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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Blazed Trail, by Stewart Edward White
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+Title: The Blazed Trail
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+Author: Stewart Edward White
+
+Release Date:  September, 2002  [Etext #3413]
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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Blazed Trail, by Stewart Edward White
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+
+
+THE BLAZED TRAIL
+
+by Stewart Edward White
+
+
+
+
+TO MY FATHER-- From whose early pioneer life are drawn many
+of Harry Thorpe's experiences.
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+
+PART I:  THE FOREST
+
+PART II:  THE LANDLOOKER
+
+PART III:  THE BLAZING OF THE TRAIL
+
+PART IV:  THORPE'S DREAM GIRL
+
+PART V:  THE FOLLOWING OF THE TRAIL
+
+
+
+
+PART I:  THE FOREST
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+When history has granted him the justice of perspective, we
+shall know the American Pioneer as one of the most picturesque
+of her many figures.  Resourceful, self-reliant, bold; adapting
+himself with fluidity to diverse circumstances and conditions;
+meeting with equal cheerfulness of confidence and completeness of
+capability both unknown dangers and the perils by which he has been
+educated; seizing the useful in the lives of the beasts and men
+nearest him, and assimilating it with marvellous rapidity; he
+presents to the world a picture of complete adequacy which it would
+be difficult to match in any other walk of life.  He is a strong
+man, with a strong man's virtues and a strong man's vices.  In him
+the passions are elemental, the dramas epic, for he lives in the age
+when men are close to nature, and draw from her their forces.  He
+satisfies his needs direct from the earth.  Stripped of all the
+towns can give him, he merely resorts to a facile substitution.
+It becomes an affair of rawhide for leather, buckskin for cloth,
+venison for canned tomatoes.  We feel that his steps are planted on
+solid earth, for civilizations may crumble without disturbing his
+magnificent self-poise.  In him we perceive dimly his environment.
+He has something about him which other men do not possess--a frank
+clearness of the eye, a swing of the shoulder, a carriage of the
+hips, a tilt of the hat, an air of muscular well-being which marks
+him as belonging to the advance guard, whether he wears buckskin,
+mackinaw, sombrero, or broadcloth.  The woods are there, the plains,
+the rivers.  Snow is there, and the line of the prairie.  Mountain
+peaks and still pine forests have impressed themselves subtly; so
+that when we turn to admire his unconsciously graceful swing, we
+seem to hear the ax biting the pine, or the prospector's pick
+tapping the rock.  And in his eye is the capability of quiet humor,
+which is just the quality that the surmounting of many difficulties
+will give a man.
+
+Like the nature he has fought until he understands, his disposition
+is at once kindly and terrible.  Outside the subtleties of his
+calling, he sees only red.  Relieved of the strenuousness of his
+occupation, he turns all the force of the wonderful energies that
+have carried him far where other men would have halted, to channels
+in which a gentle current makes flood enough.  It is the mountain
+torrent and the canal.  Instead of pleasure, he seeks orgies.  He
+runs to wild excesses of drinking, fighting, and carousing--which
+would frighten most men to sobriety--with a happy, reckless spirit
+that carries him beyond the limits of even his extraordinary forces.
+
+This is not the moment to judge him.  And yet one cannot help
+admiring the magnificently picturesque spectacle of such energies
+running riot.  The power is still in evidence, though beyond its
+proper application.
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+In the network of streams draining the eastern portion of
+Michigan and known as the Saginaw waters, the great firm of
+Morrison & Daly had for many years carried on extensive logging
+operations in the wilderness.  The number of their camps was legion,
+of their employees a multitude.  Each spring they had gathered
+in their capacious booms from thirty to fifty million feet of
+pine logs.
+
+Now at last, in the early eighties, they reached the end of their
+holdings.  Another winter would finish the cut.  Two summers would
+see the great mills at Beeson Lake dismantled or sold, while Mr.
+Daly, the "woods partner" of the combination, would flit away to
+the scenes of new and perhaps more extensive operations.  At this
+juncture Mr. Daly called to him John Radway, a man whom he knew to
+possess extensive experience, a little capital, and a desire for
+more of both.
+
+"Radway," said he, when the two found themselves alone in the mill
+office, "we expect to cut this year some fifty millions, which will
+finish our pine holdings in the Saginaw waters.  Most of this timber
+lies over in the Crooked Lake district, and that we expect to put
+in ourselves.  We own, however, five million on the Cass Branch
+which we would like to log on contract.  Would you care to take
+the job?"
+
+"How much a thousand do you give?" asked Radway.
+
+"Four dollars," replied the lumberman.
+
+"I'll look at it," replied the jobber.
+
+So Radway got the "descriptions" and a little map divided into
+townships, sections, and quarter sections; and went out to look at
+it.  He searched until he found a "blaze" on a tree, the marking
+on which indicated it as the corner of a section.  From this corner
+the boundary lines were blazed at right angles in either direction.
+Radway followed the blazed lines.  Thus he was able accurately to
+locate isolated "forties" (forty acres), "eighties," quarter
+sections, and sections in a primeval wilderness.  The feat, however,
+required considerable woodcraft, an exact sense of direction, and a
+pocket compass.
+
+These resources were still further drawn upon for the next task.
+Radway tramped the woods, hills, and valleys to determine the most
+practical route over which to build a logging road from the standing
+timber to the shores of Cass Branch.  He found it to be an affair of
+some puzzlement.  The pines stood on a country rolling with hills,
+deep with pot-holes.  It became necessary to dodge in and out, here
+and there, between the knolls, around or through the swamps, still
+keeping, however, the same general direction, and preserving always
+the requisite level or down grade.  Radway had no vantage point from
+which to survey the country.  A city man would promptly have lost
+himself in the tangle; but the woodsman emerged at last on the
+banks of the stream, leaving behind him a meandering trail of
+clipped trees that wound, twisted, doubled, and turned, but kept
+ever to a country without steep hills.  From the main road he
+purposed arteries to tap the most distant parts.
+
+"I'll take it," said he to Daly.
+
+Now Radway happened to be in his way a peculiar character.  He was
+acutely sensitive to the human side of those with whom he had
+dealings.  In fact, he was more inclined to take their point of view
+than to hold his own.  For that reason, the subtler disputes were
+likely to go against him.  His desire to avoid coming into direct
+collision of opinion with the other man, veiled whatever of justice
+might reside in his own contention.  Consequently it was difficult
+for him to combat sophistry or a plausible appearance of right. Daly
+was perfectly aware of Radway's peculiarities, and so proceeded to
+drive a sharp bargain with him.
+
+Customarily a jobber is paid a certain proportion of the agreed
+price as each stage of the work is completed--so much when the
+timber is cut; so much when it is skidded, or piled; so much when
+it is stacked at the river, or banked; so much when the "drive"
+down the waters of the river is finished.  Daly objected to this
+method of procedure.
+
+"You see, Radway," he explained, "it is our last season in the
+country.  When this lot is in, we want to pull up stakes, so we
+can't take any chances on not getting that timber in.  If you don't
+finish your Job, it keeps us here another season.  There can be
+no doubt, therefore, that you finish your job.  In other words,
+we can't take any chances.  If you start the thing, you've got to
+carry it 'way through."
+
+"I think I can, Mr. Daly," the jobber assured him.
+
+"For that reason," went on Daly, "we object to paying you as the
+work progresses.  We've got to have a guarantee that you don't quit
+on us, and that those logs will be driven down the branch as far as
+the river in time to catch our drive.  Therefore I'm going to make
+you a good price per thousand, but payable only when the logs are
+delivered to our rivermen."
+
+Radway, with his usual mental attitude of one anxious to justify
+the other man, ended by seeing only his employer's argument.  He
+did not perceive that the latter's proposition introduced into the
+transaction a gambling element.  It became possible for Morrison &
+Daly to get a certain amount of work, short of absolute completion,
+done for nothing.
+
+"How much does the timber estimate?" he inquired finally.
+
+"About five millions."
+
+"I'd need a camp of forty or fifty men then.  I don't see how I can
+run such a camp without borrowing."
+
+"You have some money, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes; a little.  But I have a family, too."
+
+"That's all right.  Now look here."  Daly drew towards him a sheet
+of paper and began to set down figures showing how the financing
+could be done.  Finally it was agreed.  Radway was permitted to draw
+on the Company's warehouse for what provisions he would need.  Daly
+let him feel it as a concession.
+
+All this was in August.  Radway, who was a good practical woodsman,
+set about the job immediately.  He gathered a crew, established his
+camp, and began at once to cut roads through the country he had
+already blazed on his former trip.
+
+Those of us who have ever paused to watch a group of farmers working
+out their road taxes, must have gathered a formidable impression of
+road-clearing.  And the few of us who, besides, have experienced the
+adventure of a drive over the same highway after the tax has been
+pronounced liquidated, must have indulged in varied reflections as
+to the inadequacy of the result.
+
+Radway's task was not merely to level out and ballast the six feet
+of a road-bed already constructed, but to cut a way for five miles
+through the unbroken wilderness.  The way had moreover to be not
+less than twenty-five feet wide, needed to be absolutely level and
+free from any kind of obstructions, and required in the swamps
+liberal ballasting with poles, called corduroys.  To one who will take
+the trouble to recall the variety of woods, thickets, and jungles
+that go to make up a wooded country--especially in the creek bottoms
+where a logging road finds often its levelest way--and the piles of
+windfalls, vines, bushes, and scrubs that choke the thickets with a
+discouraging and inextricable tangle, the clearing of five miles to
+street width will look like an almost hopeless undertaking.  Not only
+must the growth be removed, but the roots must be cut out, and the
+inequalities of the ground levelled or filled up.  Reflect further
+that Radway had but a brief time at his disposal,--but a few months
+at most,--and you will then be in a position to gauge the first
+difficulties of those the American pioneer expects to encounter as
+a matter of course.  The cutting of the road was a mere incident in
+the battle with the wilderness.
+
+The jobber, of course, pushed his roads as rapidly as possible, but
+was greatly handicapped by lack of men.  Winter set in early and
+surprised him with several of the smaller branches yet to finish.
+The main line, however, was done.
+
+At intervals squares were cut out alongside.  In them two long
+timbers, or skids, were laid andiron-wise for the reception of the
+piles of logs which would be dragged from the fallen trees.  They
+were called skidways.  Then finally the season's cut began.
+
+The men who were to fell the trees, Radway distributed along one
+boundary of a "forty."  They were instructed to move forward across
+the forty in a straight line, felling every pine tree over eight
+inches in diameter.  While the "saw-gangs," three in number,
+prepared to fell the first trees, other men, called "swampers,"
+were busy cutting and clearing of roots narrow little trails down
+through the forest from the pine to the skidway at the edge of the
+logging road.  The trails were perhaps three feet wide, and marvels
+of smoothness, although no attempt was made to level mere inequalities
+of the ground.  They were called travoy roads (French "travois").
+Down them the logs would be dragged and hauled, either by means of
+heavy steel tongs or a short sledge on which one end of the timber
+would be chained.
+
+Meantime the sawyers were busy.  Each pair of men selected a tree,
+the first they encountered over the blazed line of their "forty."
+After determining in which direction it was to fall, they set to
+work to chop a deep gash in that side of the trunk.
+
+Tom Broadhead and Henry Paul picked out a tremendous pine which
+they determined to throw across a little open space in proximity
+to the travoy road.  One stood to right, the other to left, and
+alternately their axes bit deep.  It was a beautiful sight this,
+of experts wielding their tools.  The craft of the woodsman means
+incidentally such a free swing of the shoulders and hips, such a
+directness of stroke as the blade of one sinks accurately in the
+gash made by the other, that one never tires of watching the grace
+of it.  Tom glanced up as a sailor looks aloft.
+
+"She'll do, Hank," he said.
+
+The two then with a dozen half clips of the ax, removed the
+inequalities of the bark from the saw's path.  The long, flexible
+ribbon of steel began to sing, bending so adaptably to the hands
+and motions of the men manipulating, that it did not seem possible
+so mobile an instrument could cut the rough pine.  In a moment the
+song changed timbre.  Without a word the men straightened their
+backs.  Tom flirted along the blade a thin stream of kerosene oil
+from a bottle in his hip pocket, and the sawyers again bent to
+their work, swaying back and forth rhythmically, their muscles
+rippling under the texture of their woolens like those of a panther
+under its skin.  The outer edge of the saw-blade disappeared.
+
+"Better wedge her, Tom," advised Hank.
+
+They paused while, with a heavy sledge, Tom drove a triangle of
+steel into the crack made by the sawing.  This prevented the weight
+of the tree from pinching the saw, which is a ruin at once to the
+instrument and the temper of the filer.  Then the rhythmical z-z-z!
+z-z-z! again took up its song.
+
+When the trunk was nearly severed, Tom drove another and thicker
+wedge.
+
+"Timber!" hallooed Hank in a long-drawn melodious call that melted
+through the woods into the distance.  The swampers ceased work and
+withdrew to safety.
+
+But the tree stood obstinately upright.  So the saw leaped back and
+forth a few strokes more.
+
+"Crack!" called the tree.
+
+Hank coolly unhooked his saw handle, and Tom drew the blade through
+and out the other side.
+
+The tree shivered, then leaded ever so slightly from the
+perpendicular, then fell, at first gently, afterwards with a
+crescendo rush, tearing through the branches of other trees,
+bending the small timber, breaking the smallest, and at last
+hitting with a tremendous crash and bang which filled the air with
+a fog of small twigs, needles, and the powder of snow, that settled
+but slowly.  There is nothing more impressive than this rush of
+a pine top, excepting it be a charge of cavalry or the fall of
+Niagara.  Old woodsmen sometimes shout aloud with the mere
+excitement into which it lifts them.
+
+Then the swampers, who had by now finished the travoy road, trimmed
+the prostrate trunk clear of all protuberances.  It required fairly
+skillful ax work.  The branches had to be shaved close and clear,
+and at the same time the trunk must not be gashed.  And often a man
+was forced to wield his instrument from a constrained position.
+
+The chopped branches and limbs had now to be dragged clear and
+piled.  While this was being finished, Tom and Hank marked off and
+sawed the log lengths, paying due attention to the necessity of
+avoiding knots, forks, and rotten places.  Thus some of the logs
+were eighteen, some sixteen, or fourteen, and some only twelve feet
+in length.
+
+Next appeared the teamsters with their little wooden sledges, their
+steel chains, and their tongs.  They had been helping the skidders
+to place the parallel and level beams, or skids, on which the logs
+were to be piled by the side of the road.  The tree which Tom and
+Hank had just felled lay up a gentle slope from the new travoy
+road, so little Fabian Laveque, the teamster, clamped the bite of
+his tongs to the end of the largest, or butt, log.
+
+"Allez, Molly!" he cried.
+
+The horse, huge, elephantine, her head down, nose close to her
+chest, intelligently spying her steps, moved.  The log half rolled
+over, slid three feet, and menaced a stump.
+
+"Gee!" cried Laveque.
+
+Molly stepped twice directly sideways, planted her fore foot on a
+root she had seen, and pulled sharply.  The end of the log slid
+around the stump.
+
+"Allez!" commanded Laveque.
+
+And Molly started gingerly down the hill.  She pulled the timber,
+heavy as an iron safe, here and there through the brush, missing no
+steps, making no false moves, backing, and finally getting out of
+the way of an unexpected roll with the ease and intelligence of
+Laveque himself.  In five minutes the burden lay by the travoy road.
+In two minutes more one end of it had been rolled on the little
+flat wooden sledge and, the other end dragging, it was winding
+majestically down through the ancient forest.  The little Frenchman
+stood high on the forward end.  Molly stepped ahead carefully, with
+the strange intelligence of the logger's horse.  Through the tall,
+straight, decorative trunks of trees the little convoy moved with
+the massive pomp of a dead warrior's cortege.  And little Fabian
+Laveque, singing, a midget in the vastness, typified the indomitable
+spirit of these conquerors of a wilderness.
+
+When Molly and Fabian had travoyed the log to the skidway, they
+drew it with a bump across the two parallel skids, and left it
+there to be rolled to the top of the pile.
+
+Then Mike McGovern and Bob Stratton and Jim Gladys took charge of
+it.  Mike and Bob were running the cant-hooks, while Jim stood on
+top of the great pile of logs already decked.  A slender, pliable
+steel chain, like a gray snake, ran over the top of the pile and
+disappeared through a pulley to an invisible horse,--Jenny, the
+mate of Molly.  Jim threw the end of this chain down.  Bob passed
+it over and under the log and returned it to Jim, who reached down
+after it with the hook of his implement.  Thus the stick of timber
+rested in a long loop, one end of which led to the invisible horse,
+and the other Jim made fast to the top of the pile.  He did so by
+jamming into another log the steel swamp-hook with which the chain
+was armed.  When all was made fast, the horse started.
+
+"She's a bumper!" said Bob.  "Look out, Mike!"
+
+The log slid to the foot of the two parallel poles laid slanting up
+the face of the pile.  Then it trembled on the ascent.  But one end
+stuck for an instant, and at once the log took on a dangerous slant.
+Quick as light Bob and Mike sprang forward, gripped the hooks of the
+cant-hooks, like great thumbs and forefingers, and, while one held
+with all his power, the other gave a sharp twist upward.  The log
+straightened.  It was a master feat of power, and the knack of
+applying strength justly.
+
+At the top of the little incline, the timber hovered for a second.
+
+"One more!" sang out Jim to the driver.  He poised, stepped
+lightly up and over, and avoided by the safe hair's breadth being
+crushed when the log rolled.  But it did not lie quite straight and
+even.  So Mike cut a short thick block, and all three stirred the
+heavy timber sufficiently to admit of the billet's insertion.
+
+Then the chain was thrown down for another.
+
+Jenny, harnessed only to a straight short bar with a hook in it,
+leaned to her collar and dug in her hoofs at the word of command.
+The driver, close to her tail, held fast the slender steel chain
+by an ingenious hitch about the ever-useful swamp-hook.  When Jim
+shouted "whoa!" from the top of the skidway, the driver did not
+trouble to stop the horse,--he merely let go the hook.  So the power
+was shut off suddenly, as is meet and proper in such ticklish
+business.  He turned and walked back, and Jenny, like a dog, without
+the necessity of command, followed him in slow patience.
+
+Now came Dyer, the scaler, rapidly down the logging road, a small
+slender man with a little, turned-up mustache.  The men disliked
+him because of his affectation of a city smartness, and because he
+never ate with them, even when there was plenty of room.  Radway
+had confidence in him because he lived in the same shanty with him.
+This one fact a good deal explains Radway's character.  The scaler's
+duty at present was to measure the diameter of the logs in each
+skidway, and so compute the number of board feet.  At the office he
+tended van, kept the books, and looked after supplies.
+
+He approached the skidway swiftly, laid his flexible rule across the
+face of each log, made a mark on his pine tablets in the column to
+which the log belonged, thrust the tablet in the pocket of his coat,
+seized a blue crayon, in a long holder, with which he made an 8 as
+indication that the log had been scaled, and finally tapped several
+times strongly with a sledge hammer.  On the face of the hammer in
+relief was an M inside of a delta.  This was the Company's brand,
+and so the log was branded as belonging to them.  He swarmed all
+over the skidway, rapid and absorbed, in strange contrast of
+activity to the slower power of the actual skidding.  In a moment
+he moved on to the next scene of operations without having said a
+word to any of the men.
+
+"A fine t'ing!" said Mike, spitting.
+
+So day after day the work went on.  Radway spent his time tramping
+through the woods, figuring on new work, showing the men how to do
+things better or differently, discussing minute expedients with the
+blacksmith, the carpenter, the cook.
+
+He was not without his troubles.  First he had not enough men; the
+snow lacked, and then came too abundantly; horses fell sick of colic
+or caulked themselves; supplies ran low unexpectedly; trees turned
+out "punk"; a certain bit of ground proved soft for travoying, and
+so on.  At election-time, of course, a number of the men went out.
+
+And one evening, two days after election-time, another and
+important character entered the North woods and our story.
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+On the evening in question, some thirty or forty miles southeast of
+Radway's camp, a train was crawling over a badly laid track which
+led towards the Saginaw Valley.  The whole affair was very crude.
+To the edge of the right-of-way pushed the dense swamp, like a black
+curtain shutting the virgin country from the view of civilization.
+Even by daylight the sight could have penetrated but a few feet.
+The right-of-way itself was rough with upturned stumps, blackened by
+fire, and gouged by many and varied furrows.  Across the snow were
+tracks of animals.
+
+The train consisted of a string of freight cars, one coach divided
+half and half between baggage and smoker, and a day car occupied by
+two silent, awkward women and a child.  In the smoker lounged a dozen
+men.  They were of various sizes and descriptions, but they all wore
+heavy blanket mackinaw coats, rubber shoes, and thick German socks
+tied at the knee.  This constituted, as it were, a sort of uniform.
+The air was so thick with smoke that the men had difficulty in
+distinguishing objects across the length of the car.
+
+The passengers sprawled in various attitudes.  Some hung their legs
+over the arms of the seats; others perched their feet on the backs
+of the seats in front; still others slouched in corners, half
+reclining.  Their occupations were as diverse.  Three nearest the
+baggage-room door attempted to sing, but without much success.  A
+man in the corner breathed softly through a mouth organ, to the
+music of which his seat mate, leaning his head sideways, gave close
+attention.  One big fellow with a square beard swaggered back and
+forth down the aisle offering to everyone refreshment from a quart
+bottle.  It was rarely refused.  Of the dozen, probably three
+quarters were more or less drunk.
+
+After a time the smoke became too dense.  A short, thick-set fellow
+with an evil dark face coolly thrust his heel through a window.  The
+conductor, who, with the brakeman and baggage master, was seated in
+the baggage van, heard the jingle of glass.  He arose.
+
+"Guess I'll take up tickets," he remarked.  "Perhaps it will quiet
+the boys down a little."
+
+The conductor was a big man, raw-boned and broad, with a hawk face.
+His every motion showed lean, quick, panther-like power.
+
+"Let her went," replied the brakeman, rising as a matter of course
+to follow his chief.
+
+The brakeman was stocky, short, and long armed.  In the old fighting
+days Michigan railroads chose their train officials with an eye to
+their superior deltoids.  A conductor who could not throw an
+undesirable fare through a car window lived a short official life.
+The two men loomed on the noisy smoking compartment.
+
+"Tickets, please!" clicked the conductor sharply.
+
+Most of the men began to fumble about in their pockets, but the
+three singers and the one who had been offering the quart bottle
+did not stir.
+
+"Ticket, Jack!" repeated the conductor, "come on, now."
+
+The big bearded man leaned uncertainly against the seat.
+
+"Now look here, Bud," he urged in wheedling tones, "I ain't got
+no ticket.  You know how it is, Bud.  I blows my stake."  He fished
+uncertainly in his pocket and produced the quart bottle, nearly
+empty, "Have a drink?"
+
+"No," said the conductor sharply.
+
+"A' right," replied Jack, amiably, "take one myself."  He tipped
+the bottle, emptied it, and hurled it through a window.  The
+conductor paid no apparent attention to the breaking of the glass.
+
+"If you haven't any ticket, you'll have to get off," said he.
+
+The big man straightened up.
+
+"You go to hell!" he snorted, and with the sole of his spiked boot
+delivered a mighty kick at the conductor's thigh.
+
+The official, agile as a wild cat, leaped back, then forward, and
+knocked the man half the length of the car.  You see, he was used to
+it.  Before Jack could regain his feet the official stood over him.
+
+The three men in the corner had also risen, and were staggering down
+the aisle intent on battle.  The conductor took in the chances with
+professional rapidity.
+
+"Get at 'em, Jimmy," said he.
+
+And as the big man finally swayed to his feet, he was seized by the
+collar and trousers in the grip known to "bouncers" everywhere,
+hustled to the door, which someone obligingly opened, and hurled
+from the moving train into the snow.  The conductor did not care
+a straw whether the obstreperous Jack lit on his head or his feet,
+hit a snowbank or a pile of ties.  Those were rough days, and the
+preservation of authority demanded harsh measures.
