in under their blankets at night as soon as dark
came, Neale had been too exhausted to sleep and had lain awake aching,
every one of his big bones bruised by the roughness of the hastily-made
balsam-bough bed. But inside a week, he was able, as his companions did,
to stretch out with one long, deep breath, and to know nothing more till
morning came, and the light woke him to roll over and open his eyes to
the unimaginable freshness of dawn, filtering through the thick-leaved
branches over his head. He drew in a chest-full of the sweet, new air, a
heart-full of immaculate beauty, and fell heavily asleep again, till
half-an-hour later one of his companions kicked him awake to take his
share of getting breakfast and packing up for the day's tramp.
The three timber-cruisers talked very little of anything, most of their
prodigious capacity for effort going into their work, and they never
talked at all of the beauty which was the background of their lives; but
they occasionally paid a silent, offish tribute to that beauty by going
a little out of their way to some "look-out" evidently, from their talk,
familiar to them since boyhood. This was generally the top of a cliff or
rocky slide, where there were no trees to obscure the view. Arrived
there, they never did anything but sit and swing their feet over
emptiness, pitch stones into the void below them, and quarrel with each
other about the identification of different peaks and hollows in the
vast wooded expanse of mountains before them. But they were always more
than usually silent after such a glimpse of the spaciousness of the
world and, for one, Neale found a greatness in his heart to match the
greatness which had filled his eyes.
Once as they sat thus on a crag, throwing stones and smoking, the head
timber-cruiser, old Martin Hoardman, remarked to Neale, of whom they
usually took little notice, "See that high range ... and then that other
beyond it, the one with the three-peaked mountain in the middle?"
Neale nodded.
"Wa'l, you'd never guess it, but there's a valley down in between them
two, with a sight of folks in it, and farms and everything."
Another man said, "Why, old man Crittenden's got a brother lives there.
Ain't that the Ashley valley? He runs an old-fashioned water-power mill
there."
Martin observed, "Yep, I've drawed many a load of logs to the old man's
mill."
Neale remembered the sharp-spoken old man who had visited Grandfather's
mill one day when he was a little boy. He had said then, he would go up
to Ashley some day and make Uncle Burton a visit. Well, if he were a
crow or a hawk, he could do it now, in about half an hour. He sat
dreaming, his eyes fixed on the two hazy blue lines of mountains which
stood up so high and so close to each other that they entirely hid the
valley between. It must be a quiet, sheltered spot, that valley.
"Time to be movin' on," said old Martin, getting to his feet, and
striding off into the woods, with his strong, unelastic, never-tiring
gait.
At the end of five weeks they were plodding back up the road to the
Crittenden house, Neale not to be distinguished from the other men. The
road seemed hard and narrow and foolish to them, the house and barn like
toys, the world about them on so small a scale that their widened eyes
could scarcely distinguish one thing from another. Neale had the
distinct impression, when he stepped into the kitchen that if he stood
up straight, he would put his head through the ceiling. And what a
comical, trifling thing a chair was! He felt afraid to let his whole
weight come down on it and expected it to go to pieces in his hand, it
felt so flimsy.
But his bed was good--oh, very good. He slept till noon the next day and
was wakened by Grandfather coming up to see what the matter was. He
scrambled up, half-awake, rubbing his eyes and staring, his pyjamas open
upon his broad chest, his long arms bare. Grandfather stood looking at
him for a moment before he went back downstairs. He did not say a word
except, "You're going to eat breakfast and dinner together, I guess,"
but Neale knew that Grandfather was very well pleased with what he saw.
Grandfather was a pretty good old scout, anyhow, he thought, as he
washed gingerly in the white earthen-ware basin, which seemed
appallingly breakable to him.