+
+Jimmy had got at 'em in a method of his own.  He gathered himself
+into a ball of potential trouble, and hurled himself bodily at the
+legs of his opponents which he gathered in a mighty bear hug.  It
+would have been poor fighting had Jimmy to carry the affair to a
+finish by himself, but considered as an expedient to gain time for
+the ejectment proceedings, it was admirable.  The conductor returned
+to find a kicking, rolling, gouging mass of kinetic energy knocking
+the varnish off all one end of the car.  A head appearing, he coolly
+batted it three times against a corner of the seat arm, after which
+he pulled the contestant out by the hair and threw him into a seat
+where he lay limp.  Then it could be seen that Jimmy had clasped
+tight in his embrace a leg each of the other two.  He hugged them
+close to his breast, and jammed his face down against them to
+protect his features.  They could pound the top of his head and
+welcome.  The only thing he really feared was a kick in the side,
+and for that there was hardly room.
+
+The conductor stood over the heap, at a manifest advantage.
+
+"You lumber-jacks had enough, or do you want to catch it plenty?"
+
+The men, drunk though they were, realized their helplessness.  They
+signified they had had enough.  Jimmy thereupon released them and
+stood up, brushing down his tousled hair with his stubby fingers.
+
+"Now is it ticket or bounce?" inquired the conductor.
+
+After some difficulty and grumbling, the two paid their fare and
+that of the third, who was still dazed.  In return the conductor
+gave them slips.  Then he picked his lantern from the overhead rack
+whither he had tossed it, slung it on his left arm, and sauntered
+on down the aisle punching tickets.  Behind him followed Jimmy.
+When he came to the door he swung across the platform with the
+easy lurch of the trainman, and entered the other car, where he
+took the tickets of the two women and the boy.  One sitting in the
+second car would have been unable to guess from the bearing or
+manner of the two officials that anything had gone wrong.
+
+The interested spectators of the little drama included two men near
+the water-cooler who were perfectly sober.  One of them was perhaps
+a little past the best of life, but still straight and vigorous.
+His lean face was leather-brown in contrast to a long mustache and
+heavy eyebrows bleached nearly white, his eyes were a clear steady
+blue, and his frame was slender but wiry.  He wore the regulation
+mackinaw blanket coat, a peaked cap with an extraordinarily high
+crown, and buckskin moccasins over long stockings.
+
+The other was younger, not more than twenty-six perhaps, with the
+clean-cut, regular features we have come to consider typically
+American.  Eyebrows that curved far down along the temples, and
+eyelashes of a darkness in contrast to the prevailing note of his
+complexion combined to lend him a rather brooding, soft, and
+melancholy air which a very cursory second examination showed to
+be fictitious.  His eyes, like the woodsman's, were steady, but
+inquiring.  His jaw was square and settled, his mouth straight.  One
+would be likely to sum him up as a man whose actions would be little
+influenced by glamour or even by the sentiments.  And yet, equally,
+it was difficult to rid the mind of the impression produced by his
+eyes.  Unlike the other inmates of the car, he wore an ordinary
+business suit, somewhat worn, but of good cut, and a style that
+showed even over the soft flannel shirt.  The trousers were,
+however, bound inside the usual socks and rubbers.
+
+The two seat mates had occupied their time each in his own fashion.
+To the elder the journey was an evil to be endured with the patience
+learned in watching deer runways, so he stared straight before him,
+and spat with a certain periodicity into the centre of the aisle.
+The younger stretched back lazily in an attitude of ease which spoke
+of the habit of travelling.  Sometimes he smoked a pipe.  Thrice he
+read over a letter.  It was from his sister, and announced her
+arrival at the little rural village in which he had made arrangements
+for her to stay.  "It is interesting,--now," she wrote, "though the
+resources do not look as though they would wear well.  I am learning
+under Mrs. Renwick to sweep and dust and bake and stew and do a
+multitude of other things which I always vaguely supposed came
+ready-made.  I like it; but after I have learned it all, I do not
+believe the practise will appeal to me much.  However, I can stand
+it well enough for a year or two or three, for I am young; and then
+you will have made your everlasting fortune, of course."
+
+Harry Thorpe experienced a glow of pride each time he read this
+part of the letter.  He liked the frankness of the lack of pretence;
+he admired the penetration and self-analysis which had taught her
+the truth that, although learning a new thing is always interesting,
+the practising of an old one is monotonous.  And her pluck appealed
+to him.  It is not easy for a girl to step from the position of
+mistress of servants to that of helping about the housework of a
+small family in a small town for the sake of the home to be found
+in it.
+
+"She's a trump!" said Thorpe to himself, "and she shall have
+her everlasting fortune, if there's such a thing in the country."
+
+He jingled the three dollars and sixty cents in his pocket, and
+smiled.  That was the extent of his everlasting fortune at present.
+
+The letter had been answered from Detroit.
+
+"I am glad you are settled," he wrote.  "At least I know you have
+enough to eat and a roof over you.  I hope sincerely that you will
+do your best to fit yourself to your new conditions.  I know it is
+hard, but with my lack of experience and my ignorance as to where
+to take hold, it may be a good many years before we can do any
+better."
+
+When Helen Thorpe read this, she cried.  Things had gone wrong that
+morning, and an encouraging word would have helped her.  The somber
+tone of her brother's communication threw her into a fit of the
+blues from which, for the first time, she saw her surroundings in a
+depressing and distasteful light.  And yet he had written as he did
+with the kindest possible motives.
+
+Thorpe had the misfortune to be one of those individuals who, though
+careless of what people in general may think of them, are in a
+corresponding degree sensitive to the opinion of the few they
+love.  This feeling was further exaggerated by a constitutional
+shrinking from any outward manifestation of the emotions.  As a
+natural result, he was often thought indifferent or discouraging
+when in reality his natural affections were at their liveliest.  A
+failure to procure for a friend certain favors or pleasures
+dejected him, not only because of that friend's disappointment, but
+because, also, he imagined the failure earned him a certain blame.
+Blame from his heart's intimates he shrank from.  His life outside
+the inner circles of his affections was apt to be so militant and
+so divorced from considerations of amity, that as a matter of
+natural reaction he became inclined to exaggerate the importance of
+small objections, little reproaches, slight criticisms from his real
+friends.  Such criticisms seemed to bring into a sphere he would have
+liked to keep solely for the mutual reliance of loving kindness,
+something of the hard utilitarianism of the world at large.  In
+consequence he gradually came to choose the line of least resistance,
+to avoid instinctively even the slightly disagreeable.  Perhaps for
+this reason he was never entirely sincere with those he loved.  He
+showed enthusiasm over any plan suggested by them, for the reason
+that he never dared offer a merely problematical anticipation.
+The affair had to be absolutely certain in his own mind before he
+ventured to admit anyone to the pleasure of looking forward to
+it,--and simply because he so feared the disappointment in case
+anything should go wrong.  He did not realize that not only is
+the pleasure of anticipation often the best, but that even
+disappointment, provided it happen through excusable causes,
+strengthens the bonds of affection through sympathy.  We do not
+want merely results from a friend--merely finished products.  We
+like to be in at the making, even though the product spoil.
+
+This unfortunate tendency, together with his reserve, lent him the
+false attitude of a rather cold, self-centered man, discouraging
+suggestions at first only to adopt them later in the most
+inexplicable fashion, and conferring favors in a ready-made
+impersonal manner which destroyed utterly their quality as favors.
+In reality his heart hungered for the affection which this false
+attitude generally repelled.  He threw the wet blanket of doubt
+over warm young enthusiasms because his mind worked with a certain
+deliberateness which did not at once permit him to see the
+practicability of the scheme.  Later he would approve.  But by that
+time, probably, the wet blanket had effectually extinguished the
+glow.  You cannot always savor your pleasures cold.
+
+So after the disgrace of his father, Harry Thorpe did a great deal
+of thinking and planning which he kept carefully to himself.  He
+considered in turn the different occupations to which he could turn
+his hand, and negatived them one by one.  Few business firms would
+care to employ the son of as shrewd an embezzler as Henry Thorpe.
+Finally he came to a decision.  He communicated this decision to his
+sister.  It would have commended itself more logically to her had
+she been able to follow step by step the considerations that had
+led her brother to it.  As the event turned, she was forced to accept
+it blindly.  She knew that her brother intended going West, but as
+to his hopes and plans she was in ignorance.  A little sympathy, a
+little mutual understanding would have meant a great deal to her,
+for a girl whose mother she but dimly remembers, turns naturally to
+her next of kin.  Helen Thorpe had always admired her brother, but
+had never before needed him.  She had looked upon him as strong,
+self-contained, a little moody.  Now the tone of his letter caused
+her to wonder whether he were not also a trifle hard and cold.  So
+she wept on receiving it, and the tears watered the ground for
+discontent.
+
+At the beginning of the row in the smoking car, Thorpe laid aside
+his letter and watched with keen appreciation the direct practicality
+of the trainmen's method.  When the bearded man fell before the
+conductor's blow, he turned to the individual at his side.
+
+"He knows how to hit, doesn't he!" he observed.  "That fellow was
+knocked well off his feet."
+
+"He does," agreed the other dryly.
+
+They fell into a desultory conversation of fits and starts.  Woodsmen
+of the genuine sort are never talkative; and Thorpe, as has been
+explained, was constitutionally reticent.  In the course of their
+disjointed remarks Thorpe explained that he was looking for work in
+the woods, and intended, first of all, to try the Morrison & Daly
+camps at Beeson Lake.
+
+"Know anything about logging?" inquired the stranger.
+
+"Nothing," Thorpe confessed.
+
+"Ain't much show for anything but lumber-jacks.  What did you think
+of doing?"
+
+"I don't know," said Thorpe, doubtfully.  "I have driven horses a
+good deal; I thought I might drive team."
+
+The woodsman turned slowly and looked Thorpe over with a quizzical
+eye.  Then he faced to the front again and spat.
+
+"Quite like," he replied still more dryly.
+
+The boy's remark had amused him, and he had showed it, as much as
+he ever showed anything.  Excepting always the riverman, the driver
+of a team commands the highest wages among out-of-door workers.  He
+has to be able to guide his horses by little steps over, through,
+and around slippery and bristling difficulties.  He must acquire
+the knack of facing them square about in their tracks.  He must hold
+them under a control that will throw into their collars, at command,
+from five pounds to their full power of pull, lasting from five
+seconds to five minutes.  And above all, he must be able to keep
+them out of the way of tremendous loads of logs on a road which
+constant sprinkling has rendered smooth and glassy, at the same
+time preventing the long tongue from sweeping them bodily against
+leg-breaking debris when a curve in the road is reached.  It is
+easier to drive a fire engine than a logging team.
+
+But in spite of the naivete of the remark, the woodsman had seen
+something in Thorpe he liked.  Such men become rather expert in the
+reading of character, and often in a log shanty you will hear
+opinions of a shrewdness to surprise you.  He revised his first
+intention to let the conversation drop.
+
+"I think M. & D. is rather full up just now," he remarked.  "I'm
+walkin'-boss there.  The roads is about all made, and road-making is
+what a greenhorn tackles first.  They's more chance earlier in the
+year.  But if the OLD Fellow" (he strongly accented the first
+word) "h'aint nothin' for you, just ask for Tim Shearer, an' I'll
+try to put you on the trail for some jobber's camp."
+
+The whistle of the locomotive blew, and the conductor appeared in
+the doorway.
+
+"Where's that fellow's turkey?" he inquired.
+
+Several men looked toward Thorpe, who, not understanding this argot
+of the camps, was a little bewildered.  Shearer reached over his head
+and took from the rack a heavy canvas bag, which he handed to the
+conductor.
+
+"That's the 'turkey'--" he explained, "his war bag.  Bud'll throw
+it off at Scott's, and Jack'll get it there."
+
+"How far back is he?" asked Thorpe.
+
+"About ten mile.  He'll hoof it in all right."
+
+A number of men descended at Scott's.  The three who had come into
+collision with Jimmy and Bud were getting noisier.  They had
+produced a stone jug, and had collected the remainder of the
+passengers,--with the exception of Shearer and Thorpe,--and now were
+passing the jug rapidly from hand to hand.  Soon they became musical,
+striking up one of the weird long-drawn-out chants so popular with
+the shanty boy.  Thorpe shrewdly guessed his companion to be a man
+of weight, and did not hesitate to ascribe his immunity from
+annoyance to the other's presence.
+
+"It's a bad thing," said the walking-boss, "I used to be at it
+myself, and I know.  When I wanted whisky, I needed it worse than a
+scalded pup does a snow bank.  The first year I had a hundred and
+fifty dollars, and I blew her all in six days.  Next year I had a
+little more, but she lasted me three weeks.  That was better.  Next
+year, I says to myself, I'll just save fifty of that stake, and blow
+the rest.  So I did.  After that I got to be scaler, and sort've
+quit.  I just made a deal with the Old Fellow to leave my stake with
+headquarters no matter whether I call for it or not.  I got quite a
+lot coming, now."
+
+"Bees'n Lake!" cried Jimmy fiercely through an aperture of the door.
+
+"You'll find th' boardin'-house just across over the track," said
+the woodsman, holding out his hand, "so long.  See you again if you
+don't find a job with the Old Fellow.  My name's Shearer."
+
+"Mine is Thorpe," replied the other.  "Thank you."
+
+The woodsman stepped forward past the carousers to the baggage
+compartment, where he disappeared.  The revellers stumbled out the
+other door.
+
+Thorpe followed and found himself on the frozen platform of a
+little dark railway station.  As he walked, the boards shrieked
+under his feet and the sharp air nipped at his face and caught his
+lungs.  Beyond the fence-rail protection to the side of the platform
+he thought he saw the suggestion of a broad reach of snow, a
+distant lurking forest, a few shadowy buildings looming mysterious
+in the night.  The air was twinkling with frost and the brilliant
+stars of the north country.
+
+Directly across the track from the railway station, a single
+building was picked from the dark by a solitary lamp in a lower-
+story room.  The four who had descended before Thorpe made over
+toward this light, stumbling and laughing uncertainly, so he knew
+it was probably in the boarding-house, and prepared to follow them.
+Shearer and the station agent,--an individual much muffled,--turned
+to the disposition of some light freight that had been dropped from
+the baggage car.
+
+The five were met at the steps by the proprietor of the boarding-
+house.  This man was short and stout, with a harelip and cleft
+palate, which at once gave him the well-known slurring speech of
+persons so afflicted, and imparted also to the timbre of his voice
+a peculiarly hollow, resonant, trumpet-like note.  He stumped about
+energetically on a wooden leg of home manufacture.  It was a
+cumbersome instrument, heavy, with deep pine socket for the stump,
+and a projecting brace which passed under a leather belt around the
+man's waist.  This instrument he used with the dexterity of a third
+hand.  As Thorpe watched him, he drove in a projecting nail, kicked
+two "turkeys" dexterously inside the open door, and stuck the
+armed end of his peg-leg through the top and bottom of the whisky
+jug that one of the new arrivals had set down near the door.  The
+whisky promptly ran out.  At this the cripple flirted the impaled
+jug from the wooden leg far out over the rail of the verandah into
+the snow.
+
+A growl went up.
+
+"What'n hell's that for I!" snarled one of the owners of the
+whisky threateningly.
+
+"Don't allow no whisky here," snuffed the harelip.
+
+The men were very angry.  They advanced toward the cripple, who
+retreated with astonishing agility to the lighted room.  There he
+bent the wooden leg behind him, slipped the end of the brace from
+beneath the leather belt, seized the other, peg end in his right
+hand, and so became possessed of a murderous bludgeon.  This he
+brandished, hopping at the same time back and forth in such perfect
+poise and yet with so ludicrous an effect of popping corn, that the
+men were surprised into laughing.
+
+"Bully for you, peg-leg!" they cried.
+
+"Rules 'n regerlations, boys," replied the latter, without,
+however, a shade of compromising in his tones.  "Had supper?"
+
+On receiving a reply in the affirmative, he caught up the lamp,
+and, having resumed his artificial leg in one deft motion, led the
+way to narrow little rooms.
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+
+Thorpe was awakened a long time before daylight by the ringing
+of a noisy bell.  He dressed, shivering, and stumbled down stairs
+to a round stove, big as a boiler, into which the cripple dumped
+huge logs of wood from time to time.  After breakfast Thorpe returned
+to this stove and sat half dozing for what seemed to him untold
+ages.  The cold of the north country was initiating him.
+
+Men came in, smoked a brief pipe, and went out.  Shearer was one of
+them.  The woodsman nodded curtly to the young man, his cordiality
+quite gone.  Thorpe vaguely wondered why.  After a time he himself
+put on his overcoat and ventured out into the town.  It seemed to
+Thorpe a meager affair, built of lumber, mostly unpainted, with
+always the dark, menacing fringe of the forest behind.  The great
+saw mill, with its tall stacks and its row of water-barrels--
+protection against fire--on top, was the dominant note.  Near the
+mill crouched a little red-painted structure from whose stovepipe a
+column of white smoke rose, attesting the cold, a clear hundred feet
+straight upward, and to whose door a number of men were directing
+their steps through the snow.  Over the door Thorpe could distinguish
+the word "Office."  He followed and entered.
+
+In a narrow aisle railed off from the main part of the room waited
+Thorpe's companions of the night before.  The remainder of the
+office gave accommodation to three clerks.  One of these glanced up
+inquiringly as Thorpe came in.
+
+"I am looking for work," said Thorpe.
+
+"Wait there," briefly commanded the clerk.
+
+In a few moments the door of the inner room opened, and Shearer
+came out.  A man's head peered from within.
+
+"Come on, boys," said he.
+
+The five applicants shuffled through.  Thorpe found himself in the
+presence of a man whom he felt to be the natural leader of these
+wild, independent spirits.  He was already a little past middle
+life, and his form had lost the elastic vigor of youth.  But his eye
+was keen, clear, and wrinkled to a certain dry facetiousness; and
+his figure was of that bulk which gives an impression of a subtler
+weight and power than the merely physical.  This peculiarity
+impresses us in the portraits of such men as Daniel Webster and
+others of the old jurists.  The manner of the man was easy, good-
+natured, perhaps a little facetious, but these qualities were
+worn rather as garments than exhibited as characteristics.  He could
+afford them, not because he had fewer difficulties to overcome or
+battles to fight than another, but because his strength was so
+sufficient to them that mere battles or difficulties could not
+affect the deliberateness of his humor.  You felt his superiority
+even when he was most comradely with you.  This man Thorpe was to
+meet under other conditions, wherein the steel hand would more
+plainly clink the metal.
+
+He was now seated in a worn office chair before a littered desk.  In
+the close air hung the smell of stale cigars and the clear fragrance
+of pine.
+
+"What is it, Dennis?" he asked the first of the men.
+
+"I've been out," replied the lumberman.  "Have you got anything for
+me, Mr. Daly?"
+
+The mill-owner laughed.
+
+"I guess so.  Report to Shearer.  Did you vote for the right man,
+Denny?"
+
+The lumberman grinned sheepishly.  "I don't know, sir.  I didn't get
+that far."
+
+"Better let it alone.  I suppose you and Bill want to come back,
+too?" he added, turning to the next two in the line.  "All right,
+report to Tim.  Do you want work?" he inquired of the last of the
+quartette, a big bashful man with the shoulders of a Hercules.
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the latter uncomfortably.
+
+"What do you do?"
+
+"I'm a cant-hook man, sir."
+
+"Where have you worked?"
+
+"I had a job with Morgan & Stebbins on the Clear River last winter."
+
+"All right, we need cant-hook men.  Report at 'seven,' and if they
+don't want you there, go to 'thirteen.'"
+
+Daly looked directly at the man with an air of finality.  The
+lumberman still lingered uneasily, twisting his cap in his hands.
+
+"Anything you want?" asked Daly at last.
+
+"Yes, sir," blurted the big man.  "If I come down here and tell
+you I want three days off and fifty dollars to bury my mother, I
+wish you'd tell me to go to hell!  I buried her three times last
+winter!"
+
+Daly chuckled a little.
+
+"All right, Bub," said he, "to hell it is."
+
+The man went out.  Daly turned to Thorpe with the last flickers of
+amusement in his eyes.
+
+"What can I do for you?" he inquired in a little crisper tones.
+Thorpe felt that he was not treated with the same careless
+familiarity, because, potentially, he might be more of a force to
+deal with.  He underwent, too, the man's keen scrutiny, and knew
+that every detail of his appearance had found its comment in the
+other's experienced brain.
+
+"I am looking for work," Thorpe replied.
+
+"What kind of work?"
+
+"Any kind, so I can learn something about the lumber business."
+
+The older man studied him keenly for a few moments.
+
+"Have you had any other business experience?"
+
+"None."
+
+"What have you been doing?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+The lumberman's eyes hardened.
+
+"We are a very busy firm here," he said with a certain deliberation;
+"we do not carry a big force of men in any one department, and each
+
+of those men has to fill his place and slop some over the sides.
+We do not pretend or attempt to teach here.  If you want to be a
+lumberman, you must learn the lumber business more directly than
+through the windows of a bookkeeper's office.  Go into the woods.
+Learn a few first principles.  Find out the difference between
+Norway and white pine, anyway."
+
+Daly, being what is termed a self-made man, entertained a prejudice
+against youths of the leisure class.  He did not believe in their
+earnestness of purpose, their capacity for knowledge, nor their
+perseverance in anything.  That a man of twenty-six should be
+looking for his first situation was incomprehensible to him.  He
+made no effort to conceal his prejudice, because the class to which
+the young man had belonged enjoyed his hearty contempt.
+
+The truth is, he had taken Thorpe's ignorance a little too much
+for granted.  Before leaving his home, and while the project of
+emigration was still in the air, the young fellow had, with the
+quiet enthusiasm of men of his habit of mind, applied himself
+to the mastering of whatever the books could teach.  That is not
+much.  The literature on lumbering seems to be singularly limited.
+Still he knew the trees, and had sketched an outline into which to
+paint experience.  He said nothing of this to the man before him,
+because of that strange streak in his nature which prompted him to
+conceal what he felt most strongly; to leave to others the task of
+guessing out his attitude; to stand on appearances without attempting
+to justify them, no matter how simple the justification might be.
+A moment's frank, straightforward talk might have caught Daly's
+attention, for the lumberman was, after all, a shrewd reader of
+character where his prejudices were not concerned.  Then events
+would have turned out very differently.
+
+After his speech the business man had whirled back to his desk.
+
+"Have you anything for me to do in the woods, then?" the other
+asked quietly.
+
+"No," said Daly over his shoulder.
+
+Thorpe went out.
+
+Before leaving Detroit he had, on the advice of friends, visited
+the city office of Morrison & Daly.  There he had been told
+positively that the firm were hiring men.  Now, without five dollars
+in his pocket, he made the elementary discovery that even in
+chopping wood skilled labor counts.  He did not know where to turn
+next, and he would not have had the money to go far in any case.
+So, although Shearer's brusque greeting that morning had argued a
+lack of cordiality, he resolved to remind the riverman of his
+promised assistance.
+
+That noon he carried out his resolve.  To his surprise Shearer was
+cordial--in his way.  He came afterward to appreciate the subtle
+nuances of manner and treatment by which a boss retains his moral
+supremacy in a lumber country,--repels that too great familiarity
+which breeds contempt, without imperiling the trust and comradeship
+which breeds willingness.  In the morning Thorpe had been a
+prospective employee of the firm, and so a possible subordinate of
+Shearer himself.  Now he was Shearer's equal.
+
+"Go up and tackle Radway.  He's jobbing for us on the Cass Branch.
+He needs men for roadin', I know, because he's behind.  You'll get a
+job there."
+
+"Where is it?" asked Thorpe.
+
+"Ten miles from here.  She's blazed, but you better wait for th'
+supply team, Friday.  If you try to make her yourself, you'll get
+lost on some of th' old loggin' roads."
+
+Thorpe considered.
+
+"I'm busted," he said at last frankly.
+
+"Oh, that's all right," replied the walking-boss.  "Marshall, come
+here!"
+
+The peg-legged boarding-house keeper stumped in.
+
+"What is it?" he trumpeted snufflingly.
+
+"This boy wants a job till Friday.  Then he's going up to Radway's
+with the supply team.  Now quit your hollerin' for a chore-boy for a
+few days."
+
+"All right," snorted Marshall, "take that ax and split some dry
+wood that you'll find behind the house."
+
+"I'm very much obliged to you," began Thorpe to the walking-boss,
+"and---"
+
+"That's all right," interrupted the latter, "some day you can give
+me a job."
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+For five days Thorpe cut wood, made fires, drew water, swept
+floors, and ran errands.  Sometimes he would look across the broad
+stump-dotted plain to the distant forest.  He had imagination.  No
+business man succeeds without it.  With him the great struggle to
+wrest from an impassive and aloof nature what she has so long held
+securely as her own, took on the proportions of a battle.  The
+distant forest was the front.  To it went the new bands of fighters.
+From it came the caissons for food, that ammunition of the frontier;
+messengers bringing tidings of defeat or victory; sometimes men
+groaning on their litters from the twisting and crushing and
+breaking inflicted on them by the calm, ruthless enemy; once a dead
+man bearing still on his chest the mark of the tree that had killed
+him.  Here at headquarters sat the general, map in hand, issuing his
+orders, directing his forces.
+
+And out of the forest came mystery.  Hunters brought deer on sledges.
+Indians, observant and grave, swung silently across the reaches
+on their snowshoes, and silently back again carrying their meager
+purchases.  In the daytime ravens wheeled and croaked about the
+outskirts of the town, bearing the shadow of the woods on their
+plumes and of the north-wind in the somber quality of their voices;
+rare eagles wheeled gracefully to and fro; snow squalls coquetted
+with the landscape.  At night the many creatures of the forest
+ventured out across the plains in search of food,--weasels; big
+white hares; deer, planting daintily their little sharp hoofs where
+the frozen turnips were most plentiful; porcupines in quest of
+anything they could get their keen teeth into;--and often the big
+timber wolves would send shivering across the waste a long whining
+howl.  And in the morning their tracks would embroider the snow with
+many stories.
+
+The talk about the great stove in the boarding-house office also
+possessed the charm of balsam fragrance.  One told the other occult
+facts about the "Southeast of the southwest of eight."  The second
+in turn vouchsafed information about another point of the compass.
+Thorpe heard of many curious practical expedients.  He learned that
+one can prevent awkward air-holes in lakes by "tapping" the ice
+with an ax,--for the air must get out, naturally or artificially;
+that the top log on a load should not be large because of the
+probability, when one side has dumped with a rush, of its falling
+straight down from its original height, so breaking the sleigh;
+that a thin slice of salt pork well peppered is good when tied
+about a sore throat; that choking a horse will cause him to swell
+up and float on the top of the water, thus rendering it easy to
+slide him out on the ice from a hole he may have broken into; that
+a tree lodged against another may be brought to the ground by
+felling a third against it; that snowshoes made of caribou hide do
+not become baggy, because caribou shrinks when wet, whereas other
+rawhide stretches.  These, and many other things too complicated to
+elaborate here, he heard discussed by expert opinion.  Gradually
+he acquired an enthusiasm for the woods, just as a boy conceives
+a longing for the out-of-door life of which he hears in the
+conversation of his elders about the winter fire.  He became eager
+to get away to the front, to stand among the pines, to grapple with
+the difficulties of thicket, hill, snow, and cold that nature
+silently interposes between the man and his task.
+
+At the end of the week he received four dollars from his employer;
+dumped his valise into a low bobsleigh driven by a man muffled in a
+fur coat; assisted in loading the sleigh with a variety of things,
+from Spearhead plug to raisins; and turned his face at last toward
+the land of his hopes and desires.
+
+The long drive to camp was at once a delight and a misery to him.
+Its miles stretched longer and longer as time went on; and the
+miles of a route new to a man are always one and a half at least.
+The forest, so mysterious and inviting from afar, drew within
+itself coldly when Thorpe entered it.  He was as yet a stranger.
+The snow became the prevailing note.  The white was everywhere,
+concealing jealously beneath rounded uniformity the secrets of the
+woods.  And it was cold.  First Thorpe's feet became numb, then his
+hands, then his nose was nipped, and finally his warm clothes were
+lifted from him by invisible hands, and he was left naked to
+shivers and tremblings.  He found it torture to sit still on the top
+of the bale of hay; and yet he could not bear to contemplate the
+cold shock of jumping from the sleigh to the ground,--of touching
+foot to the chilling snow.  The driver pulled up to breathe his
+horses at the top of a hill, and to fasten under one runner a heavy
+chain, which, grinding into the snow, would act as a brake on the
+descent.
+
+"You're dressed pretty light," he advised; "better hoof it a ways
+and get warm."
+
+The words tipped the balance of Thorpe's decision.  He descended
+stiffly, conscious of a disagreeable shock from a six-inch jump.
+
+In ten minutes, the wallowing, slipping, and leaping after the
+tail of the sled had sent his blood tingling to the last of his
+protesting members.  Cold withdrew.  He saw now that the pines were
+beautiful and solemn and still; and that in the temple of their
+columns dwelt winter enthroned.  Across the carpet of the snow
+wandered the trails of her creatures,--the stately regular prints
+of the partridge; the series of pairs made by the squirrel; those
+of the weasel and mink, just like the squirrels' except that the
+prints were not quite side by side, and that between every other
+pair stretched the mark of the animal's long, slender body; the
+delicate tracery of the deer mouse; the fan of the rabbit; the print
+of a baby's hand that the raccoon left; the broad pad of a lynx;
+the dog-like trail of wolves;--these, and a dozen others, all equally
+unknown, gave Thorpe the impression of a great mysterious multitude
+of living things which moved about him invisible.  In a thicket of
+cedar and scrub willow near the bed of a stream, he encountered one
+of those strangely assorted bands of woods-creatures which are
+always cruising it through the country.  He heard the cheerful little
+chickadee; he saw the grave nuthatch with its appearance of a total
+lack of humor; he glimpsed a black-and-white woodpecker or so, and
+was reviled by a ribald blue jay.  Already the wilderness was taking
+its character to him.
+
+After a little while, they arrived by way of a hill, over which
+they plunged into the middle of the camp.  Thorpe saw three large
+buildings, backed end to end, and two smaller ones, all built of
+heavy logs, roofed with plank, and lighted sparsely through one or
+two windows apiece.  The driver pulled up opposite the space between
+two of the larger buildings, and began to unload his provisions.
+Thorpe set about aiding him, and so found himself for the first
+time in a "cook camp."
+
+It was a commodious building,--Thorpe had no idea a log structure
+ever contained so much room.  One end furnished space for two
+cooking ranges and two bunks placed one over the other.  Along one
+side ran a broad table-shelf, with other shelves over it and numerous
+barrels underneath, all filled with cans, loaves of bread, cookies,
+and pies.  The center was occupied by four long bench-flanked tables,
+down whose middle straggled utensils containing sugar, apple-butter,
+condiments, and sauces, and whose edges were set with tin dishes for
+about forty men.  The cook, a rather thin-faced man with a mustache,
+directed where the provisions were to be stowed; and the "cookee,"
+a hulking youth, assisted Thorpe and the driver to carry them in.
+During the course of the work Thorpe made a mistake.
+
+"That stuff doesn't come here," objected the cookee, indicating a
+box of tobacco the newcomer was carrying.  "She goes to the 'van.'"
+
+Thorpe did not know what the "van" might be, but he replaced the
+tobacco on the sleigh.  In a few moments the task was finished,
+with the exception of a half dozen other cases, which the driver
+designated as also for the "van." The horses were unhitched, and
+stabled in the third of the big log buildings.  The driver indicated
+the second.
+
+"Better go into the men's camp and sit down 'till th' boss gets
+in," he advised.
+
+Thorpe entered a dim, over-heated structure, lined on two sides
+by a double tier of large bunks partitioned from one another like
+cabins of boats, and centered by a huge stove over which hung
+slender poles.  The latter were to dry clothes on.  Just outside
+the bunks ran a straight hard bench.  Thorpe stood at the entrance
+trying to accustom his eyes to the dimness.
+
+"Set down," said a voice, "on th' floor if you want to; but I'd
+prefer th' deacon seat."
+
+Thorpe obediently took position on the bench, or "deacon seat."
+His eyes, more used to the light, could make out a thin, tall, bent
+old man, with bare cranium, two visible teeth, and a three days'
+stubble of white beard over his meager, twisted face.
+
+He caught, perhaps, Thorpe's surprised expression.
+
+"You think th' old man's no good, do you?" he cackled, without the
+slightest malice, "looks is deceivin'!"  He sprang up swiftly,
+seized the toe of his right foot in his left hand, and jumped his
+left foot through the loop thus formed.  Then he sat down again,
+and laughed at Thorpe's astonishment.
+
+"Old Jackson's still purty smart," said he.  "I'm barn-boss.  They
+ain't a man in th' country knows as much about hosses as I do.  We
+ain't had but two sick this fall, an' between you an' me, they's a
+skate lot.  You're a greenhorn, ain't you?"
+
+"Yes," confessed Thorpe.
+
+"Well," said Jackson, reflectively but rapidly, "Le Fabian, he's
+quiet but bad; and O'Grady, he talks loud but you can bluff him;
+and Perry, he's only bad when he gets full of red likker; and Norton
+he's bad when he gets mad like, and will use axes."
+
+Thorpe did not know he was getting valuable points on the camp
+bullies.  The old man hitched nearer and peered in his face.
+
+"They don't bluff you a bit," he said, "unless you likes them,
+and then they can back you way off the skidway."
+
+Thorpe smiled at the old fellow's volubility.  He did not know
+how near to the truth the woodsman's shrewdness had hit; for to
+himself, as to most strong characters, his peculiarities were the
+normal, and therefore the unnoticed.  His habit of thought in
+respect to other people was rather objective than subjective.  He
+inquired so impersonally the significance of whatever was before
+him, that it lost the human quality both as to itself and himself.
+To him men were things.  This attitude relieved him of self-
+consciousness.  He never bothered his head as to what the other
+man thought of him, his ignorance, or his awkwardness, simply
+because to him the other man was nothing but an element in his
+problem.  So in such circumstances he learned fast.  Once introduce
+the human element, however, and his absurdly sensitive self-
+consciousness asserted itself.  He was, as Jackson expressed it,
+backed off the skidway.
+
+At dark the old man lit two lamps, which served dimly to gloze the
+shadows, and thrust logs of wood into the cast-iron stove.  Soon
+after, the men came in.  They were a queer, mixed lot.  Some carried
+the indisputable stamp of the frontiersman in their bearing and
+glance; others looked to be mere day-laborers, capable of performing
+whatever task they were set to, and of finding the trail home again.
+There were active, clean-built, precise Frenchmen, with small hands
+and feet, and a peculiarly trim way of wearing their rough garments;
+typical native-born American lumber-jacks powerful in frame, rakish
+in air, reckless in manner; big blonde Scandinavians and Swedes,
+strong men at the sawing; an Indian or so, strangely in contrast to
+the rest; and a variety of Irishmen, Englishmen, and Canadians.
+These men tramped in without a word, and set busily to work at
+various tasks.  Some sat on the "deacon seat" and began to take
+off their socks and rubbers; others washed at a little wooden sink;
+still others selected and lit lanterns from a pendant row near the
+window, and followed old Jackson out of doors.  They were the
+teamsters.
+
+"You'll find the old man in the office," said Jackson.
+
+Thorpe made his way across to the small log cabin indicated as the
+office, and pushed open the door.  He found himself in a little room
+containing two bunks, a stove, a counter and desk, and a number of
+shelves full of supplies.  About the walls hung firearms, snowshoes,
+and a variety of clothes.
+
+A man sat at the desk placing figures on a sheet of paper.  He
+obtained the figures from statistics pencilled on three thin leaves
+of beech-wood riveted together.  In a chair by the stove lounged a
+bulkier figure, which Thorpe concluded to be that of the "old man."
+
+"I was sent here by Shearer," said Thorpe directly; "he said you
+might give me some work."
+
+So long a silence fell that the applicant began to wonder if his
+question had been heard.
+
+"I might," replied the man drily at last.
+
+"Well, will you?" Thorpe inquired, the humor of the situation
+overcoming him.
+
+"Have you ever worked in the woods?"
+
+"No."
+
+The man smoked silently.
+
+"I'll put you on the road in the morning," he concluded, as though
+this were the deciding qualification.
+
+One of the men entered abruptly and approached the counter.  The
+writer at the desk laid aside his tablets.
+
+"What is it, Albert?" he added.
+
+"Jot of chewin'," was the reply.
+
+The scaler took from the shelf a long plug of tobacco and cut off
+two inches.
+
+"Ain't hitting the van much, are you, Albert?" he commented, putting
+the man's name and the amount in a little book.  Thorpe went out,
+after leaving his name for the time book, enlightened as to the
+method of obtaining supplies.  He promised himself some warm clothing
+from the van, when he should have worked out the necessary credit.
+
+At supper he learned something else,--that he must not talk at
+table.  A moment's reflection taught him the common-sense of the
+rule.  For one thing, supper was a much briefer affair than it
+would have been had every man felt privileged to take his will in
+conversation; not to speak of the absence of noise and the presence
+of peace.  Each man asked for what he wanted.
+
+"Please pass the beans," he said with the deliberate intonation
+of a man who does not expect that his request will be granted.
+
+Besides the beans were fried salt pork, boiled potatoes, canned
+corn, mince pie, a variety of cookies and doughnuts, and strong
+green tea.  Thorpe found himself eating ravenously of the crude fare.
+
+That evening he underwent a catechism, a few practical jokes, which
+he took good-naturedly, and a vast deal of chaffing.  At nine the
+lights were all out.  By daylight he and a dozen other men were at
+work, hewing a road that had to be as smooth and level as a New
+York boulevard.
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+
+Thorpe and four others were set to work on this road, which was
+to be cut through a creek bottom leading, he was told, to "seventeen."
+The figures meant nothing to him.  Later, each number came to possess
+an individuality of its own.  He learned to use a double-bitted ax.
+
+Thorpe's intelligence was of the practical sort that wonderfully
+helps experience.  He watched closely one of the older men, and
+analyzed the relation borne by each one of his movements to the
+object in view.  In a short time he perceived that one hand and arm
+are mere continuations of the helve, attaching the blade of the ax
+to the shoulder of the wielder; and that the other hand directs the
+stroke.  He acquired the knack thus of throwing the bit of steel into
+the gash as though it were a baseball on the end of a string; and so
+accomplished power.  By experiment he learned just when to slide the
+guiding hand down the helve; and so gained accuracy.  He suffered
+none of those accidents so common to new choppers.  His ax did not
+twist itself from his hands, nor glance to cut his foot.  He
+attained the method of the double bit, and how to knock roots by
+alternate employment of the edge and flat.  In a few days his hands
+became hard and used to the cold.
+
+From shortly after daylight he worked.  Four other men bore him
+company, and twice Radway himself came by, watched their operations
+for a moment, and moved on without comment.  After Thorpe had caught
+his second wind, he enjoyed his task, proving a certain pleasure in
+the ease with which he handled his tool.
+
+At the end of an interminable period, a faint, musical halloo
+swelled, echoed, and died through the forest, beautiful as a
+spirit.  It was taken up by another voice and repeated.  Then by
+another.  Now near at hand, now far away it rang as hollow as a
+bell.  The sawyers, the swampers, the skidders, and the team men
+turned and put on their heavy blanket coats.
+
+Down on the road Thorpe heard it too, and wondered what it might be.
+
+"Come on, Bub! she means chew!" explained old man Heath kindly.
+Old man Heath was a veteran woodsman who had come to swamping in
+his old age.  He knew the game thoroughly, but could never save
+his "stake" when Pat McGinnis, the saloon man, enticed him in.
+Throughout the morning he had kept an eye on the newcomer, and was
+secretly pleased in his heart of the professional at the readiness
+with which the young fellow learned.
+
+Thorpe resumed his coat, and fell in behind the little procession.
+After a short time he came upon a horse and sledge.  Beyond it the
+cookee had built a little camp fire, around and over which he had
+grouped big fifty-pound lard-tins, half full of hot things to eat.
+Each man, as he approached, picked up a tin plate and cup from a
+pile near at hand.
+
+The cookee was plainly master of the situation.  He issued peremptory
+orders.  When Erickson, the blonde Swede, attempted surreptitiously
+to appropriate a doughnut, the youth turned on him savagely.
+
+"Get out of that, you big tow-head!" he cried with an oath.
+
+A dozen Canada jays, fluffy, impatient, perched near by or made
+little short circles over and back.  They awaited the remains of
+the dinner.  Bob Stratton and a devil-may-care giant by the name of
+Nolan constructed a joke wherewith to amuse the interim.  They cut a
+long pole, and placed it across a log and through a bush, so that
+one extremity projected beyond the bush.  Then diplomacy won a piece
+of meat from the cookee.  This they nailed to the end of the pole by
+means of a pine sliver.  The Canada jays gazed on the morsel with
+covetous eyes.  When the men had retired, they swooped.  One big
+fellow arrived first, and lit in defiance of the rest.
+
+"Give it to 'im!" whispered Nolan, who had been watching.
+
+Bob hit the other end of the pole a mighty whack with his ax.  The
+astonished jay, projected straight upward by the shock, gave a
+startled squawk and cut a hole through the air for the tall timber.
+Stratton and Nolan went into convulsions of laughter.
+
+"Get at it!" cried the cookee, as though setting a pack of dogs on
+their prey.
+
+The men ate, perched in various attitudes and places.  Thorpe found
+it difficult to keep warm.  The violent exercise had heated him
+through, and now the north country cold penetrated to his bones.
+He huddled close to the fire, and drank hot tea, but it did not do
+him very much good.  In his secret mind he resolved to buy one of
+the blanket mackinaws that very evening.  He began to see that the
+costumes of each country have their origin in practicality.
+
+That evening he picked out one of the best.  As he was about to
+inquire the price, Radway drew the van book toward him, inquiring,
+
+"Let's see; what's the name?"
+
+In an instant Thorpe was charged on the book with three dollars and
+a half, although his work that day had earned him less than a
+dollar.  On his way back to the men's shanty he could not help
+thinking how easy it would be for him to leave the next morning two
+dollars and a half ahead.  He wondered if this method of procedure
+obtained in all the camps.
+
+The newcomer's first day of hard work had tired him completely.  He
+was ready for nothing so much as his bunk.  But he had forgotten
+that it was Saturday night.  His status was still to assure.
+
+They began with a few mild tricks.  Shuffle the Brogan followed
+Hot Back.  Thorpe took all of it good-naturedly.  Finally a tall
+individual with a thin white face, a reptilian forehead, reddish
+hair, and long baboon arms, suggested tossing in a blanket.  Thorpe
+looked at the low ceiling, and declined.
+
+"I'm with the game as long as you say, boys," said he, "and I'll
+have as much fun as anybody, but that's going too far for a tired
+man."
+
+The reptilian gentleman let out a string of oaths whose meaning
+might be translated, "We'll see about that!"
+
+Thorpe was a good boxer, but he knew by now the lumber-jack's
+method of fighting,--anything to hurt the other fellow.  And in a
+genuine old-fashioned knock-down-and-drag-out rough-and-tumble your
+woodsman is about the toughest customer to handle you will be likely
+to meet.  He is brought up on fighting.  Nothing pleases him better
+than to get drunk and, with a few companions, to embark on an
+earnest effort to "clean out" a rival town.  And he will accept
+cheerfully punishment enough to kill three ordinary men.  It takes
+one of his kind really to hurt him.
+
+Thorpe, at the first hostile movement, sprang back to the door,
+seized one of the three-foot billets of hardwood intended for the
+stove, and faced his opponents.
+
+"I don't know which of you boys is coming first," said he quietly,
+"but he's going to get it good and plenty."
+
+If the affair had been serious, these men would never have recoiled
+before the mere danger of a stick of hardwood.  The American woodsman
+is afraid of nothing human.  But this was a good-natured bit of
+foolery, a test of nerve, and there was no object in getting a
+broken head for that.  The reptilian gentleman alone grumbled at
+the abandonment of the attack, mumbling something profane.
+
+"If you hanker for trouble so much," drawled the unexpected voice
+of old Jackson from the corner, "mebbe you could put on th' gloves."
+
+The idea was acclaimed.  Somebody tossed out a dirty torn old set of
+buckskin boxing gloves.
+
+The rest was farce.  Thorpe was built on the true athletic lines,
+broad, straight shoulders, narrow flanks, long, clean, smooth
+muscles.  He possessed, besides, that hereditary toughness and bulk
+which no gymnasium training will ever quite supply.  The other man,
+while powerful and ugly in his rushes, was clumsy and did not use
+his head.  Thorpe planted his hard straight blows at will.  In this
+game he was as manifestly superior as his opponent would probably
+have been had the rules permitted kicking, gouging, and wrestling.
+Finally he saw his opening and let out with a swinging pivot blow.
+The other picked himself out of a corner, and drew off the gloves.
+Thorpe's status was assured.
+
+A Frenchman took down his fiddle and began to squeak.  In the course
+of the dance old Jackson and old Heath found themselves together,
+smoking their pipes of Peerless.
+
+"The young feller's all right," observed Heath; "he cuffed Ben up
+to a peak all right."
+
+"Went down like a peck of wet fish-nets," replied Jackson tranquilly.
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+
+In the office shanty one evening about a week later, Radway and
+his scaler happened to be talking over the situation.  The scaler,
+whose name was Dyer, slouched back in the shadow, watching his great
+honest superior as a crafty, dainty cat might watch the blunderings
+of a St. Bernard.  When he spoke, it was with a mockery so subtle as
+quite to escape the perceptions of the lumberman.  Dyer had a precise
+little black mustache whose ends he was constantly twisting into
+points, black eyebrows, and long effeminate black lashes.  You would
+have expected his dress in the city to be just a trifle flashy, not
+enough so to be loud, but sinning as to the trifles of good taste.
+The two men conversed in short elliptical sentences, using many
+technical terms.
+
+"That 'seventeen' white pine is going to underrun," said Dyer.  "It
+won't skid over three hundred thousand."
+
+"It's small stuff," agreed Radway, "and so much the worse for us;
+but the Company'll stand in on it because small stuff like that
+always over-runs on the mill-cut."
+
+The scaler nodded comprehension.
+
+"When you going to dray-haul that Norway across Pike Lake?"
+
+"To-morrow.  She's springy, but the books say five inches of ice
+will hold a team, and there's more than that.  How much are we
+putting in a day, now?"
+
+"About forty thousand."
+
+Radway fell silent.
+
+"That's mighty little for such a crew," he observed at last,
+doubtfully.
+
+"I always said you were too easy with them.  You got to drive them
+more."
+
+"Well, it's a rough country," apologized Radway, trying, as was
+his custom, to find excuses for the other party as soon as he was
+agreed with in his blame, "there's any amount of potholes; and, then,
+we've had so much snow the ground ain't really froze underneath.  It
+gets pretty soft in some of them swamps.  Can't figure on putting up
+as much in this country as we used to down on the Muskegon."
+
+The scaler smiled a thin smile all to himself behind the stove.  Big
+John Radway depended so much on the moral effect of approval or
+disapproval by those with whom he lived.  It amused Dyer to withhold
+the timely word, so leaving the jobber to flounder between his easy
+nature and his sense of what should be done.
+
+Dyer knew perfectly well that the work was behind, and he knew the
+reason.  For some time the men had been relaxing their efforts.
+They had worked honestly enough, but a certain snap and vim had
+lacked.  This was because Radway had been too easy on them.
+
+Your true lumber-jack adores of all things in creation a man whom he
+feels to be stronger than himself.  If his employer is big enough to
+drive him, then he is willing to be driven to the last ounce of his
+strength.  But once he gets the notion that his "boss" is afraid
+of, or for, him or his feelings or his health, he loses interest in
+working for that man.  So a little effort to lighten or expedite his
+work, a little leniency in excusing the dilatory finishing of a
+job, a little easing-up under stress of weather, are taken as so
+many indications of a desire to conciliate.  And conciliation means
+weakness every time.  Your lumber-jack likes to be met front to
+front, one strong man to another.  As you value your authority, the
+love of your men, and the completion of your work, keep a bluff
+brow and an unbending singleness of purpose.
+
+Radway's peculiar temperament rendered him liable to just this
+mistake.  It was so much easier for him to do the thing himself
+than to be harsh to the point of forcing another to it, that he was
+inclined to take the line of least resistance when it came to a
+question of even ordinary diligence.  He sought often in his own
+mind excuses for dereliction in favor of a man who would not have
+dreamed of seeking them for himself.  A good many people would call
+this kindness of heart.  Perhaps it was; the question is a little
+puzzling.  But the facts were as stated.
+
+Thorpe had already commented on the feeling among the men, though,
+owing to his inexperience, he was not able to estimate its full
+value.  The men were inclined to a semi-apologetic air when they
+spoke of their connection with the camp.  Instead of being honored
+as one of a series of jobs, this seemed to be considered as merely
+a temporary halting-place in which they took no pride, and from
+which they looked forward in anticipation or back in memory to
+better things.
+
+"Old Shearer, he's the bully boy," said Bob Stratton.  "I remember
+when he was foremap for M. & D. at Camp 0.  Say, we did hustle them
+saw-logs in!  I should rise to remark!  Out in th' woods by first
+streak o' day.  I recall one mornin' she was pretty cold, an' the
+boys grumbled some about turnin' out.  'Cold,' says Tim, 'you sons
+of guns! You got your ch'ice.  It may be too cold for you in the
+woods, but it's a damm sight too hot fer you in hell, an' you're
+going to one or the other!'  And he meant it too.  Them was great
+days!  Forty million a year, and not a hitch."
+
+One man said nothing in the general discussion.  It was his first
+winter in the woods, and plainly in the eyes of the veterans this
+experience did not count.  It was a "faute de mieux," in which one
+would give an honest day's work, and no more.
+
+As has been hinted, even the inexperienced newcomer noticed the
+lack of enthusiasm, of unity.  Had he known the loyalty, devotion,
+and adoration that a thoroughly competent man wins from his "hands,"
+the state of affairs would have seemed even more surprising.  The
+lumber-jack will work sixteen, eighteen hours a day, sometimes up
+to the waist in water full of floating ice; sleep wet on the ground
+by a little fire; and then next morning will spring to work at
+daylight with an "Oh, no, not tired; just a little stiff, sir!" in
+cheerful reply to his master's inquiry,--for the right man!  Only it
+must be a strong man,--with the strength of the wilderness in his eye.
+
+The next morning Radway transferred Molly and Jenny, with little
+Fabian Laveque and two of the younger men, to Pike Lake.  There,
+earlier in the season, a number of pines had been felled out on the
+ice, cut in logs, and left in expectation of ice thick enough to
+bear the travoy "dray."  Owing to the fact that the shores of Pike
+Lake were extremely precipitous, it had been impossible to travoy
+the logs up over the hill.
+
+Radway had sounded carefully the thickness of the ice with an ax.
+Although the weather had of late been sufficiently cold for the
+time of year, the snow, as often happens, had fallen before the
+temperature.  Under the warm white blanket, the actual freezing
+had been slight.  However, there seemed to be at least eight inches
+of clear ice, which would suffice.
+
+Some of the logs in question were found to be half imbedded in the
+ice.  It became necessary first of all to free them.  Young Henrys
+cut a strong bar six or eight feet long, while Pat McGuire chopped
+a hole alongside the log.  Then one end of the bar was thrust into
+the hole, the logging chain fastened to the other; and, behold, a
+monster lever, whose fulcrum was the ice and whose power was applied
+by Molly, hitched to the end of the chain.  In this simple manner a
+task was accomplished in five minutes which would have taken a dozen
+men an hour.  When the log had been cat-a-cornered from its bed, the
+chain was fastened around one end by means of the ever-useful steel
+swamp-hook, and it was yanked across the dray.  Then the travoy took
+its careful way across the ice to where a dip in the shore gave
+access to a skidway.
+
+Four logs had thus been safely hauled.  The fifth was on its journey
+across the lake.  Suddenly without warning, and with scarcely a
+sound, both horses sank through the ice, which bubbled up around
+them and over their backs in irregular rotted pieces.  Little Fabian
+Laveque shouted, and jumped down from his log.  Pat McGuire and
+young Henrys came running.
+
+The horses had broken through an air-hole, about which the ice was
+strong.  Fabian had already seized Molly by the bit, and was holding
+her head easily above water.
+
+"Kitch Jenny by dat he't!" he cried to Pat.
+
+Thus the two men, without exertion, sustained the noses of the team
+above the surface.  The position demanded absolutely no haste, for it
+could have been maintained for a good half hour.  Molly and Jenny,
+their soft eyes full of the intelligence of the situation, rested
+easily in full confidence.  But Pat and Henrys, new to this sort of
+emergency, were badly frightened and excited.  To them the affair
+had come to a deadlock.
+
+"Oh, Lord!" cried Pat, clinging desperately to Jenny's headpiece.
+"What will we'z be doin'?  We can't niver haul them two horses on
+the ice."
+
+"Tak' de log-chain," said Fabian to Henrys, "an' tie him around
+de nec' of Jenny."
+
+Henrys, after much difficulty and nervous fumbling, managed to
+loosen the swamp-hook; and after much more difficulty and nervous
+fumbling succeeded in making it fast about the gray mare's neck.
+Fabian intended with this to choke the animal to that peculiar
+state when she would float like a balloon on the water, and two
+men could with ease draw her over the edge of the ice.  Then the
+unexpected happened.
+
+The instant Henrys had passed the end of the chain through the
+knot, Pat, possessed by some Hibernian notion that now all was
+fast, let go of the bit.  Jenny's head at once went under, and
+the end of the logging chain glided over the ice and fell plump
+in the hole.
+
+Immediately all was confusion.  Jenny kicked and struggled, churning
+the water, throwing it about, kicking out in every direction.  Once a
+horse's head dips strongly, the game is over.  No animal drowns more
+quickly.  The two young boys scrambled away, and French oaths could
+not induce them to approach.  Molly, still upheld by Fabian, looked
+at him piteously with her strange intelligent eyes, holding herself
+motionless and rigid with complete confidence in this master who had
+never failed her before.  Fabian dug his heels into the ice, but
+could not hang on.  The drowning horse was more than a dead weight.
+Presently it became a question of letting go or being dragged into
+the lake on top of the animals.  With a sob the little Frenchman
+relinquished his hold.  The water seemed slowly to rise and over-
+film the troubled look of pleading in Molly's eyes.
+
+"Assassins!" hissed Laveque at the two unfortunate youths.  That
+was all.
+
+When the surface of the waters had again mirrored the clouds, they
+hauled the carcasses out on the ice and stripped the harness.  Then
+they rolled the log from the dray, piled the tools on it, and took
+their way to camp.  In the blue of the winter's sky was a single
+speck.
+
+The speck grew.  Soon it swooped.  With a hoarse croak it lit on
+the snow at a wary distance, and began to strut back and forth.
+Presently, its suspicions at rest, the raven advanced, and with
+eager beak began its dreadful meal.  By this time another, which
+had seen the first one's swoop, was in view through the ether; then
+another; then another.  In an hour the brotherhood of ravens, thus
+telegraphically notified, was at feast.
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+
+Fabian Laveque elaborated the details of the catastrophe with
+volubility.
+
+"Hee's not fonny dat she bre'ks t'rough," he said.  "I 'ave see
+dem bre'k t'rough two, t'ree tam in de day, but nevaire dat she
+get drown!  W'en dose dam-fool can't t'ink wit' hees haid--sacre
+Dieu! eet is so easy, to chok' dat cheval--she make me cry wit'
+de eye!"
+
+"I suppose it was a good deal my fault," commented Radway, doubtfully
+shaking his head, after Laveque had left the office.  "I ought to
+have been surer about the ice."
+
+"Eight inches is a little light, with so much snow atop," remarked
+the scaler carelessly.
+
+By virtue of that same careless remark, however, Radway was so
+confirmed in his belief as to his own culpability that he quite
+overlooked Fabian's just contention--that the mere thinness of the
+ice was in reality no excuse for the losing of the horses.  So Pat
+and Henrys were not discharged--were not instructed to "get their
+time."  Fabian Laveque promptly demanded his.
+
+"Sacre bleu!" said he to old Jackson.  "I no work wid dat dam-fool
+dat no t'ink wit' hees haid."
+
+This deprived the camp at once of a teamster and a team.  When you
+reflect that one pair of horses takes care of the exertions of a
+crew of sawyers, several swampers, and three or four cant-hook men,
+you will readily see what a serious derangement their loss would
+cause.  And besides, the animals themselves are difficult to replace.
+They are big strong beasts, selected for their power, staying
+qualities, and intelligence, worth anywhere from three to six
+hundred dollars a pair.  They must be shipped in from a distance.
+And, finally, they require a very careful and patient training
+before they are of value in co-operating with the nicely adjusted
+efforts necessary to place the sawlog where it belongs.  Ready-
+trained horses are never for sale during the season.
+
+Radway did his best.  He took three days to search out a big team
+of farm horses.  Then it became necessary to find a driver.  After
+some deliberation he decided to advance Bob Stratton to the post,
+that "decker" having had more or less experience the year before.
+Erickson, the Swede, while not a star cant-hook man, was nevertheless
+sure and reliable.  Radway placed him in Stratton's place.  But now
+he must find a swamper.  He remembered Thorpe.
+
+So the young man received his first promotion toward the ranks of
+skilled labor.  He gained at last a field of application for the
+accuracy he had so intelligently acquired while road-making, for
+now a false stroke marred a saw-log; and besides, what was more to
+his taste, he found himself near the actual scene of operation, at
+the front, as it were.  He had under his very eyes the process as
+far as it had been carried.
+
+In his experience here he made use of the same searching analytical
+observation that had so quickly taught him the secret of the ax-
+swing.  He knew that each of the things he saw, no matter how
+trivial, was either premeditated or the product of chance.  If
+premeditated, he tried to find out its reason for being.  If
+fortuitous, he wished to know the fact, and always attempted to
+figure out the possibility of its elimination.
+
+So he learned why and when the sawyers threw a tree up or down
+hill; how much small standing timber they tried to fell it through;
+what consideration held for the cutting of different lengths of log;
+how the timber was skilfully decked on the skids in such a manner
+that the pile should not bulge and fall, and so that the scaler
+could easily determine the opposite ends of the same log;--in short,
+a thousand and one little details which ordinarily a man learns only
+as the exigencies arise to call in experience.  Here, too, he first
+realized he was in the firing line.
+
+Thorpe had assigned him as bunk mate the young fellow who assisted
+Tom Broadhead in the felling.  Henry Paul was a fresh-complexioned,
+clear-eyed, quick-mannered young fellow with an air of steady
+responsibility about him.  He came from the southern part of the
+State, where, during the summer, he worked on a little homestead
+farm of his own.  After a few days he told Thorpe that he was
+married, and after a few days more he showed his bunk mate the
+photograph of a sweet-faced young woman who looked trustingly out
+of the picture.
+
+"She's waitin' down there for me, and it ain't so very long till
+spring," said Paul wistfully.  "She's the best little woman a man
+ever had, and there ain't nothin' too good for her, chummy!"
+
+Thorpe, soul-sick after his recent experiences with the charity of
+the world, discovered a real pleasure in this fresh, clear passion.
+As he contemplated the abounding health, the upright carriage, the
+sparkling, bubbling spirits of the young woodsman, he could easily
+imagine the young girl and the young happiness, too big for a
+little backwoods farm.
+
+Three days after the newcomer had started in at the swamping, Paul,
+during their early morning walk from camp to the scene of their
+operations, confided in him further.
+
+"Got another letter, chummy," said he, "come in yesterday.  She
+tells me," he hesitated with a blush, and then a happy laugh, "that
+they ain't going to be only two of us at the farm next year."
+
+"You mean!" queried Thorpe.
+
+"Yes," laughed Paul, "and if it's a girl she gets named after her
+mother, you bet."
+
+The men separated.  In a moment Thorpe found himself waist-deep in
+the pitchy aromatic top of an old bull-sap, clipping away at the
+projecting branches.  After a time he heard Paul's gay halloo.
+
+"TimBER!" came the cry, and then the swish-sh-sh,--CRASH of the
+tree's fall.
+
+Thorpe knew that now either Hank or Tom must be climbing with the
+long measuring pole along the prostrate trunk, marking by means of
+shallow ax-clips where the saw was to divide the logs.  Then Tom
+shouted something unintelligible.  The other men seemed to understand,
+however, for they dropped their work and ran hastily in the direction
+of the voice.  Thorpe, after a moment's indecision, did the same.
+He arrived to find a group about a prostrate man.  The man was Paul.
+
+Two of the older woodsmen, kneeling, were conducting coolly a hasty
+examination.  At the front every man is more or less of a surgeon.
+
+"Is he hurt badly?" asked Thorpe; "what is it?"
+
+"He's dead," answered one of the other men soberly.
+
+With the skill of ghastly practice some of them wove a litter on
+which the body was placed.  The pathetic little procession moved in
+the solemn, inscrutable forest.
+
+When the tree had fallen it had crashed through the top of another,
+leaving suspended in the branches of the latter a long heavy limb.
+A slight breeze dislodged it.  Henry Paul was impaled as by a javelin.
+
+This is the chief of the many perils of the woods.  Like crouching
+pumas the instruments of a man's destruction poise on the spring,
+sometimes for days.  Then swiftly, silently, the leap is made.  It
+is a danger unavoidable, terrible, ever-present.  Thorpe was destined
+in time to see men crushed and mangled in a hundred ingenious ways
+by the saw log, knocked into space and a violent death by the butts
+of trees, ground to powder in the mill of a jam, but never would he
+be more deeply impressed than by this ruthless silent taking of a
+life.  The forces of nature are so tame, so simple, so obedient;
+and in the next instant so absolutely beyond human control or
+direction, so whirlingly contemptuous of puny human effort, that
+in time the wilderness shrouds itself to our eyes in the same
+impenetrable mystery as the sea.
+
+That evening the camp was unusually quiet.  Tellier let his
+fiddle hang.  After supper Thorpe was approached by Purdy, the
+reptilian red-head with whom he had had the row some evenings
+before.
+
+"You in, chummy?" he asked in a quiet voice.  "It's a five apiece
+for Hank's woman."
+
+"Yes," said Thorpe.
+
+The men were earning from twenty to thirty dollars a month.  They
+had, most of them, never seen Hank Paul before this autumn.  He
+had not, mainly because of his modest disposition, enjoyed any
+extraordinary degree of popularity.  Yet these strangers cheerfully,
+as a matter of course, gave up the proceeds of a week's hard work,
+and that without expecting the slightest personal credit.  The money
+was sent "from the boys."  Thorpe later read a heart-broken letter
+of thanks to the unknown benefactors.  It touched him deeply, and
+he suspected the other men of the same emotions, but by that time
+they had regained the independent, self-contained poise of the
+frontiersman.  They read it with unmoved faces, and tossed it aside
+with a more than ordinarily rough joke or oath.  Thorpe understood
+their reticence.  It was a part of his own nature.  He felt more
+than ever akin to these men.
+
+As swamper he had more or less to do with a cant-hook in helping
+the teamsters roll the end of the log on the little "dray."  He
+soon caught the knack.  Towards Christmas he had become a fairly
+efficient cant-hook man, and was helping roll the great sticks of
+timber up the slanting skids.  Thus always intelligence counts,
+especially that rare intelligence which resolves into the analytical
+and the minutely observing.
+
+On Sundays Thorpe fell into the habit of accompanying old Jackson
+Hines on his hunting expeditions.  The ancient had been raised in
+the woods.  He seemed to know by instinct the haunts and habits of
+all the wild animals, just as he seemed to know by instinct when
+one of his horses was likely to be troubled by the colic.  His
+woodcraft was really remarkable.
+
+So the two would stand for hours in the early morning and late
+evening waiting for deer on the edges of the swamps.  They haunted
+the runways during the middle of the day.  On soft moccasined feet
+they stole about in the evening with a bull's-eye lantern fastened
+on the head of one of them for a "jack."  Several times they
+surprised the wolves, and shone the animals' eyes like the
+scattered embers of a camp fire.
+
+Thorpe learned to shoot at a deer's shoulders rather than his heart,
+how to tell when the animal had sustained a mortal hurt from the
+way it leaped and the white of its tail.  He even made progress
+in the difficult art of still hunting, where the man matches his
+senses against those of the creatures of the forest,--and sometimes
+wins.  He soon knew better than to cut the animal's throat, and
+learned from Hines that a single stab at a certain point of the
+chest was much better for the purposes of bleeding.  And, what is
+more, he learned not to over-shoot down hill.
+
+Besides these things Jackson taught him many other, minor, details
+of woodcraft.  Soon the young man could interpret the thousands of
+signs, so insignificant in appearance and so important in reality,
+which tell the history of the woods.  He acquired the knack of
+winter fishing.
+
+These Sundays were perhaps the most nearly perfect of any of the
+days of that winter.  In them the young man drew more directly face
+to face with the wilderness.  He called a truce with the enemy;
+and in return that great inscrutable power poured into his heart
+a portion of her grandeur.  His ambition grew; and, as always with
+him, his determination became the greater and the more secret.  In
+proportion as his ideas increased, he took greater pains to shut
+them in from expression.  For failure in great things would bring
+keener disappointment than failure in little.
+
+He was getting just the experience and the knowledge he needed; but
+that was about all.  His wages were twenty-five dollars a month,
+which his van bill would reduce to the double eagle.  At the end
+of the winter he would have but a little over a hundred dollars to
+show for his season's work, and this could mean at most only fifty
+dollars for Helen.  But the future was his.  He saw now more plainly
+what he had dimly perceived before, that for the man who buys timber,
+and logs it well, a sure future is waiting.  And in this camp he was
+beginning to learn from failure the conditions of success.
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+
+They finished cutting on section seventeen during Thorpe's second
+week.  It became necessary to begin on section fourteen, which lay
+two miles to the east.  In that direction the character of the
+country changed somewhat.
+
+The pine there grew thick on isolated "islands" of not more than
+an acre or so in extent,--little knolls rising from the level of a
+marsh.  In ordinary conditions nothing would have been easier than
+to have ploughed roads across the frozen surface of this marsh.  The
+peculiar state of the weather interposed tremendous difficulties.
+
+The early part of autumn had been characterized by a heavy snow-
+fall immediately after a series of mild days.  A warm blanket of
+some thickness thus overlaid the earth, effectually preventing the
+freezing which subsequent cold weather would have caused.  All
+the season Radway had contended with this condition.  Even in the
+woods, muddy swamp and spring-holes caused endless difficulty and
+necessitated a great deal of "corduroying," or the laying of poles
+side by side to form an artificial bottom.  Here in the open some
+six inches of water and unlimited mud awaited the first horse that
+should break through the layer of snow and thin ice.  Between each
+pair of islands a road had to be "tramped."
+
+Thorpe and the rest were put at this disagreeable job.  All day long
+they had to walk mechanically back and forth on diagonals between
+the marks set by Radway with his snowshoes.  Early in the morning
+their feet were wet by icy water, for even the light weight of a
+man sometimes broke the frozen skin of the marsh.  By night a road
+of trampled snow, of greater or less length, was marked out across
+the expanse.  Thus the blanket was thrown back from the warm earth,
+and thus the cold was given a chance at the water beneath.  In a
+day or so the road would bear a horse.  A bridge of ice had been
+artificially constructed, on either side of which lay unsounded
+depths.  This road was indicated by a row of firs stuck in the snow
+on either side.
+
+It was very cold.  All day long the restless wind swept across the
+shivering surface of the plains, and tore around the corners of the
+islands.  The big woods are as good as an overcoat.  The overcoat
+had been taken away.
+
+When the lunch-sleigh arrived, the men huddled shivering in the lee
+of one of the knolls, and tried to eat with benumbed fingers before
+a fire that was but a mockery.  Often it was nearly dark before their
+work had warmed them again.  All of the skidways had to be placed on
+the edges of the islands themselves, and the logs had to be travoyed
+over the steep little knolls.  A single misstep out on to the plain
+meant a mired horse.  Three times heavy snows obliterated the roads,
+so that they had to be ploughed out before the men could go to work
+again.  It was a struggle.
+
+Radway was evidently worried.  He often paused before a gang to
+inquire how they were "making it."  He seemed afraid they might
+wish to quit, which was indeed the case, but he should never have
+taken before them any attitude but that of absolute confidence in
+their intentions.  His anxiety was natural, however.  He realized
+the absolute necessity of skidding and hauling this job before the
+heavy choking snows of the latter part of January should make it
+impossible to keep the roads open.  So insistent was this necessity
+that he had seized the first respite in the phenomenal snow-fall of
+the early autumn to begin work.  The cutting in the woods could wait.
+
+Left to themselves probably the men would never have dreamed of
+objecting to whatever privations the task carried with it.  Radway's
+anxiety for their comfort, however, caused them finally to imagine
+that perhaps they might have some just grounds for complaint after
+all.  That is a great trait of the lumber-jack.
+
+But Dyer, the scaler, finally caused the outbreak.  Dyer was an
+efficient enough man in his way, but he loved his own ease.  His
+habit was to stay in his bunk of mornings until well after daylight.
+To this there could be no objection--except on the part of the cook,
+who was supposed to attend to his business himself--for the scaler
+was active in his work, when once he began it, and could keep up
+with the skidding.  But now he displayed a strong antipathy to the
+north wind on the plains.  Of course he could not very well shirk
+the work entirely, but he did a good deal of talking on the very
+cold mornings.
+
+"I don't pose for no tough son-of-a-gun," said he to Radway, "and
+I've got some respect for my ears and feet.  She'll warm up a little
+by to-morrow, and perhaps the wind'll die.  I can catch up on you
+fellows by hustling a little, so I guess I'll stay in and work on
+the books to-day."
+
+"All right," Radway assented, a little doubtfully.
+
+This happened perhaps two days out of the week.  Finally Dyer hung
+out a thermometer, which he used to consult.  The men saw it, and
+consulted it too.  At once they felt much colder.
+
+"She was stan' ten below," sputtered Baptiste Tellier, the Frenchman
+who played the fiddle.  "He freeze t'rou to hees eenside.  Dat is
+too cole for mak de work."
+
+"Them plains is sure a holy fright," assented Purdy.
+
+"Th' old man knows it himself," agreed big Nolan; "did you see him
+rammin' around yesterday askin' us if we found her too cold?  He
+knows damn well he ought not to keep a man out that sort o' weather."
+
+"You'd shiver like a dog in a briar path on a warm day in July,"
+said Jackson Hines contemptuously.
+
+"Shut up!" said they.  "You're barn-boss.  You don't have to be out
+in th' cold."
+
+This was true.  So Jackson's intervention went for a little worse
+than nothing.
+
+"It ain't lak' he has nuttin' besides," went on Baptiste.  "He can
+mak' de cut in de meedle of de fores'."
+
+"That's right," agreed Bob Stratton, "they's the west half of eight
+ain't been cut yet."
+
+So they sent a delegation to Radway.  Big Nolan was the spokesman.
+
+"Boss," said he bluntly, "she's too cold to work on them plains
+to-day.  She's the coldest day we had."
+
+Radway was too old a hand at the business to make any promises on
+the spot.
+
+"I'll see, boys," said he.
+
+When the breakfast was over the crew were set to making skidways
+and travoy roads on eight.  This was a precedent.  In time the work
+on the plains was grumblingly done in any weather.  However, as to
+this Radway proved firm enough.  He was a good fighter when he knew
+he was being imposed on.  A man could never cheat or defy him openly
+without collecting a little war that left him surprised at the
+jobber's belligerency.  The doubtful cases, those on the subtle line
+of indecision, found him weak.  He could be so easily persuaded that
+he was in the wrong.  At times it even seemed that he was anxious to
+be proved at fault, so eager was he to catch fairly the justice of
+the other man's attitude.  He held his men inexorably and firmly to
+their work on the indisputably comfortable days; but gave in often
+when an able-bodied woodsman should have seen in the weather no
+inconvenience, even.  As the days slipped by, however, he tightened
+the reins.  Christmas was approaching.  An easy mathematical
+computation reduced the question of completing his contract with
+Morrison & Daly to a certain weekly quota.  In fact he was surprised
+at the size of it.  He would have to work diligently and steadily
+during the rest of the winter.
+
+Having thus a definite task to accomplish in a definite number of
+days, Radway grew to be more of a taskmaster.  His anxiety as to
+the completion of the work overlaid his morbidly sympathetic human
+interest.  Thus he regained to a small degree the respect of his
+men.  Then he lost it again.
+
+One morning he came in from a talk with the supply-teamster, and
+woke Dyer, who was not yet up.
+
+"I'm going down home for two or three weeks," he announced to Dyer,
+"you know my address.  You'll have to take charge, and I guess
+you'd better let the scaling go.  We can get the tally at the
+banking grounds when we begin to haul.  Now we ain't got all the
+time there is, so you want to keep the boys at it pretty well."
+
+Dyer twisted the little points of his mustache.  "All right, sir,"
+said he with his smile so inscrutably insolent that Radway never
+saw the insolence at all.  He thought this a poor year for a man
+in Radway's position to spend Christmas with his family, but it
+was none of his business.
+
+"Do as much as you can in the marsh, Dyer," went on the jobber.
+"I don't believe it's really necessary to lay off any more there
+on account of the weather.  We've simply got to get that job in
+before the big snows."
+
+"All right, sir," repeated Dyer.
+
+The scaler did what he considered his duty.  All day long he tramped
+back and forth from one gang of men to the other, keeping a sharp
+eye on the details of the work.  His practical experience was
+sufficient to solve readily such problems of broken tackle, extra
+expedients, or facility which the days brought forth.  The fact that
+in him was vested the power to discharge kept the men at work.
+
+Dyer was in the habit of starting for the marsh an hour or so after
+sunrise.  The crew, of course, were at work by daylight.  Dyer heard
+them often through his doze, just as he heard the chore-boy come in
+to build the fire and fill the water pail afresh.  After a time the
+fire, built of kerosene and pitchy jack pine, would get so hot that
+in self-defense he would arise and dress.  Then he would breakfast
+leisurely.
+
+Thus he incurred the enmity of the cook and cookee.  Those
+individuals have to prepare food three times a day for a half
+hundred heavy eaters; besides which, on sleigh-haul, they are
+supposed to serve a breakfast at three o'clock for the loaders
+and a variety of lunches up to midnight for the sprinkler men.
+As a consequence, they resent infractions of the little system
+they may have been able to introduce.
+
+Now the business of a foreman is to be up as soon as anybody.  He
+does none of the work himself, but he must see that somebody else
+does it, and does it well.  For this he needs actual experience
+at the work itself, but above all zeal and constant presence.  He
+must know how a thing ought to be done, and he must be on hand
+unexpectedly to see how its accomplishment is progressing.  Dyer
+should have been out of bed at first horn-blow.
+
+One morning he slept until nearly ten o'clock.  It was inexplicable!
+He hurried from his bunk, made a hasty toilet, and started for the
+dining-room to get some sort of a lunch to do him until dinner
+time.  As he stepped from the door of the office he caught sight of
+two men hurrying from the cook camp to the men's camp.  He thought
+he heard the hum of conversation in the latter building.  The cookee
+set hot coffee before him.  For the rest, he took what he could find
+cold on the table.
+
+On an inverted cracker box the cook sat reading an old copy of the
+Police Gazette.  Various fifty-pound lard tins were bubbling and
+steaming on the range.  The cookee divided his time between them
+and the task of sticking on the log walls pleasing patterns made
+of illustrations from cheap papers and the gaudy labels of canned
+goods.  Dyer sat down, feeling, for the first time, a little guilty.
+This was not because of a sense of a dereliction in duty, but
+because he feared the strong man's contempt for inefficiency.
+
+"I sort of pounded my ear a little long this morning," he remarked
+with an unwonted air of bonhomie.
+
+The cook creased his paper with one hand and went on reading; the
+little action indicating at the same time that he had heard, but
+intended to vouchsafe no attention.  The cookee continued his
+occupations.
+
+"I suppose the men got out to the marsh on time," suggested Dyer,
+still easily.
+
+The cook laid aside his paper and looked the scaler in the eye.
+
+"You're the foreman; I'm the cook," said he.  "You ought to know."
+
+The cookee had paused, the paste brush in his hand.
+
+Dyer was no weakling.  The problem presenting, he rose to the
+emergency.  Without another word he pushed back his coffee cup
+and crossed the narrow open passage to the men's camp
+
+When he opened the door a silence fell.  He could see dimly that
+the room was full of lounging and smoking lumbermen.  As a matter
+of fact, not a man had stirred out that morning.  This was more for
+the sake of giving Dyer a lesson than of actually shirking the work,
+for a lumber-jack is honest in giving his time when it is paid for.
+
+"How's this, men!" cried Dyer sharply; "why aren't you out on
+the marsh?"
+
+No one answered for a minute.  Then Baptiste:
+
+"He mak' too tam cole for de marsh.  Meester Radway he spik dat we
+kip off dat marsh w'en he mak' cole."
+
+Dyer knew that the precedent was indisputable.
+
+"Why didn't you cut on eight then?" he asked, still in peremptory
+tones.
+
+"Didn't have no one to show us where to begin," drawled a voice in
+the corner.
+
+Dyer turned sharp on his heel and went out.
+
+"Sore as a boil, ain't he!" commented old Jackson Hines with a
+chuckle.
+
+In the cook camp Dyer was saying to the cook, "Well, anyway, we'll
+have dinner early and get a good start for this afternoon."
+
+The cook again laid down his paper.  "I'm tending to this job of
+cook," said he, "and I'm getting the meals on time.  Dinner will
+be on time to-day not a minute early, and not a minute late."
+
+Then he resumed his perusal of the adventures of ladies to whom the
+illustrations accorded magnificent calf-development.
+
+The crew worked on the marsh that afternoon, and the subsequent
+days of the week.  They labored conscientiously but not zealously.
+There is a deal of difference, and the lumber-jack's unaided
+conscience is likely to allow him a certain amount of conversation
+from the decks of skidways.  The work moved slowly.  At Christmas
+a number of the men "went out."  Most of them were back again after
+four or five days, for, while men were not plenty, neither was work.
+The equilibrium was nearly exact.
+
+But the convivial souls had lost to Dyer the days of their debauch,
+and until their thirst for recuperative "Pain Killer," "Hinckley"
+and Jamaica Ginger was appeased, they were not much good.  Instead
+of keeping up to fifty thousand a day, as Radway had figured was
+necessary, the scale would not have exceeded thirty.
+
+Dyer saw all this plainly enough, but was not able to remedy it.
+That was not entirely his fault.  He did not dare give the
+delinquents their time, for he would not have known where to fill
+their places.  This lay in Radway's experience.  Dyer felt that
+responsibilities a little too great had been forced on him, which
+was partly true.  In a few days the young man's facile conscience
+had covered all his shortcomings with the blanket excuse.  He
+conceived that he had a grievance against Radway!
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+
+Radway returned to camp by the 6th of January.  He went on snowshoes
+over the entire job; and then sat silently in the office smoking
+"Peerless" in his battered old pipe.  Dyer watched him amusedly,
+secure in his grievance in case blame should be attached to him.
+The jobber looked older.  The lines of dry good-humor about his eyes
+had subtly changed to an expression of pathetic anxiety.  He attached
+no blame to anybody, but rose the next morning at horn-blow, and the
+men found they had a new master over them.
+
+And now the struggle with the wilderness came to grapples.  Radway
+was as one possessed by a burning fever.  He seemed everywhere at
+once, always helping with his own shoulder and arm, hurrying eagerly.
+For once luck seemed with him.  The marsh was cut over; the "eighty"
+on section eight was skidded without a break.  The weather held cold
+and clear.
+
+Now it became necessary to put the roads in shape for hauling.  All
+winter the blacksmith, between his tasks of shoeing and mending,
+had occupied his time in fitting the iron-work on eight log-sleighs
+which the carpenter had hewed from solid sticks of timber.  They were
+tremendous affairs, these sleighs, with runners six feet apart, and
+bunks nine feet in width for the reception of logs.  The bunks were
+so connected by two loosely-coupled rods that, when emptied, they
+could be swung parallel with the road, so reducing the width of the
+sleigh.  The carpenter had also built two immense tanks on runners,
+holding each some seventy barrels of water, and with holes so
+arranged in the bottom and rear that on the withdrawal of plugs the
+water would flood the entire width of the road.  These sprinklers
+were filled by horse power.  A chain, running through blocks attached
+to a solid upper framework, like the open belfry of an Italian
+monastery, dragged a barrel up a wooden track from the water hole to
+the opening in the sprinkler.  When in action this formidable machine
+weighed nearly two tons and resembled a moving house.  Other men had
+felled two big hemlocks, from which they had hewed beams for a V plow.
+
+The V plow was now put in action.  Six horses drew it down the road,
+each pair superintended by a driver.  The machine was weighted down
+by a number of logs laid across the arms.  Men guided it by levers,
+and by throwing their weight against the fans of the plow.  It was a
+gay, animated scene this, full of the spirit of winter--the plodding,
+straining horses, the brilliantly dressed, struggling men, the
+sullen-yielding snow thrown to either side, the shouts, warnings,
+and commands.  To right and left grew white banks of snow.  Behind
+stretched a broad white path in which a scant inch hid the bare earth.
+
+For some distance the way led along comparatively high ground.  Then,
+skirting the edge of a lake, it plunged into a deep creek bottom
+between hills.  Here, earlier in the year, eleven bridges had been
+constructed, each a labor of accuracy; and perhaps as many swampy
+places had been "corduroyed" by carpeting them with long parallel
+poles.  Now the first difficulty began.
+
+Some of the bridges had sunk below the level, and the approaches
+had to be corduroyed to a practicable grade.  Others again were
+humped up like tom-cats, and had to be pulled apart entirely.  In
+spots the "corduroy" had spread, so that the horses thrust their
+hoofs far down into leg-breaking holes.  The experienced animals
+were never caught, however.  As soon as they felt the ground giving
+way beneath one foot, they threw their weight on the other.
+
+Still, that sort of thing was to be expected.  A gang of men who
+followed the plow carried axes and cant-hooks for the purpose of
+repairing extemporaneously just such defects, which never would
+have been discovered otherwise than by the practical experience.
+Radway himself accompanied the plow.  Thorpe, who went along as one
+of the "road monkeys," saw now why such care had been required of
+him in smoothing the way of stubs, knots, and hummocks.
+
+Down the creek an accident occurred on this account.  The plow had
+encountered a drift.  Three times the horses had plunged at it, and
+three times had been brought to a stand, not so much by the drag of
+the V plow as by the wallowing they themselves had to do in the drift.
+
+"No use, break her through, boys," said Radway.  So a dozen men
+hurled their bodies through, making an opening for the horses.
+
+"Hi! YUP!" shouted the three teamsters, gathering up their reins.
+
+The horses put their heads down and plunged.  The whole apparatus
+moved with a rush, men clinging, animals digging their hoofs in,
+snow flying.  Suddenly there came a check, then a CRACK, and then
+the plow shot forward so suddenly and easily that the horses all
+but fell on their noses.  The flanging arms of the V, forced in a
+place too narrow, had caught between heavy stubs.  One of the arms
+had broken square off.
+
+There was nothing for it but to fell another hemlock and hew out
+another beam, which meant a day lost.  Radway occupied his men with
+shovels in clearing the edge of the road, and started one of his
+sprinklers over the place already cleared.  Water holes of suitable
+size had been blown in the creek bank by dynamite.  There the
+machines were filled.  It was a slow process.  Stratton attached
+his horse to the chain and drove him back and forth, hauling the
+barrel up and down the slideway.  At the bottom it was capsized
+and filled by means of a long pole shackled to its bottom and
+manipulated by old man Heath.  At the top it turned over by its
+own weight.  Thus seventy odd times.
+
+Then Fred Green hitched his team on and the four horses drew the
+creaking, cumbrous vehicle spouting down the road.  Water gushed in
+fans from the openings on either side and beneath; and in streams
+from two holes behind.  Not for an instant as long as the flow
+continued dared the teamsters breathe their horses, for a pause
+would freeze the runners tight to the ground.  A tongue at either
+end obviated the necessity of turning around.
+
+While the other men hewed at the required beam for the broken V
+plow, Heath, Stratton, and Green went over the cleared road-length
+once.  To do so required three sprinklerfuls.  When the road should
+be quite free, and both sprinklers running, they would have to keep
+at it until after midnight.
+
+And then silently the wilderness stretched forth her hand and pushed
+these struggling atoms back to their place.
+
+That night it turned warmer.  The change was heralded by a shift of
+wind.  Then some blue jays appeared from nowhere and began to scream
+at their more silent brothers, the whisky jacks.
+
+"She's goin' to rain," said old Jackson.  "The air is kind o' holler."
+
+"Hollow?" said Thorpe, laughing.  "How is that?"
+
+"I don' no," confessed Hines, "but she is.  She jest feels that way."
+
+In the morning the icicles dripped from the roof, and although the
+snow did not appreciably melt, it shrank into itself and became
+pock-marked on the surface.
+
+Radway was down looking at the road.
+
+"She's holdin' her own," said he, "but there ain't any use putting
+more water on her.  She ain't freezing a mite.  We'll plow her out."
+
+So they finished the job, and plowed her out, leaving exposed the
+wet, marshy surface of the creek-bottom, on which at night a thin
+crust formed.  Across the marsh the old tramped road held up the
+horses, and the plow swept clear a little wider swath.
+
+"She'll freeze a little to-night," said Radway hopefully.  "You
+sprinkler boys get at her and wet her down."
+
+Until two o'clock in the morning the four teams and the six men
+creaked back and forth spilling hardly-gathered water--weird,
+unearthly, in the flickering light of their torches.  Then they
+crept in and ate sleepily the food that a sleepy cookee set out
+for them.
+
+By morning the mere surface of this sprinkled water had frozen, the
+remainder beneath had drained away, and so Radway found in his road
+considerable patches of shell ice, useless, crumbling.  He looked
+in despair at the sky.  Dimly through the gray he caught the tint
+of blue.
+
+The sun came out.  Nut-hatches and wood-peckers ran gayly up the
+warming trunks of the trees.  Blue jays fluffed and perked and
+screamed in the hard-wood tops.  A covey of grouse ventured from the
+swamp and strutted vainly, a pause of contemplation between each
+step.  Radway, walking out on the tramped road of the marsh, cracked
+the artificial skin and thrust his foot through into icy water.
+That night the sprinklers stayed in.
+
+The devil seemed in it.  If the thaw would only cease before the ice
+bottom so laboriously constructed was destroyed!  Radway vibrated
+between the office and the road.  Men were lying idle; teams were
+doing the same.  Nothing went on but the days of the year; and four
+of them had already ticked off the calendar.  The deep snow of the
+unusually cold autumn had now disappeared from the tops of the
+stumps.  Down in the swamp the covey of partridges were beginning
+to hope that in a few days more they might discover a bare spot in
+the burnings.  It even stopped freezing during the night.  At times
+Dyer's little thermometer marked as high as forty degrees.
+
+"I often heard this was a sort 'v summer resort," observed Tom
+Broadhead, "but danged if I knew it was a summer resort all the
+year 'round."
+
+The weather got to be the only topic of conversation.  Each had his
+say, his prediction.  It became maddening.  Towards evening the chill
+of melting snow would deceive many into the belief that a cold snap
+was beginning.
+
+"She'll freeze before morning, sure," was the hopeful comment.
+
+And then in the morning the air would be more balmily insulting
+than ever.
+
+"Old man is as blue as a whetstone," commented Jackson Hines, "an'
+I don't blame him.  This weather'd make a man mad enough to eat the
+devil with his horns left on."
+
+By and by it got to be a case of looking on the bright side of the
+affair from pure reaction.
+
+"I don't know," said Radway, "it won't be so bad after all.  A
+couple of days of zero weather, with all this water lying around,
+would fix things up in pretty good shape.  If she only freezes
+tight, we'll have a good solid bottom to build on, and that'll be
+quite a good rig out there on the marsh."
+
+The inscrutable goddess of the wilderness smiled, and calmly,
+relentlessly, moved her next pawn.
+
+It was all so unutterably simple, and yet so effective.  Something
+there was in it of the calm inevitability of fate.  It snowed.
+
+All night and all day the great flakes zig-zagged softly down
+through the air.  Radway plowed away two feet of it.  The surface
+was promptly covered by a second storm.  Radway doggedly plowed it
+out again.
+
+This time the goddess seemed to relent.  The ground froze solid.
+The sprinklers became assiduous in their labor.  Two days later the
+road was ready for the first sleigh, its surface of thick, glassy
+ice, beautiful to behold; the ruts cut deep and true; the grades
+sanded, or sprinkled with retarding hay on the descents.  At the
+river the banking ground proved solid.  Radway breathed again, then
+sighed.  Spring was eight days nearer.  He was eight days more behind.
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+
+As soon as loading began, the cook served breakfast at three
+o'clock.  The men worked by the light of torches, which were often
+merely catsup jugs with wicking in the necks.  Nothing could be more
+picturesque than a teamster conducting one of his great pyramidical
+loads over the little inequalities of the road, in the ticklish
+places standing atop with the bent knee of the Roman charioteer,
+spying and forestalling the chances of the way with a fixed eye and
+an intense concentration that relaxed not one inch in the miles of
+the haul.  Thorpe had become a full-fledged cant-hook man.
+
+He liked the work.  There is about it a skill that fascinates.  A
+man grips suddenly with the hook of his strong instrument, stopping
+one end that the other may slide; he thrusts the short, strong stock
+between the log and the skid, allowing it to be overrun; he stops
+the roll with a sudden sure grasp applied at just the right moment
+to be effective.  Sometimes he allows himself to be carried up
+bodily, clinging to the cant-hook like an acrobat to a bar, until
+the log has rolled once; when, his weapon loosened, he drops
+lightly, easily to the ground.  And it is exciting to pile the logs
+on the sleigh, first a layer of five, say; then one of six smaller;
+of but three; of two; until, at the very apex, the last is dragged
+slowly up the skids, poised, and, just as it is about to plunge
+down the other side, is gripped and held inexorably by the little
+men in blue flannel shirts.
+
+Chains bind the loads.  And if ever, during the loading, or
+afterwards when the sleigh is in motion, the weight of the logs
+causes the pyramid to break down and squash out;--then woe to the
+driver, or whoever happens to be near!  A saw log does not make a
+great deal of fuss while falling, but it falls through anything that
+happens in its way, and a man who gets mixed up in a load of twenty-
+five or thirty of them obeying the laws of gravitation from a height
+of some fifteen to twenty feet, can be crushed into strange shapes
+and fragments.  For this reason the loaders are picked and careful
+men.
+
+At the banking grounds, which lie in and about the bed of the river,
+the logs are piled in a gigantic skidway to await the spring freshets,
+which will carry them down stream to the "boom."  In that enclosure
+they remain until sawed in the mill.
+
+Such is the drama of the saw log, a story of grit, resourcefulness,
+adaptability, fortitude and ingenuity hard to match.  Conditions
+never repeat themselves in the woods as they do in the factory.  The
+wilderness offers ever new complications to solve, difficulties to
+overcome.  A man must think of everything, figure on everything,
+from the grand sweep of the country at large to the pressure on a
+king-bolt.  And where another possesses the boundless resources of
+a great city, he has to rely on the material stored in one corner
+of a shed.  It is easy to build a palace with men and tools; it is
+difficult to build a log cabin with nothing but an ax.  His wits
+must help him where his experience fails; and his experience must
+push him mechanically along the track of habit when successive
+buffetings have beaten his wits out of his head.  In a day he must
+construct elaborate engines, roads, and implements which old
+civilization considers the works of leisure.  Without a thought
+of expense he must abandon as temporary, property which other
+industries cry out at being compelled to acquire as permanent.
+For this reason he becomes in time different from his fellows.
+The wilderness leaves something of her mystery in his eyes, that
+mystery of hidden, unknown but guessed, power.  Men look after him
+on the street, as they would look after any other pioneer, in vague
+admiration of a scope more virile than their own.
+
+Thorpe, in common with the other men, had thought Radway's vacation
+at Christmas time a mistake.  He could not but admire the feverish
+animation that now characterized the jobber.  Every mischance was as
+quickly repaired as aroused expedient could do the work.
+
+The marsh received first attention.  There the restless snow drifted
+uneasily before the wind.  Nearly every day the road had to be
+plowed, and the sprinklers followed the teams almost constantly.
+Often it was bitter cold, but no one dared to suggest to the
+determined jobber that it might be better to remain indoors.  The
+men knew as well as he that the heavy February snows would block
+traffic beyond hope of extrication.
+
+As it was, several times an especially heavy fall clogged the way.
+The snow-plow, even with extra teams, could hardly force its path
+through.  Men with shovels helped.  Often but a few loads a day, and
+they small, could be forced to the banks by the utmost exertions of
+the entire crew.  Esprit de corps awoke.  The men sprang to their
+tasks with alacrity, gave more than an hour's exertion to each of
+the twenty-four, took a pride in repulsing the assaults of the
+great enemy, whom they personified under the generic "She."  Mike
+McGovern raked up a saint somewhere whom he apostrophized in a
+personal and familiar manner.
+
+He hit his head against an overhanging branch.
+
+"You're a nice wan, now ain't ye?" he cried angrily at the
+unfortunate guardian of his soul.  "Dom if Oi don't quit ye!
+Ye see!"
+
+"Be the gate of Hivin!" he shouted, when he opened the door of
+mornings and discovered another six inches of snow, "Ye're a
+burrd!  If Oi couldn't make out to be more of a saint than that,
+Oi'd quit the biznis!  Move yor pull, an' get us some dacint
+weather!  Ye awt t' be road monkeyin' on th' golden streets, thot's
+what ye awt to be doin'!"
+
+Jackson Hines was righteously indignant, but with the shrewdness of
+the old man, put the blame partly where it belonged.
+
+"I ain't sayin'," he observed judicially, "that this weather ain't
+hell.  It's hell and repeat.  But a man sort've got to expec' weather.
+He looks for it, and he oughta be ready for it.  The trouble is we
+got behind Christmas.  It's that Dyer.  He's about as mean as they
+make 'em.  The only reason he didn't die long ago is becuz th'
+Devil's thought him too mean to pay any 'tention to.  If ever he
+should die an' go to Heaven he'd pry up th' golden streets an' use
+the infernal pit for a smelter."
+
+With this magnificent bit of invective, Jackson seized a lantern
+and stumped out to see that the teamsters fed their horses properly.
+
+"Didn't know you were a miner, Jackson," called Thorpe, laughing.
+
+"Young feller," replied Jackson at the door, "it's a lot easier
+to tell what I AIN'T been."
+
+So floundering, battling, making a little progress every day, the
+strife continued.
+
+One morning in February, Thorpe was helping load a big butt log.
+He was engaged in "sending up"; that is, he was one of the two
+men who stand at either side of the skids to help the ascending log
+keep straight and true to its bed on the pile.  His assistant's end
+caught on a sliver, ground for a second, and slipped back.  Thus the
+log ran slanting across the skids instead of perpendicular to them.
+To rectify the fault, Thorpe dug his cant-hook into the timber and
+threw his weight on the stock.  He hoped in this manner to check
+correspondingly the ascent of his end.  In other words, he took the
+place, on his side, of the preventing sliver, so equalizing the
+pressure and forcing the timber to its proper position.  Instead of
+rolling, the log slid.  The stock of the cant-hook was jerked from
+his hands.  He fell back, and the cant-hook, after clinging for a
+moment to the rough bark, snapped down and hit him a crushing blow
+on the top of the head.
+
+Had a less experienced man than Jim Gladys been stationed at the
+other end, Thorpe's life would have ended there.  A shout of
+surprise or horror would have stopped the horse pulling on the
+decking chain; the heavy stick would have slid back on the
+prostrate young man, who would have thereupon been ground to atoms
+as he lay.  With the utmost coolness Gladys swarmed the slanting
+face of the load; interposed the length of his cant-hook stock
+between the log and it; held it exactly long enough to straighten
+the timber, but not so long as to crush his own head and arm; and
+ducked, just as the great piece of wood rumbled over the end of the
+skids and dropped with a thud into the place Norton, the "top" man,
+had prepared for it.
+
+It was a fine deed, quickly thought, quickly dared.  No one saw it.
+Jim Gladys was a hero, but a hero without an audience.
+
+They took Thorpe up and carried him in, just as they had carried
+Hank Paul before.  Men who had not spoken a dozen words to him in
+as many days gathered his few belongings and stuffed them awkwardly
+into his satchel.  Jackson Hines prepared the bed of straw and warm
+blankets in the bottom of the sleigh that was to take him out.
+
+"He would have made a good boss," said the old fellow.  "He's a
+hard man to nick."
+
+Thorpe was carried in from the front, and the battle went on
+without him.
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+
+Thorpe never knew how carefully he was carried to camp, nor how
+tenderly the tote teamster drove his hay-couched burden to Beeson
+Lake.  He had no consciousness of the jolting train, in the baggage
+car of which Jimmy, the little brakeman, and Bud, and the baggage
+man spread blankets, and altogether put themselves to a great deal
+of trouble.  When finally he came to himself, he was in a long,
+bright, clean room, and the sunset was throwing splashes of light
+on the ceiling over his head.
+
+He watched them idly for a time; then turned on his pillow.  At once
+he perceived a long, double row of clean white-painted iron beds, on
+which lay or sat figures of men.  Other figures, of women, glided
+here and there noiselessly.  They wore long, spreading dove-gray
+clothes, with a starched white kerchief drawn over the shoulders
+and across the breast.  Their heads were quaintly white-garbed in
+stiff winglike coifs, fitting close about the oval of the face.
+Then Thorpe sighed comfortably, and closed his eyes and blessed the
+chance that he had bought a hospital ticket of the agent who had
+visited camp the month before.  For these were Sisters, and the
+young man lay in the Hospital of St. Mary.
+
+Time was when the lumber-jack who had the misfortune to fall sick
+or to meet with an accident was in a sorry plight indeed.  If he
+possessed a "stake," he would receive some sort of unskilled
+attention in one of the numerous and fearful lumberman's boarding-
+houses,--just so long as his money lasted, not one  instant more.
+Then he was bundled brutally into the street, no matter what his
+condition might be.  Penniless, without friends, sick, he drifted
+naturally to the county poorhouse.  There he was patched up quickly
+and sent out half-cured.  The authorities were not so much to blame.
+With the slender appropriations at their disposal, they found
+difficulty in taking care of those who came legitimately under their
+jurisdiction.  It was hardly to be expected that they would welcome
+with open arms a vast army of crippled and diseased men temporarily
+from the woods.  The poor lumber-jack was often left broken in mind
+and body from causes which a little intelligent care would have
+rendered unimportant.
+
+With the establishment of the first St. Mary's hospital, I think at
+Bay City, all this was changed.  Now, in it and a half dozen others
+conducted on the same principles, the woodsman receives the best of
+medicines, nursing, and medical attendance.  From one of the numerous
+agents who periodically visit the camps, he purchases for eight
+dollars a ticket which admits him at any time during the year to
+the hospital, where he is privileged to remain free of further
+charge until convalescent.  So valuable are these institutions, and
+so excellently are they maintained by the Sisters, that a hospital
+agent is always welcome, even in those camps from which ordinary
+peddlers and insurance men are rigidly excluded.  Like a great many
+other charities built on a common-sense self-supporting rational
+basis, the woods hospitals are under the Roman Catholic Church.
+
+In one of these hospitals Thorpe lay for six weeks suffering from
+a severe concussion of the brain.  At the end of the fourth, his
+fever had broken, but he was pronounced as yet too weak to be moved.
+
+His nurse was a red-cheeked, blue-eyed, homely little Irish girl,
+brimming with motherly good-humor.  When Thorpe found strength to
+talk, the two became friends.  Through her influence he was moved
+to a bed about ten feet from the window.  Thence his privileges were
+three roofs and a glimpse of the distant river.
+
+The roofs were covered with snow.  One day Thorpe saw it sink into
+itself and gradually run away.  The tinkle tinkle tank tank of drops
+sounded from his own eaves.  Down the far-off river, sluggish reaches
+of ice drifted.  Then in a night the blue disappeared from the stream.
+It became a menacing gray, and even from his distance Thorpe could
+catch the swirl of its rising waters.  A day or two later dark masses
+drifted or shot across the field of his vision, and twice he thought
+he distinguished men standing upright and bold on single logs as they
+rushed down the current.
+
+"What is the date?" he asked of the Sister.
+
+"The eleventh of March."
+
+"Isn't it early for the thaw?"
+
+"Listen to 'im!" exclaimed the Sister delightedly.  "Early is it!
+Sure th' freshet co't thim all.  Look, darlint, ye kin see th' drive
+from here."
+
+"I see," said Thorpe wearily, "when can I get out?"
+
+"Not for wan week," replied the Sister decidedly.
+
+At the end of the week Thorpe said good-by to his attendant, who
+appeared as sorry to see him go as though the same partings did not
+come to her a dozen times a year; he took two days of tramping the
+little town to regain the use of his legs, and boarded the morning
+train for Beeson Lake.  He did not pause in the village, but bent
+his steps to the river trail.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+
+Thorpe found the woods very different from when he had first
+traversed them.  They were full of patches of wet earth and of
+sunshine; of dark pine, looking suddenly worn, and of fresh green
+shoots of needles, looking deliciously springlike.  This was the
+contrast everywhere--stern, earnest, purposeful winter, and gay,
+laughing, careless spring.  It was impossible not to draw in fresh
+spirits with every step.
+
+He followed the trail by the river.  Butterballs and scoters paddled
+up at his approach.  Bits of rotten ice occasionally swirled down the
+diminishing stream.  The sunshine was clear and bright, but silvery
+rather than golden, as though a little of the winter's snow,--a
+last ethereal incarnation,--had lingered in its substance.  Around
+every bend Thorpe looked for some of Radway's crew "driving" the
+logs down the current.  He knew from chance encounters with several
+of the men in Bay City that Radway was still in camp; which meant,
+of course, that the last of the season's operations were not yet
+finished.  Five miles further Thorpe began to wonder whether this
+last conclusion might not be erroneous.  The Cass Branch had
+shrunken almost to its original limits.  Only here and there a
+little bayou or marsh attested recent freshets.  The drive must
+have been finished, even this early, for the stream in its present
+condition would hardly float saw logs, certainly not in quantity.
+
+Thorpe, puzzled, walked on.  At the banking ground he found empty
+skids.  Evidently the drive was over.  And yet even to Thorpe's
+ignorance, it seemed  incredible that the remaining million and a
+half of logs had been hauled, banked and driven during the short
+time he had lain in the Bay City hospital.  More to solve the
+problem than in any hope of work, he set out up the logging road.
+
+Another three miles brought him to camp.  It looked strangely wet
+and sodden and deserted.  In fact, Thorpe found a bare half dozen
+people in it,--Radway, the cook, and four men who were helping to
+pack up the movables, and who later would drive out the wagons
+containing them.  The jobber showed strong traces of the strain he
+had undergone, but greeted Thorpe almost jovially.  He seemed able
+to show more of his real nature now that the necessity of authority
+had been definitely removed.
+
+"Hullo, young man," he shouted at Thorpe's mud-splashed figure,
+"come back to view, the remains?  All well again, heigh?  That's
+good!"
+
+He strode down to grip the young fellow heartily by the hand.  It
+was impossible not to be charmed by the sincere cordiality of his
+manner.
+
+"I didn't know you were through," explained Thorpe, "I came to see
+if I could get a job."
+
+"Well now I AM sorry!" cried Radway, "you can turn in and help
+though, if you want to."
+
+Thorpe greeted the cook and old Jackson Hines, the only two whom he
+knew, and set to work to tie up bundles of blankets, and to collect
+axes, peavies, and tools of all descriptions.  This was evidently the
+last wagon-trip, for little remained to be done.
+
+"I ought by rights to take the lumber of the roofs and floors,"
+observed Radway thoughtfully, "but I guess she don't matter."
+
+Thorpe had never seen him in better spirits.  He ascribed the older
+man's hilarity to relief over the completion of a difficult task.
+That evening the seven dined together at one end of the long table.
+The big room exhaled already the atmosphere of desertion.
+
+"Not much like old times, is she?" laughed Radway.  "Can't you just
+shut your eyes and hear Baptiste say, 'Mak' heem de soup one tam
+more for me'? She's pretty empty now."
+
+Jackson Hines looked whimsically down the bare board.  "More room
+than God made for geese in Ireland," was his comment.
+
+After supper they even sat outside for a little time to smoke their
+pipes, chair-tilted against the logs of the cabins, but soon the
+chill of melting snow drove them indoors.  The four teamsters played
+seven-up in the cook camp by the light of a barn lantern, while
+Thorpe and the cook wrote letters.  Thorpe's was to his sister.
+
+"I have been in the hospital for about a month," he wrote.  "Nothing
+serious--a crack on the head, which is all right now.  But I cannot
+get home this summer, nor, I am afraid, can we arrange about the
+school this year.  I am about seventy dollars ahead of where I was
+last fall, so you see it is slow business.  This summer I am going
+into a mill, but the wages for green labor are not very high there
+either," and so on.
+
+When Miss Helen Thorpe, aged seventeen, received this document she
+stamped her foot almost angrily.  "You'd think he was a day-laborer!"
+she cried.  "Why doesn't he try for a clerkship or something in the
+city where he'd have a chance to use his brains!"
+
+The thought of her big, strong, tanned brother chained to a desk
+rose to her, and she smiled a little sadly.
+
+"I know," she went on to herself, "he'd rather be a common laborer
+in the woods than railroad manager in the office.  He loves his out-
+of-doors."
+
+"Helen!" called a voice from below, "if you're through up there, I
+wish you'd come down and help me carry this rug out."
+
+The girl's eyes cleared with a snap.
+
+"So do I!" she cried defiantly, "so do I love out-of-doors!  I like
+the woods and the fields and the trees just as much as he does, only
+differently; but I don't get out!"
+
+And thus she came to feeling rebelliously that her brother had been
+a little selfish in his choice of an occupation, that he sacrificed
+her inclinations to his own.  She did not guess,--how could she?--
+his dreams for her.  She did not see the future through his thoughts,
+but through his words.  A negative hopelessness settled down on her,
+which soon her strong spirit, worthy counterpart of her brother's,
+changed to more positive rebellion.  Thorpe had aroused antagonism
+where he craved only love.  The knowledge of that fact would have
+surprised and hurt him, for he was entirely without suspicion of
+it.  He lived subjectively to so great a degree that his thoughts
+and aims took on a certain tangible objectivity,--they became so
+real to him that he quite overlooked the necessity of communication
+to make them as real to others.  He assumed unquestioningly that
+the other must know.  So entirely had he thrown himself into his
+ambition of making a suitable position for Helen, so continually
+had he dwelt on it in his thoughts, so earnestly had he striven for
+it in every step of the great game he was beginning to play, that
+it never occurred to him he should also concede a definite outward
+manifestation of his feeling in order to assure its acceptance.
+Thorpe believed that he had sacrificed every thought and effort to
+his sister.  Helen was becoming convinced that he had considered
+only himself.
+
+After finishing the letter which gave occasion to this train of
+thought, Thorpe lit his pipe and strolled out into the darkness.
+Opposite the little office he stopped amazed.
+
+Through the narrow window he could see Radway seated in front of
+the stove.  Every attitude of the man denoted the most profound
+dejection.  He had sunk down into his chair until he rested on
+almost the small of his back, his legs were struck straight out in
+front of him, his chin rested on his breast, and his two arms hung
+listless at his side, a pipe half falling from the fingers of one
+hand.  All the facetious lines had turned to pathos.  In his face
+sorrowed the anxious, questing, wistful look of the St. Bernard
+that does not understand.
+
+"What's the matter with the boss, anyway?" asked Thorpe in a low
+voice of Jackson Hines, when the seven-up game was finished.
+
+"H'aint ye heard?" inquired the old man in surprise.
+
+"Why, no.  What?"
+
+"Busted," said the old man sententiously.
+
+"How?  What do you mean?"
+
+"What I say.  He's busted.  That freshet caught him too quick.  They's
+more'n a million and a half logs left in the woods that can't be got
+out this year, and as his contract calls for a finished job, he don't
+get nothin' for what he's done."
+
+"That's a queer rig," commented Thorpe.  "He's done a lot of valuable
+work here,--the timber's cut and skidded, anyway; and he's delivered
+a good deal of it to the main drive.  The M. & D. outfit get all the
+advantage of that."
+
+"They do, my son.  When old Daly's hand gets near anything, it
+cramps.  I don't know how the old man come to make such a contrac',
+but he did.  Result is, he's out his expenses and time."
+
+To understand exactly the catastrophe that had occurred, it is
+necessary to follow briefly an outline of the process after the
+logs have been piled on the banks.  There they remain until the
+break-up attendant on spring shall flood the stream to a freshet.
+The rollways are then broken, and the saw logs floated down the
+river to the mill where they are to be cut into lumber.
+
+If for any reason this transportation by water is delayed until
+the flood goes down, the logs are stranded or left in pools.
+Consequently every logger puts into the two or three weeks of
+freshet water a feverish activity which shall carry his product
+through before the ebb.
+
+The exceptionally early break-up of this spring, combined with the
+fact that, owing to the series of incidents and accidents already
+sketched, the actual cutting and skidding had fallen so far behind,
+caught Radway unawares.  He saw his rollways breaking out while his
+teams were still hauling in the woods.  In order to deliver to the
+mouth of the Cass Branch the three million already banked, he was
+forced to drop everything else and attend strictly to the drive.
+This left still, as has been stated, a million and a half on
+skidways, which Radway knew he would be unable to get out that year.
+
+In spite of the jobber's certainty that his claim was thus annulled,
+and that he might as well abandon the enterprise entirely for all he
+would ever get out of it, he finished the "drive" conscientiously
+and saved to the Company the logs already banked.  Then he had
+interviewed Daly.  The latter refused to pay him one cent.  Nothing
+remained but to break camp and grin as best he might over the loss
+of his winter's work and expenses.
+
+The next day Radway and Thorpe walked the ten miles of the river
+trail together, while the teamsters and the cook drove down the
+five teams.  Under the influence of the solitude and a certain
+sympathy which Thorpe manifested, Radway talked--a very little.
+
+"I got behind; that's all there is to it," he said.  "I s'pose I
+ought to have driven the men a little; but still, I don't know.  It
+gets pretty cold on the plains.  I guess I bit off more than I could
+chew."
+
+His eye followed listlessly a frenzied squirrel swinging from the
+tops of poplars.
+
+"I wouldn't 'a done it for myself," he went on.  "I don't like the
+confounded responsibility.  They's too much worry connected with it
+all.  I had a good snug little stake--mighty nigh six thousand.
+She's all gone now.  That'd have been enough for me--I ain't a
+drinkin' man.  But then there was the woman and the kid.  This ain't
+no country for woman-folks, and I wanted t' take little Lida out o'
+here.  I had lots of experience in the woods, and I've seen men make
+big money time and again, who didn't know as much about it as I do.
+But they got there, somehow.  Says I, I'll make a stake this year--
+I'd a had twelve thousand in th' bank, if things'd have gone right--
+and then we'll jest move down around Detroit an' I'll put Lida in
+school."
+
+Thorpe noticed a break in the man's voice, and glancing suddenly
+toward him was astounded to catch his eyes brimming with tears.
+Radway perceived the surprise.
+
+"You know when I left Christmas?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I was gone two weeks, and them two weeks done me.  We was going
+slow enough before, God knows, but even with the rank weather and
+all, I think we'd have won out, if we could have held the same gait."
+
+Radway paused.  Thorpe was silent.
+
+"The boys thought it was a mighty poor rig, my leaving that way."
+
+He paused again in evident expectation of a reply.  Again Thorpe was
+silent.
+
+"Didn't they?" Radway insisted.
+
+"Yes, they did," answered Thorpe.
+
+The older man sighed.  "I thought so," he went on.  "Well, I didn't
+go to spend Christmas.  I went because Jimmy brought me a telegram
+that Lida was sick with diphtheria.  I sat up nights with her for
+'leven days."
+
+"No bad after-effects, I hope?" inquired Thorpe.
+
+"She died," said Radway simply.
+
+The two men tramped stolidly on.  This was too great an affair for
+Thorpe to approach except on the knees of his spirit.  After a long
+interval, during which the waters had time to still, the young man
+changed the subject.
+
+"Aren't you going to get anything out of M. & D.?" he asked.
+
+"No.  Didn't earn nothing.  I left a lot of their saw logs hung up
+in the woods, where they'll deteriorate from rot and worms.  This is
+their last season in this district."
+
+"Got anything left?"
+
+"Not a cent."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"Do!" cried the old woodsman, the fire springing to his eye.  "Do!
+I'm going into the woods, by God!  I'm going to work with my hands,
+and be happy!  I'm going to do other men's work for them and take
+other men's pay.  Let them do the figuring and worrying.  I'll boss
+their gangs and make their roads and see to their logging for 'em,
+but it's got to be THEIRS.  No! I'm going to be a free man by the G.
+jumping Moses!"
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+
+Thorpe dedicated a musing instant to the incongruity of rejoicing
+over a freedom gained by ceasing to be master and becoming servant.
+
+"Radway," said he suddenly, "I need money and I need it bad.  I
+think you ought to get something out of this job of the M. & D.--not
+much, but something.  Will you give me a share of what I can collect
+from them?"
+
+"Sure!" agreed the jobber readily, with a laugh.  "Sure! But you won't
+get anything.  I'll give you ten per cent quick."
+
+"Good enough!" cried Thorpe.
+
+"But don't be too sure you'll earn day wages doing it," warned the
+other.  "I saw Daly when I was down here last week."
+
+"My time's not valuable," replied Thorpe.  "Now when we get to town
+I want your power of attorney and a few figures, after which I will
+not bother you again."
+
+The next day the young man called for the second time at the little
+red-painted office under the shadow of the mill, and for the second
+time stood before the bulky power of the junior member of the firm.
+
+"Well, young man, what can I do for you?" asked the latter.
+
+"I have been informed," said Thorpe without preliminary, "that
+you intend to pay John Radway nothing for the work done on the
+Cass Branch this winter.  Is that true?"
+
+Daly studied his antagonist meditatively.  "If it is true, what is
+it to you?" he asked at length.
+
+"I am acting in Mr. Radway's interest."
+
+"You are one of Radway's men?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In what capacity have you been working for him?"
+
+"Cant-hook man," replied Thorpe briefly.
+
+"I see," said Daly slowly.  Then suddenly, with an intensity of
+energy that startled Thorpe, he cried: "Now you get out of here!
+Right off!  Quick!"
+
+The younger man recognized the compelling and autocratic boss
+addressing a member of the crew.
+
+"I shall do nothing of the kind!" he replied with a flash of fire.
+
+The mill-owner leaped to his feet every inch a leader of men.  Thorpe
+did not wish to bring about an actual scene of violence.  He had
+attained his object, which was to fluster the other out of his
+judicial calm.
+
+"I have Radway's power of attorney," he added.
+
+Daly sat down, controlled himself with an effort, and growled out,
+"Why didn't you say so?"
+
+"Now I would like to know your position," went on Thorpe.  "I am
+not here to make trouble, but as an associate of Mr. Radway, I have
+a right to understand the case.  Of course I have his side of the
+story," he suggested, as though convinced that a detailing of the
+other side might change his views.
+
+Daly considered carefully, fixing his flint-blue eyes unswervingly
+on Thorpe's face.  Evidently his scrutiny advised him that the young
+man was a force to be reckoned with.
+
+"It's like this," said he abruptly, "we contracted last fall with
+this man Radway to put in five million feet of our timber, delivered
+to the main drive at the mouth of the Cass Branch.  In this he was
+to act independently except as to the matter of provisions.  Those
+he drew from our van, and was debited with the amount of the same.
+Is that clear?"
+
+"Perfectly," replied Thorpe.
+
+"In return we were to pay him, merchantable scale, four dollars a
+thousand.  If, however, he failed to put in the whole job, the
+contract was void."
+
+"That's how I understand it," commented Thorpe.  "Well?"
+
+"Well, he didn't get in the five million.  There's a million and a
+half hung up in the woods."
+
+"But you have in your hands three million and a half, which under
+the present arrangement you get free of any charge whatever."
+
+"And we ought to get it," cried Daly.  "Great guns!  Here we intend
+to saw this summer and quit.  We want to get in every stick of
+timber we own so as to be able to clear out of here for good and
+all at the close of the season; and now this condigned jobber ties
+us up for a million and a half."
+
+"It is exceedingly annoying," conceded Thorpe, "and it is a good
+deal of Radway's fault, I am willing to admit, but it's your fault
+too."
+
+"To be sure," replied Daly with the accent of sarcasm.
+
+"You had no business entering into any such contract.  It gave him
+no show."
+
+"I suppose that was mainly his lookout, wasn't it?  And as I already
+told you, we had to protect ourselves."
+
+"You should have demanded security for the completion of the work.
+Under your present agreement, if Radway got in the timber, you were
+to pay him a fair price.  If he didn't, you appropriated everything
+he had already done.  In other words, you made him a bet."
+
+"I don't care what you call it," answered Daly, who had recovered
+his good-humor in contemplation of the security of his position.
+"The fact stands all right."
+
+"It does," replied Thorpe unexpectedly, "and I'm glad of it.  Now
+let's examine a few figures.  You owned five million feet of timber,
+which at the price of stumpage" (standing trees) "was worth ten
+thousand dollars."
+
+"Well."
+
+"You come out at the end of the season with three million and a
+half of saw logs, which with the four dollars' worth of logging
+added, are worth twenty-one thousand dollars."
+
+"Hold on!" cried Daly, "we paid Radway four dollars; we could have
+done it ourselves for less."
+
+"You could not have done it for one cent less than four-twenty in
+that country," replied Thorpe, "as any expert will testify."
+
+"Why did we give it to Radway at four, then?"
+
+"You saved the expense of a salaried overseer, and yourselves some
+bother," replied Thorpe.  "Radway could do it for less, because, for
+some strange reason which you yourself do not understand, a jobber
+can always log for less than a company."
+
+"We could have done it for four," insisted Daly stubbornly, "but
+get on.  What are you driving at?  My time's valuable."
+
+"Well, put her at four, then," agreed Thorpe.  "That makes your
+saw logs worth over twenty thousand dollars.  Of this value Radway
+added thirteen thousand.  You have appropriated that much of his
+without paying him one cent."
+
+Daly seemed amused.  "How about the million and a half feet of ours
+HE appropriated?" he asked quietly.
+
+"I'm coming to that.  Now for your losses.  At the stumpage rate
+your million and a half which Radway 'appropriated' would be only
+three thousand.  But for the sake of argument, we'll take the actual
+sum you'd have received for saw logs.  Even then the million and a
+half would only have been worth between eight and nine thousand.
+Deducting this purely theoretical loss Radway has occasioned you,
+from the amount he has gained for you, you are still some four or
+five thousand ahead of the game.  For that you paid him nothing."
+
+"That's Radway's lookout."
+
+"In justice you should pay him that amount.  He is a poor man.  He
+has sunk all he owned in this venture, some twelve thousand dollars,
+and he has nothing to live on.  Even if you pay him five thousand,
+he has lost considerable, while you have gained."
+
+"How have we gained by this bit of philanthropy?"
+
+"Because you originally paid in cash for all that timber on the
+stump just ten thousand dollars and you get from Radway saw logs to
+the value of twenty," replied Thorpe sharply.  "Besides you still
+own the million and a half which, if you do not care to put them in
+yourself, you can sell for something on the skids."
+
+"Don't you know, young man, that white pine logs on skids will spoil
+utterly in a summer?  Worms get into em."
+
+"I do," replied Thorpe, "unless you bark them; which process will
+cost you about one dollar a thousand.  You can find any amount of
+small purchasers at reduced price.  You can sell them easily at
+three dollars.  That nets you for your million and a half a little
+over four thousand dollars more.  Under the circumstances, I do not
+think that my request for five thousand is at all exorbitant."
+
+Daly laughed.  "You are a shrewd figurer, and your remarks are
+interesting," said he.
+
+"Will you give five thousand dollars?" asked Thorpe.
+
+"I will not," replied Daly, then with a sudden change of humor, "and
+now I'll do a little talking.  I've listened to you just as long as
+I'm going to.  I have Radway's contract in that safe and I live up
+to it.  I'll thank you to go plumb to hell!"
+
+"That's your last word, is it?" asked Thorpe, rising.
+
+"It is."
+
+"Then," said he slowly and distinctly, "I'll tell you what I'll
+do.  I intend to collect in full the four dollars a thousand for the
+three million and a half Mr. Radway has delivered to you.  In return
+Mr. Radway will purchase of you at the stumpage rates of two dollars
+a thousand the million and a half he failed to put in.  That makes
+a bill against you, if my figuring is correct, of just eleven thousand
+dollars.  You will pay that bill, and I will tell you why: your
+contract will be classed in any court as a gambling contract for lack
+of consideration.  You have no legal standing in the world.  I call
+your bluff, Mr. Daly, and I'll fight you from the drop of the hat
+through every court in Christendom."
+
+"Fight ahead," advised Daly sweetly, who knew perfectly well that
+Thorpe's law was faulty.  As a matter of fact the young man could
+have collected on other grounds, but neither was aware of that.
+
+"Furthermore," pursued Thorpe in addition, "I'll repeat my offer
+before witnesses; and if I win the first suit, I'll sue you for the
+money we could have made by purchasing the extra million and a half
+before it had a chance to spoil."
+
+This statement had its effect, for it forced an immediate settlement
+before the pine on the skids should deteriorate.  Daly lounged back
+with a little more deadly carelessness.
+
+"And, lastly," concluded Thorpe, playing his trump card, "the suit
+from start to finish will be published in every important paper in
+this country.  If you do not believe I have the influence to do this,
+you are at liberty to doubt the fact."
+
+Daly was cogitating many things.  He knew that publicity was the
+last thing to be desired.  Thorpe's statement had been made in
+view of the fact that much of the business of a lumber firm is done
+on credit.  He thought that perhaps a rumor of a big suit going
+against the firm might weaken confidence.  As a matter of fact,
+this consideration had no weight whatever with the older man,
+although the threat of publicity actually gained for Thorpe what he
+demanded.  The lumberman feared the noise of an investigation solely
+and simply because his firm, like so many others, was engaged at the
+time in stealing government timber in the upper peninsula.  He did
+not call it stealing; but that was what it amounted to.  Thorpe's
+shot in the air hit full.
+
+"I think we can arrange a basis of settlement," he said finally.
+"Be here to-morrow morning at ten with Radway."
+
+"Very well," said Thorpe.
+
+"By the way," remarked Daly, "I don't believe I know your name?"
+
+"Thorpe," was the reply.
+
+"Well, Mr. Thorpe," said the lumberman with cold anger, "if at
+any time there is anything within my power or influence that you
+want--I'll see that you don't get it."
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+
+The whole affair was finally compromised for nine thousand dollars.
+Radway, grateful beyond expression, insisted on Thorpe's acceptance
+of an even thousand of it.  With this money in hand, the latter felt
+justified in taking a vacation for the purpose of visiting his
+sister, so in two days after the signing of the check he walked
+up the straight garden path that led to Renwick's home.
+
+It was a little painted frame house, back from the street, fronted
+by a precise bit of lawn, with a willow bush at one corner.  A white
+picket fence effectually separated it from a broad, shaded, not
+unpleasing street.  An osage hedge and a board fence respectively
+bounded the side and back.
+
+Under the low porch Thorpe rang the bell at a door flanked by two
+long, narrow strips of imitation stained glass.  He entered then a
+little dark hall from which the stairs rose almost directly at the
+door, containing with difficulty a hat-rack and a table on which
+rested a card tray with cards.  In the course of greeting an elderly
+woman, he stepped into the parlor.  This was a small square apartment
+carpeted in dark Brussels, and stuffily glorified in the bourgeois
+manner by a white marble mantel-piece, several pieces of mahogany
+furniture upholstered in haircloth, a table on which reposed a
+number of gift books in celluloid and other fancy bindings, an
+old-fashioned piano with a doily and a bit of china statuary, a
+cabinet or so containing such things as ore specimens, dried
+seaweed and coins, and a spindle-legged table or two upholding
+glass cases garnished with stuffed birds and wax flowers.  The
+ceiling was so low that the heavy window hangings depended almost
+from the angle of it and the walls.
+
+Thorpe, by some strange freak of psychology, suddenly recalled a
+wild, windy day in the forest.  He had stood on the top of a height.
+He saw again the sharp puffs of snow, exactly like the smoke from
+bursting shells, where a fierce swoop of the storm struck the laden
+tops of pines; the dense swirl, again exactly like smoke but now of
+a great fire, that marked the lakes.  The picture super-imposed
+itself silently over this stuffy bourgeois respectability, like the
+shadow of a dream.  He heard plainly enough the commonplace drawl
+of the woman before him offering him the platitudes of her kind.
+
+"You are lookin' real well, Mr. Thorpe," she was saying, "an' I
+just know Helen will be glad to see you.  She had a hull afternoon
+out to-day and won't be back to tea.  Dew set and tell me about what
+you've been a-doin' and how you're a-gettin' along."
+
+"No, thank you, Mrs. Renwick," he replied, "I'll come back later.
+How is Helen?"
+
+"She's purty well; and sech a nice girL I think she's getting right
+handsome."
+
+"Can you tell me where she went?"
+
+But Mrs. Renwick did not know.  So Thorpe wandered about the maple-
+shaded streets of the little town.
+
+For the purposes he had in view five hundred dollars would be none
+too much.  The remaining five hundred he had resolved to invest in
+his sister's comfort and happiness.  He had thought the matter over
+and come to his decision in that secretive, careful fashion so
+typical of him, working over every logical step of his induction so
+thoroughly that it ended by becoming part of his mental fiber.  So
+when he reached the conclusion it had already become to him an axiom.
+In presenting it as such to his sister, he never realized that she
+had not followed with him the logical steps, and so could hardly be
+expected to accept the conclusion out-of-hand.
+
+Thorpe wished to give his sister the best education possible in
+the circumstances.  She was now nearly eighteen years old.  He
+knew likewise that he would probably experience a great deal of
+difficulty in finding another family which would afford the young
+girl quite the same equality coupled with so few disadvantages.
+Admitted that its level of intellect and taste was not high, Mrs.
+Renwick was on the whole a good influence.  Helen had not in the
+least the position of servant, but of a daughter.  She helped around
+the house; and in return she was fed, lodged and clothed for nothing.
+
+So though the money might have enabled Helen to live independently
+in a modest way for a year or so, Thorpe preferred that she remain
+where she was.  His game was too much a game of chance.  He might
+find himself at the end of the year without further means.  Above all
+things he wished to assure Helen's material safety until such time
+as he should be quite certain of himself.
+
+In pursuance of this idea he had gradually evolved what seemed to him
+an excellent plan.  He had already perfected it by correspondence
+with Mrs. Renwick.  It was, briefly, this: he, Thorpe, would at
+once hire a servant girl, who would make anything but supervision
+unnecessary in so small a household.  The remainder of the money he
+had already paid for a year's tuition in the Seminary of the town.
+Thus Helen gained her leisure and an opportunity for study; and
+still retained her home in case of reverse.
+
+Thorpe found his sister already a young lady.  After the first
+delight of meeting had passed, they sat side by side on the
+haircloth sofa and took stock of each other.
+
+Helen had developed from the school child to the woman.  She was
+a handsome girl, possessed of a slender, well-rounded form, deep
+hazel eyes with the level gaze of her brother, a clean-cut patrician
+face, and a thorough-bred neatness of carriage that advertised her
+good blood.  Altogether a figure rather aloof, a face rather
+impassive; but with the possibility of passion and emotion, and
+a will to back them.
+
+"Oh, but you're tanned and--and BIG!" she cried, kissing her brother.
+"You've had such a strange winter, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes," he replied absently.
+
+Another man would have struck her young imagination with the wild,
+free thrill of the wilderness.  Thus he would have gained her
+sympathy and understanding.  Thorpe was too much in earnest.
+
+"Things came a little better than I thought they were going to,
+toward the last," said he, "and I made a little money."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad!" she cried.  "Was it much?"
+
+"No, not much," he answered.  The actual figures would have been so
+much better!  "I've made arrangements with Mrs. Renwick to hire a
+servant girl, so you will have all your time free; and I have paid
+a year's tuition for you in the Seminary."
+
+"Oh!" said the girl, and fell silent.
+
+After a time, "Thank you very much, Harry dear."  Then after another
+interval, "I think I'll go get ready for supper."
+
+Instead of getting ready for supper, she paced excitedly up and down
+her room.
+
+"Oh, why DIDN'T he say what he was about?" she cried to herself.
+"Why didn't he!  Why didn't he!"
+
+
+Next morning she opened the subject again.
+
+"Harry, dear," said she, "I have a little scheme, and I want to see
+if it is not feasible.  How much will the girl and the Seminary cost?"
+
+"About four hundred dollars."
+
+"Well now, see, dear.  With four hundred dollars I can live for a
+year very nicely by boarding with some girls I know who live in a
+sort of a club; and I could learn much more by going to the High
+School and continuing with some other classes I am interested in
+now.  Why see, Harry!" she cried, all interest.  "We have Professor
+Carghill come twice a week to teach us English, and Professor
+Johns, who teaches us history, and we hope to get one or two more
+this winter.  If I go to the Seminary, I'll have to miss all that.
+And Harry, really I don't want to go to the Seminary.  I don't think
+I should like it.  I KNOW I shouldn't."
+
+"But why not live here, Helen?" he asked.
+
+"Because I'm TIRED of it!" she cried; "sick to the soul of the
+stuffiness, and the glass cases, and the--the GOODNESS of it!"
+
+Thorpe remembered his vision of the wild, wind-tossed pines, and
+sighed.  He wanted very, very much to act in accordance with his
+sister's desires, although he winced under the sharp hurt pang of
+the sensitive man whose intended kindness is not appreciated.  The
+impossibility of complying, however, reacted to shut his real ideas
+and emotions the more inscrutably within him.
+
+"I'm afraid you would not find the girls' boarding-club scheme a
+good one, Helen," said he.  "You'd find it would work better in
+theory than in practice."
+
+"But it has worked with the other girls!" she cried.
+
+"I think you would be better off here."
+
+Helen bravely choked back her disappointment.
+
+"I might live here, but let the Seminary drop, anyway.  That would
+save a good deal," she begged.  "I'd get quite as much good out of
+my work outside, and then we'd have all that money besides."
+
+"I don't know; I'll see," replied Thorpe.  "The mental discipline
+of class-room work might be a good thing."
+
+He had already thought of this modification himself, but with his
+characteristic caution, threw cold water on the scheme until he
+could ascertain definitely whether or not it was practicable.  He
+had already paid the tuition for the year, and was in doubt as to
+its repayment.  As a matter of fact, the negotiation took about two
+weeks.
+
+During that time Helen Thorpe went through her disappointment and
+emerged on the other side.  Her nature was at once strong and
+adaptable.  One by one she grappled with the different aspects of
+the case, and turned them the other way.  By a tour de force she
+actually persuaded herself that her own plan was not really
+attractive to her.  But what heart-breaks and tears this cost her,
+only those who in their youth have encountered such absolute
+negations of cherished ideas can guess.
+
+Then Thorpe told her.
+
+"I've fixed it, Helen," said he.  "You can attend the High School
+and the classes, if you please.  I have put the two hundred and
+fifty dollars out at interest for you."
+
+"Oh, Harry!" she cried reproachfully.  "Why didn't you tell me
+before!"
+
+He did not understand; but the pleasure of it had all faded.  She no
+longer felt enthusiasm, nor gratitude, nor anything except a dull
+feeling that she had been unnecessarily discouraged.  And on his
+side, Thorpe was vaguely wounded.
+
+The days, however, passed in the main pleasurably for them both.
+They were fond of one another.  The barrier slowly rising between
+them was not yet cemented by lack of affection on either side, but
+rather by lack of belief in the other's affection.  Helen imagined
+Thorpe's interest in her becoming daily more perfunctory.  Thorpe
+fancied his sister cold, unreasoning, and ungrateful.  As yet this
+was but the vague dust of a cloud.  They could not forget that, but
+for each other, they were alone in the world.  Thorpe delayed his
+departure from day to day, making all the preparations he possibly
+could at home.
+
+Finally Helen came on him busily unpacking a box which a dray had
+left at the door.  He unwound and laid one side a Winchester rifle,
+a variety of fishing tackle, and some other miscellanies of the
+woodsman.  Helen was struck by the beauty of the sporting implements.
+
+"Oh, Harry!" she cried, "aren't they fine!  What are you going to
+do with them?"
+
+"Going camping," replied Thorpe, his head in the excelsior.
+
+"When?"
+
+"This summer."
+
+Helen's eyes lit up with a fire of delight.  "How nice!  May I go
+with you?" she cried.
+
+Thorpe shook his head.
+
+"I'm afraid not, little girl.  It's going to be a hard trip a long
+ways from anywhere.  You couldn't stand it."
+
+"I'm sure I could.  Try me."
+
+"No," replied Thorpe.  "I know you couldn't.  We'll be sleeping
+on the ground and going on foot through much extremely difficult
+country."
+
+"I wish you'd take me somewhere," pursued Helen.  "I can't get
+away this summer unless you do.  Why don't you camp somewhere nearer
+home, so I can go?"
+
+Thorpe arose and kissed her tenderly.  He was extremely sorry that
+he could not spend the summer with his sister, but he believed
+likewise that their future depended to a great extent on this very
+trip.  But he did not say so.
+
+"I can't, little girl; that's all.  We've got our way to make."
+
+She understood that he considered the trip too expensive for them
+both.  At this moment a paper fluttered from the excelsior.  She
+picked it up.  A glance showed her a total of figures that made her
+gasp.
+
+"Here is your bill," she said with a strange choke in her voice,
+and left the room.
+
+"He can spend sixty dollars on his old guns; but he can't afford
+to let me leave this hateful house," she complained to the apple
+tree.  "He can go 'way off camping somewhere to have a good time,
+but he leaves me sweltering in this miserable little town all
+summer.  I don't care if he IS supporting me.  He ought to.  He's
+my brother.  Oh, I wish I were a man; I wish I were dead!"
+
+Three days later Thorpe left for the north.  He was reluctant to go.
+When the time came, he attempted to kiss Helen good-by.  She caught
+sight of the rifle in its new leather and canvas case, and on a
+sudden impulse which she could not explain to herself, she turned
+away her face and ran into the house.  Thorpe, vaguely hurt, a
+little resentful, as the genuinely misunderstood are apt to be,
+hesitated a moment, then trudged down the street.  Helen too paused
+at the door, choking back her grief.
+
+"Harry! Harry!" she cried wildly; but it was too late.
+
+Both felt themselves to be in the right.  Each realized this fact
+in the other.  Each recognized the impossibility of imposing his
+own point of view over the other's.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+THE LANDLOOKER
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+
+In every direction the woods.  Not an opening of any kind offered
+the mind a breathing place under the free sky.  Sometimes the pine
+groves,--vast, solemn, grand, with the patrician aloofness of the
+truly great; sometimes the hardwood,--bright, mysterious, full of
+life; sometimes the swamps,--dark, dank, speaking with the voices
+of the shyer creatures; sometimes the spruce and balsam thickets,--
+aromatic, enticing.  But never the clear, open sky.
+
+And always the woods creatures, in startling abundance and tameness.
+The solitary man with the packstraps across his forehead and
+shoulders had never seen so many of them.  They withdrew silently
+before him as he advanced.  They accompanied him on either side,
+watching him with intelligent, bright eyes.  They followed him
+stealthily for a little distance, as though escorting him out of
+their own particular territory.  Dozens of times a day the traveller
+glimpsed the flaunting white flags of deer.  Often the creatures
+would take but a few hasty jumps, and then would wheel, the
+beautiful embodiments of the picture deer, to snort and paw the
+leaves.  Hundreds of birds, of which he did not know the name,
+stooped to his inspection, whirred away at his approach, or went
+about their business with hardy indifference under his very eyes.
+Blase porcupines trundled superbly from his path.  Once a mother-
+partridge simulated a broken wing, fluttering painfully.  Early one
+morning the traveller ran plump on a fat lolling bear, taking his
+ease from the new sun, and his meal from a panic stricken army of
+ants.  As beseemed two innocent wayfarers they honored each other
+with a salute of surprise, and went their way.  And all about and
+through, weaving, watching, moving like spirits, were the forest
+multitudes which the young man never saw, but which he divined, and
+of whose movements he sometimes caught for a single instant the
+faintest patter or rustle.  It constituted the mystery of the forest,
+that great fascinating, lovable mystery which, once it steals into
+the heart of a man, has always a hearing and a longing when it makes
+its voice heard.
+
+The young man's equipment was simple in the extreme.  Attached to a
+heavy leather belt of cartridges hung a two-pound ax and a sheath
+knife.  In his pocket reposed a compass, an air-tight tin of
+matches, and a map drawn on oiled paper of a district divided into
+sections.  Some few of the sections were colored, which indicated
+that they belonged to private parties.  All the rest was State or
+Government land.  He carried in his hand a repeating rifle.  The
+pack, if opened, would have been found to contain a woolen and a
+rubber blanket, fishing tackle, twenty pounds or so of flour, a
+package of tea, sugar, a slab of bacon carefully wrapped in oiled
+cloth, salt, a suit of underwear, and several extra pairs of thick
+stockings.  To the outside of the pack had been strapped a frying
+pan, a tin pail, and a cup.
+
+For more than a week Thorpe had journeyed through the forest without
+meeting a human being, or seeing any indications of man, excepting
+always the old blaze of the government survey.  Many years before,
+officials had run careless lines through the country along the
+section-boundaries.  At this time the blazes were so weather-beaten
+that Thorpe often found difficulty in deciphering the indications
+marked on them.  These latter stated always the section, the township,
+and the range east or west by number.  All Thorpe had to do was to
+find the same figures on his map.  He knew just where he was.  By
+means of his compass he could lay his course to any point that suited
+his convenience.
+
+The map he had procured at the United States Land Office in Detroit.
+He had set out with the scanty equipment just described for the
+purpose of "looking" a suitable bunch of pine in the northern
+peninsula, which, at that time, was practically untouched.  Access
+to its interior could be obtained only on foot or by river.  The
+South Shore Railroad was already engaged in pushing a way through
+the virgin forest, but it had as yet penetrated only as far as Seney;
+and after all, had been projected more with the idea of establishing
+a direct route to Duluth and the copper districts than to aid the
+lumber industry.  Marquette, Menominee, and a few smaller places
+along the coast were lumbering near at home; but they shipped entirely
+by water.  Although the rest of the peninsula also was finely wooded,
+a general impression obtained among the craft that it would prove
+too inaccessible for successful operation.
+
+Furthermore, at that period, a great deal of talk was believed as
+to the inexhaustibility of Michigan pine.  Men in a position to know
+what they were talking about stated dogmatically that the forests of
+the southern peninsula would be adequate for a great many years to
+come.  Furthermore, the magnificent timber of the Saginaw, Muskegon,
+and Grand River valleys in the southern peninsula occupied entire
+attention.  No one cared to bother about property at so great a
+distance from home.  As a consequence, few as yet knew even the
+extent of the resources so far north.
+
+Thorpe, however, with the far-sightedness of the born pioneer, had
+perceived that the exploitation of the upper country was an affair
+of a few years only.
+
+The forests of southern Michigan were vast, but not limitless, and
+they had all passed into private ownership.  The north, on the other
+hand, would not prove as inaccessible as it now seemed, for the
+carrying trade would some day realize that the entire waterway of
+the Great Lakes offered an unrivalled outlet.  With that elementary
+discovery would begin a rush to the new country.  Tiring of a
+profitless employment further south he resolved to anticipate it,
+and by acquiring his holdings before general attention should be
+turned that way, to obtain of the best.
+
+He was without money, and practically without friends; while
+Government and State lands cost respectively two dollars and a half
+and a dollar and a quarter an acre, cash down.  But he relied on the
+good sense of capitalists to perceive, from the statistics which
+his explorations would furnish, the wonderful advantage of logging
+a new country with the chain of Great Lakes as shipping outlet at
+its very door.  In return for his information, he would expect a
+half interest in the enterprise.  This is the usual method of
+procedure adopted by landlookers everywhere.
+
+We have said that the country was quite new to logging, but the
+statement is not strictly accurate.  Thorpe was by no means the
+first to see the money in northern pine.  Outside the big mill
+districts already named, cuttings of considerable size were already
+under way, the logs from which were usually sold to the mills of
+Marquette or Menominee.  Here and there along the best streams,
+men had already begun operations.
+
+But they worked on a small scale and with an eye to the immediate
+present only; bending their efforts to as large a cut as possible
+each season rather than to the acquisition of holdings for future
+operations.  This they accomplished naively by purchasing one forty
+and cutting a dozen.  Thorpe's map showed often near the forks of
+an important stream a section whose coloring indicated private
+possession.  Legally the owners had the right only to the pine
+included in the marked sections; but if anyone had taken the trouble
+to visit the district, he would have found operations going on for
+miles up and down stream.  The colored squares would prove to be
+nothing but so many excuses for being on the ground.  The bulk of
+the pine of any season's cut he would discover had been stolen from
+unbought State or Government land.
+
+This in the old days was a common enough trick.  One man, at present
+a wealthy and respected citizen, cut for six years, and owned just
+one forty-acres!  Another logged nearly fifty million feet from an
+eighty!  In the State to-day live prominent business men, looked
+upon as models in every way, good fellows, good citizens, with sons
+and daughters proud of their social position, who, nevertheless,
+made the bulk of their fortunes by stealing Government pine.
+
+"What you want to-day, old man?" inquired a wholesale lumber dealer
+of an individual whose name now stands for domestic and civic virtue.
+
+"I'll have five or six million saw logs to sell you in the spring,
+and I want to know what you'll give for them."
+
+"Go on!" expostulated the dealer with a laugh, "ain't you got that
+forty all cut yet?"
+
+"She holds out pretty well," replied the other with a grin.
+
+An official, called the Inspector, is supposed to report such
+stealings, after which another official is to prosecute.  Aside
+from the fact that the danger of discovery is practically zero in
+so wild and distant a country, it is fairly well established that
+the old-time logger found these two individuals susceptible to the
+gentle art of "sugaring."  The officials, as well as the lumberman,
+became rich.  If worst came to worst, and investigation seemed
+imminent, the operator could still purchase the land at legal rates,
+and so escape trouble.  But the intention to appropriate was there,
+and, to confess the truth, the whitewashing by purchase needed but
+rarely to be employed.  I have time and again heard landlookers
+assert that the old Land Offices were rarely "on the square," but
+as to that I cannot, of course, venture an opinion.
+
+Thorpe was perfectly conversant with this state of affairs.  He
+knew, also, that in all probability many of the colored districts
+on his map represented firms engaged in steals of greater or less
+magnitude.  He was further aware that most of the concerns stole
+the timber because it was cheaper to steal than to buy; but that
+they would buy readily enough if forced to do so in order to
+prevent its acquisition by another.  This other might be himself.
+In his exploration, therefore, he decided to employ the utmost
+circumspection.  As much as possible he purposed to avoid other
+men; but if meetings became inevitable, he hoped to mask his real
+intentions.  He would pose as a hunter and fisherman.
+
+During the course of his week in the woods, he discovered that
+he would be forced eventually to resort to this expedient.  He
+encountered quantities of fine timber in the country through which
+he travelled, and some day it would be logged, but at present the
+difficulties were too great.  The streams were shallow, or they did
+not empty into a good shipping port.  Investors would naturally
+look first for holdings along the more practicable routes.
+
+A cursory glance sufficed to show that on such waters the little red
+squares had already blocked a foothold for other owners.  Thorpe
+surmised that he would undoubtedly discover fine unbought timber
+along their banks, but that the men already engaged in stealing it
+would hardly be likely to allow him peaceful acquisition.
+
+For a week, then, he journeyed through magnificent timber without
+finding what he sought, working always more and more to the north,
+until finally he stood on the shores of Superior.  Up to now the
+streams had not suited him.  He resolved to follow the shore west
+to the mouth of a fairly large river called the Ossawinamakee.*
+It showed, in common with most streams of its size, land already
+taken, but Thorpe hoped to find good timber nearer the mouth.  After
+several days' hard walking with this object in view, he found himself
+directly north of a bend in the river; so, without troubling to hunt
+for its outlet into Superior, he turned through the woods due south,
+with the intention of striking in on the stream.  This he succeeded
+in accomplishing some twenty miles inland, where also he discovered
+a well-defined and recently used trail leading up the river.  Thorpe
+camped one night at the bend, and then set out to follow the trail.
+
+*Accent the last syllable.
+
+
+It led him for upwards of ten miles nearly due south, sometimes
+approaching, sometimes leaving the river, but keeping always in its
+direction.  The country in general was rolling.  Low parallel ridges
+of gentle declivity glided constantly across his way, their valleys
+sloping to the river.  Thorpe had never seen a grander forest of
+pine than that which clothed them.
+
+For almost three miles, after the young man had passed through a
+preliminary jungle of birch, cedar, spruce, and hemlock, it ran
+without a break, clear, clean, of cloud-sweeping altitude, without
+underbrush.  Most of it was good bull-sap, which is known by the
+fineness of the bark, though often in the hollows it shaded gradually
+into the rough-skinned cork pine.  In those days few people paid
+any attention to the Norway, and hemlock was not even thought of.
+With every foot of the way Thorpe became more and more impressed.
+
+At first the grandeur, the remoteness, the solemnity of the virgin
+forest fell on his spirit with a kind of awe.  The tall, straight
+trunks lifted directly upwards to the vaulted screen through which
+the sky seemed as remote as the ceiling of a Roman church.  Ravens
+wheeled and croaked in the blue, but infinitely far away.  Some
+lesser noises wove into the stillness without breaking the web of
+its splendor, for the pine silence laid soft, hushing fingers on
+the lips of those who might waken the sleeping sunlight.
+
+Then the spirit of the pioneer stirred within his soul.  The
+wilderness sent forth its old-time challenge to the hardy.  In
+him awoke that instinct which, without itself perceiving the end on
+which it is bent, clears the way for the civilization that has been
+ripening in old-world hot-houses during a thousand years.  Men must
+eat; and so the soil must be made productive.  We regret, each after
+his manner, the passing of the Indian, the buffalo, the great pine
+forests, for they are of the picturesque; but we live gladly on the
+product of the farms that have taken their places.  Southern Michigan
+was once a pine forest: now the twisted stump-fences about the most
+fertile farms of the north alone break the expanse of prairie and
+of trim "wood-lots."
+
+Thorpe knew little of this, and cared less.  These feathered trees,
+standing close-ranked and yet each isolate in the dignity and
+gravity of a sphinx of stone set to dancing his blood of the
+frontiersman.  He spread out his map to make sure that so valuable
+a clump of timber remained still unclaimed.  A few sections lying
+near the headwaters were all he found marked as sold.  He resumed
+his tramp light-heartedly.
+
+At the ten-mile point he came upon a dam.  It was a crude dam,--built
+of logs,--whose face consisted of strong buttresses slanted up-
+stream, and whose sheer was made of unbarked timbers laid smoothly
+side by side at the required angle.  At present its gate was open.
+Thorpe could see that it was an unusually large gate, with a powerful
+apparatus for the raising and the lowering of it.
+
+The purpose of the dam in this new country did not puzzle him in
+the least, but its presence bewildered him.  Such constructions are
+often thrown across logging streams at proper intervals in order
+that the operator may be independent of the spring freshets.  When
+he wishes to "drive" his logs to the mouth of the stream, he
+first accumulates a head of water behind his dams, and then, by
+lifting the gates, creates an artificial freshet sufficient to
+float his timber to the pool formed by the next dam below.  The
+device is common enough; but it is expensive.  People do not build
+dams except in the certainty of some years of logging, and quite
+extensive logging at that.  If the stream happens to be navigable,
+the promoter must first get an Improvement Charter from a board of
+control appointed by the State.  So Thorpe knew that he had to deal,
+not with a hand-to-mouth-timber-thief, but with a great company
+preparing to log the country on a big scale.
+
+He continued his journey.  At noon he came to another and similar
+structure.  The pine forest had yielded to knolls of hardwood
+separated by swamp-holes of blackthorn.  Here he left his pack and
+pushed ahead in light marching order.  About eight miles above the
+first dam, and eighteen from the bend of the river, he ran into a
+"slashing" of the year before.  The decapitated stumps were already
+beginning to turn brown with weather, the tangle of tops and limbs
+was partially concealed by poplar growths and wild raspberry vines.
+Parenthetically, it may be remarked that the promptitude with which
+these growths succeed the cutting of the pine is an inexplicable
+marvel.  Clear forty acres at random in the very center of a pine
+forest, without a tract of poplar within an hundred miles; the next
+season will bring up the fresh shoots.  Some claim that blue jays
+bring the seeds in their crops.  Others incline to the theory that
+the creative elements lie dormant in the soil, needing only the sun
+to start them to life.  Final speculation is impossible, but the
+fact stands.
+
+To Thorpe this particular clearing became at once of the greatest
+interest.  He scrambled over and through the ugly debris which for a
+year or two after logging operations cumbers the ground.  By a rather
+prolonged search he found what he sought,--the "section corners" of
+the tract, on which the government surveyor had long ago marked the
+"descriptions."  A glance at the map confirmed his suspicions.  The
+slashing lay some two miles north of the sections designated as
+belonging to private parties.  It was Government land.
+
+Thorpe sat down, lit a pipe, and did a little thinking.
+
+As an axiom it may be premised that the shorter the distance logs
+have to be transported, the less it costs to get them in.  Now
+Thorpe had that very morning passed through beautiful timber lying
+much nearer the mouth of the river than either this, or the sections
+further south.  Why had these men deliberately ascended the stream?
+Why had they stolen timber eighteen miles from the bend, when they
+could equally well have stolen just as good fourteen miles nearer
+the terminus of their drive?
+
+Thorpe ruminated for some time without hitting upon a solution.
+Then suddenly he remembered the two dams, and his idea that the men
+in charge of the river must be wealthy and must intend operating on
+a large scale.  He thought he glimpsed it.  After another pipe, he
+felt sure.
+
+The Unknowns were indeed going in on a large scale.  They intended
+eventually to log the whole of the Ossawinamakee basin.  For this
+reason they had made their first purchase, planted their first
+foot-hold, near the headwaters.  Furthermore, located as they were
+far from a present or an immediately future civilization, they had
+felt safe in leaving for the moment their holdings represented by
+the three sections already described.  Some day they would buy all
+the standing Government pine in the basin; but in the meantime they
+would steal all they could at a sufficient distance from the lake to
+minimize the danger of discovery.  They had not dared to appropriate
+the three mile tract Thorpe had passed through, because in that
+locality the theft would probably be remarked, so they intended
+eventually to buy it.  Until that should become necessary, however,
+every stick cut meant so much less to purchase.
+
+"They're going to cut, and keep on cutting, working down river as
+fast as they can," argued Thorpe.  "If anything happens so they
+have to, they'll buy in the pine that is left; but if things go
+well with them, they'll take what they can for nothing.  They're
+getting this stuff out up-river first, because they can steal safer
+while the country is still unsettled; and even when it does fill up,
+there will not be much likelihood of an investigation so far in-
+country,--at least until after they have folded their tents."
+
+It seems to us who are accustomed to the accurate policing of our
+twentieth century, almost incredible that such wholesale robberies
+should have gone on with so little danger of detection.  Certainly
+detection was a matter of sufficient simplicity.  Someone happens
+along, like Thorpe, carrying a Government map in his pocket.  He
+runs across a parcel of unclaimed land already cut over.  It would
+seem easy to lodge a complaint, institute a prosecution against the
+men known to have put in the timber.  BUT IT IS ALMOST NEVER DONE.
+
+Thorpe knew that men occupied in so precarious a business would be
+keenly on the watch.  At the first hint of rivalry, they would buy
+in the timber they had selected.  But the situation had set his
+fighting blood to racing.  The very fact that these men were thieves
+on so big a scale made him the more obstinately determined to thwart
+them.  They undoubtedly wanted the tract down river.  Well, so did he!
+
+He purposed to look it over carefully, to ascertain its exact
+boundaries and what sections it would be necessary to buy in order
+to include it, and perhaps even to estimate it in a rough way.  In
+the accomplishment of this he would have to spend the summer, and
+perhaps part of the fall, in that district.  He could hardly expect
+to escape notice.  By the indications on the river, he judged that a
+crew of men had shortly before taken out a drive of logs.  After the
+timber had been rafted and towed to Marquette, they would return.
+He might be able to hide in the forest, but sooner or later, he was
+sure, one of the company's landlookers or hunters would stumble on
+his camp.  Then his very concealment would tell them what he was
+after.  The risk was too great.  For above all things Thorpe needed
+time.  He had, as has been said, to ascertain what he could offer.
+Then he had to offer it.  He would be forced to interest capital,
+and that is a matter of persuasion and leisure.
+
+Finally his shrewd, intuitive good-sense flashed the solution on him.
+He returned rapidly to his pack, assumed the straps, and arrived at
+the first dam about dark of the long summer day.
+
+There he looked carefully about him.  Some fifty feet from the
+water's edge a birch knoll supported, besides the birches, a single
+big hemlock.  With his belt ax, Thorpe cleared away the little white
+trees.  He stuck the sharpened end of one of them in the bark of the
+shaggy hemlock, fastened the other end in a crotch eight or ten feet
+distant, slanted the rest of the saplings along one side of this
+ridge pole, and turned in, after a hasty supper, leaving the
+completion of his permanent camp to the morrow.
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+
+In the morning he thatched smooth the roof of the shelter, using
+for the purpose the thick branches of hemlocks; placed two green
+spruce logs side by side as cooking range; slung his pot on a rod
+across two forked sticks; cut and split a quantity of wood; spread
+his blankets; and called himself established.  His beard was already
+well grown, and his clothes had become worn by the brush and faded
+by the sun and rain.  In the course of the morning he lay in wait
+very patiently near a spot overflowed by the river, where, the day
+before, he had noticed lily-pads growing.  After a time a doe and a
+spotted fawn came and stood ankle-deep in the water, and ate of the
+lily-pads.  Thorpe lurked motionless behind his screen of leaves;
+and as he had taken the precaution so to station himself that his
+hiding-place lay downwind, the beautiful animals were unaware of
+his presence.
+
+By and by a prong-buck joined them.  He was a two-year-old, young,
+tender, with the velvet just off his antlers.  Thorpe aimed at his
+shoulder, six inches above the belly-line, and pressed the trigger.
+As though by enchantment the three woods creatures disappeared.  But
+the hunter had noticed that, whereas the doe and fawn flourished
+bravely the broad white flags of their tails, the buck had seemed
+but a streak of brown.  By this he knew he had hit.
+
+Sure enough, after two hundred yards of following the prints of
+sharp hoofs and occasional gobbets of blood on the leaves, he came
+upon his prey dead.  It became necessary to transport the animal to
+camp.  Thorpe stuck his hunting knife deep into the front of the
+deer's chest, where the neck joins, which allowed most of the blood
+to drain away.  Then he fastened wild grape vines about the antlers,
+and, with a little exertion drew the body after him as though it had
+been a toboggan.
+
+It slid more easily than one would imagine, along the grain; but not
+as easily as by some other methods with which Thorpe was unfamiliar.
+
+At camp he skinned the deer, cut most of the meat into thin strips
+which he salted and placed in the sun to dry, and hung the remainder
+in a cool arbor of boughs.  The hide he suspended over a pole.
+
+All these things he did hastily, as though he might be in a hurry;
+as indeed he was.
+
+At noon he cooked himself a venison steak and some tea.  Then with
+his hatchet he cut several small pine poles, which he fashioned
+roughly in a number of shapes and put aside for the future.  The
+brains of the deer, saved for the purpose, he boiled with water in
+his tin pail, wishing it were larger.  With the liquor thus obtained
+he intended later to remove the hair and grain from the deer hide.
+Toward evening he caught a dozen trout in the pool below the dam.
+These he ate for supper.
+
+Next day he spread the buck's hide out on the ground and drenched
+it liberally with the product of deer-brains.  Later the hide was
+soaked in the river, after which, by means of a rough two-handled
+spatula, Thorpe was enabled after much labor to scrape away
+entirely the hair and grain.  He cut from the edge of the hide a
+number of long strips of raw-hide, but anointed the body of the
+skin liberally with the brain liquor.
+
+"Glad I don't have to do that every day!" he commented, wiping his
+brow with the back of his wrist.
+
+As the skin dried he worked and kneaded it to softness.  The result
+was a fair quality of white buckskin, the first Thorpe had ever
+made.  If wetted, it would harden dry and stiff.  Thorough smoking
+in the fumes of punk maple would obviate this, but that detail Thorpe
+left until later.
+
+"I don't know whether it's all necessary," he said to himself
+doubtfully, "but if you're going to assume a disguise, let it
+be a good one."
+
+In the meantime, he had bound together with his rawhide thongs
+several of the oddly shaped pine timbers to form a species of
+dead-fall trap.  It was slow work, for Thorpe's knowledge of such
+things was theoretical.  He had learned his theory well, however,
+and in the end arrived.
+
+All this time he had made no effort to look over the pine, nor did
+he intend to begin until he could be sure of doing so in safety.
+His object now was to give his knoll the appearances of a trapper's
+camp.
+
+Towards the end of the week he received his first visit.  Evening
+was drawing on, and Thorpe was busily engaged in cooking a panful
+of trout, resting the frying pan across the two green spruce logs
+between which glowed the coals.  Suddenly he became aware of a
+presence at his side.  How it had reached the spot he could not
+imagine, for he had heard no approach.  He looked up quickly.
+
+"How do," greeted the newcomer gravely.
+
+The man was an Indian, silent, solemn, with the straight, unwinking
+gaze of his race.
+
+"How do," replied Thorpe.
+
+The Indian without further ceremony threw his pack to the ground,
+and, squatting on his heels, watched the white man's preparations.
+When the meal was cooked, he coolly produced a knife, selected a
+clean bit of hemlock bark, and helped himself.  Then he lit a pipe,
+and gazed keenly about him.  The buckskin interested him.
+
+"No good," said he, feeling of its texture.
+
+Thorpe laughed.  "Not very," he confessed.
+
+"Good," continued the Indian, touching lightly his own moccasins.
+
+"What you do?" he inquired after a long silence, punctuated by
+the puffs of tobacco.
+
+"Hunt; trap; fish," replied Thorpe with equal sententiousness.
+
+"Good," concluded the Indian, after a ruminative pause.
+
+That night he slept on the ground.  Next day he made a better
+shelter than Thorpe's in less than half the time; and was off
+hunting before the sun was an hour high.  He was armed with an
+old-fashioned smooth-bore muzzle-loader; and Thorpe was astonished,
+after he had become better acquainted with his new companion's
+methods, to find that he hunted deer with fine bird shot.  The
+Indian never expected to kill or even mortally wound his game;
+but he would follow for miles the blood drops caused by his little
+wounds, until the animals in sheer exhaustion allowed him to
+approach close enough for a dispatching blow.  At two o'clock he
+returned with a small buck, tied scientifically together for
+toting, with the waste parts cut away, but every ounce of utility
+retained.
+
+"I show," said the Indian:--and he did.  Thorpe learned the Indian
+tan; of what use are the hollow shank bones; how the spinal cord is
+the toughest, softest, and most pliable sewing-thread known.
+
+The Indian appeared to intend making the birch-knoll his permanent
+headquarters.  Thorpe was at first a little suspicious of his new
+companion, but the man appeared scrupulously honest, was never
+intrusive, and even seemed genuinely desirous of teaching the white
+little tricks of the woods brought to their perfection by the Indian
+alone.  He ended by liking him.  The two rarely spoke.  They merely
+sat near each other, and smoked.  One evening the Indian suddenly
+remarked:
+
+"You look 'um tree."
+
+"What's that?" cried Thorpe, startled.
+
+"You no hunter, no trapper.  You look 'um tree, for make 'um lumber."
+
+The white had not begun as yet his explorations.  He did not dare
+until the return of the logging crew or the passing of someone in
+authority at the up-river camp, for he wished first to establish
+in their minds the innocence of his intentions.
+
+"What makes you think that, Charley?" he asked.
+
+"You good man in woods," replied Injin Charley sententiously, "I
+tell by way you look at him pine."
+
+Thorpe ruminated.
+
+"Charley," said he, "why are you staying here with me?"
+
+"Big frien'," replied the Indian promptly.
+
+"Why are you my friend?  What have I ever done for you?"
+
+"You gottum chief's eye," replied his companion with simplicity.
+
+Thorpe looked at the Indian again.  There seemed to be only one
+course.
+
+"Yes, I'm a lumberman," he confessed, "and I'm looking for pine.
+But, Charley, the men up the river must not know what I'm after."
+
+"They gettum pine," interjected the Indian like a flash.
+
+"Exactly," replied Thorpe, surprised afresh at the other's
+perspicacity.
+
+"Good!" ejaculated Injin Charley, and fell silent.
+
+With this, the longest conversation the two had attempted in their
+peculiar acquaintance, Thorpe was forced to be content.  He was,
+however, ill at ease over the incident.  It added an element of
+uncertainty to an already precarious position.
+
+Three days later he was intensely thankful the conversation had
+taken place.
+
+After the noon meal he lay on his blanket under the hemlock shelter,
+smoking and lazily watching Injin Charley busy at the side of the
+trail.  The Indian had terminated a long two days' search by toting
+from the forest a number of strips of the outer bark of white birch,
+in its green state pliable as cotton, thick as leather, and light as
+air.  These he had cut into arbitrary patterns known only to himself,
+and was now sewing as a long shapeless sort of bag or sac to a slender
+beech-wood oval.  Later it was to become a birch-bark canoe, and the
+beech-wood oval would be the gunwale.
+
+So idly intent was Thorpe on this piece of construction that he did
+not notice the approach of two men from the down-stream side.  They
+were short, alert men, plodding along with the knee-bent persistency
+of the woods-walker, dressed in broad hats, flannel shirts, coarse
+trousers tucked in high laced "cruisers "; and carrying each a
+bulging meal sack looped by a cord across the shoulders and chest.
+Both were armed with long slender scaler's rules.  The first
+intimation Thorpe received of the presence of these two men was
+the sound of their voices addressing Injin Charley.
+
+"Hullo Charley," said one of them, "what you doing here?  Ain't
+seen you since th' Sturgeon district."
+
+"Mak' 'um canoe," replied Charley rather obviously.
+
+"So I see.  But what you expect to get in this Godforsaken country?"
+
+"Beaver, muskrat, mink, otter."
+
+"Trapping, eh?" The man gazed keenly at Thorpe's recumbent figure.
+
+"Who's the other fellow?"
+
+Thorpe held his breath; then exhaled it in a long sigh of relief.
+
+"Him white man," Injin Charley was replying, "him hunt too.  He
+mak' 'um buckskin."
+
+The landlooker arose lazily and sauntered toward the group.  It was
+part of his plan to be well recognized so that in the future he
+might arouse no suspicions.
+
+"Howdy," he drawled, "got any smokin'?"
+
+"How are you," replied one of the scalers, eying him sharply, and
+tendering his pouch.  Thorpe filled his pipe deliberately, and
+returned it with a heavy-lidded glance of thanks.  To all appearances
+he was one of the lazy, shiftless white hunters of the backwoods.
+Seized with an inspiration, he said, "What sort of chances is they
+at your camp for a little flour?  Me and Charley's about out.  I'll
+bring you meat; or I'll make you boys moccasins.  I got some good
+buckskin."
+
+It was the usual proposition.
+
+"Pretty good, I guess.  Come up and see," advised the scaler.  "The
+crew's right behind us."
+
+"I'll send up Charley," drawled Thorpe, "I'm busy now makin' traps,"
+he waved his pipe, calling attention to the pine and rawhide dead-
+falls.
+
+They chatted a few moments, practically and with an eye to the
+strict utility of things about them, as became woodsmen.  Then two
+wagons creaked lurching by, followed by fifteen or twenty men.  The
+
+last of these, evidently the foreman, was joined by the two scalers.
+
+"What's that outfit?" he inquired with the sharpness of suspicion.
+
+"Old Injin Charley--you remember, the old boy that tanned that buck
+for you down on Cedar Creek."
+
+"Yes, but the other fellow."
+
+"Oh, a hunter," replied the scaler carelessly.
+
+"Sure?"
+
+The man laughed.  "Couldn't be nothin' else," he asserted with
+confidence.  "Regular old backwoods mossback."
+
+At the same time Injin Charley was setting about the splitting of
+a cedar log.
+
+"You see," he remarked, "I big frien'."
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+
+In the days that followed, Thorpe cruised about the great woods.  It
+was slow business, but fascinating.  He knew that when he should
+embark on his attempt to enlist considerable capital in an "unsight
+unseen" investment, he would have to be well supplied with statistics.
+True, he was not much of a timber estimator, nor did he know the
+methods usually employed, but his experience, observation, and reading
+had developed a latent sixth sense by which he could appreciate
+quality, difficulties of logging, and such kindred practical matters.
+
+First of all he walked over the country at large, to find where the
+best timber lay.  This was a matter of tramping; though often on an
+elevation he succeeded in climbing a tall tree whence he caught
+bird's-eye views of the country at large.  He always carried his gun
+with him, and was prepared at a moment's notice to seem engaged in
+hunting,--either for game or for spots in which later to set his
+traps.  The expedient was, however, unnecessary.
+
+Next he ascertained the geographical location of the different
+clumps and forests, entering the sections, the quarter-sections,
+even the separate forties in his note-book; taking in only the
+"descriptions" containing the best pine.
+
+Finally he wrote accurate notes concerning the topography of each
+and every pine district,--the lay of the land; the hills, ravines,
+swamps, and valleys; the distance from the river; the character of
+the soil.  In short, he accumulated all the information he could by
+which the cost of logging might be estimated.
+
+The work went much quicker than he had anticipated, mainly because
+he could give his entire attention to it.  Injin Charley attended to
+the commissary, with a delight in the process that removed it from
+the category of work.  When it rained, an infrequent occurrence, the
+two hung Thorpe's rubber blankets before the opening of the driest
+shelter, and waited philosophically for the weather to clear.  Injin
+Charley had finished the first canoe, and was now leisurely at work
+on another.  Thorpe had filled his note-book with the class of
+statistics just described.  He decided now to attempt an estimate
+of the timber.
+
+For this he had really too little experience.  He knew it, but
+determined to do his best.  The weak point of his whole scheme
+lay in that it was going to be impossible for him to allow the
+prospective purchaser a chance of examining the pine.  That
+difficulty Thorpe hoped to overcome by inspiring personal confidence
+in himself.  If he failed to do so, he might return with a landlooker
+whom the investor trusted, and the two could re-enact the comedy
+of this summer.  Thorpe hoped, however, to avoid the necessity.
+It would be too dangerous.  He set about a rough estimate of the
+timber.
+
+Injin Charley intended evidently to work up a trade in buckskin
+during the coming winter.  Although the skins were in poor condition
+at this time of the year, he tanned three more, and smoked them.  In
+the day-time he looked the country over as carefully as did Thorpe.
+But he ignored the pines, and paid attention only to the hardwood
+and the beds of little creeks.  Injin Charley was in reality a
+trapper, and he intended to get many fine skins in this promising
+district.  He worked on his tanning and his canoe-making late in
+the afternoon.
+
+One evening just at sunset Thorpe was helping the Indian shape his
+craft.  The loose sac of birch-bark sewed to the long beech oval was
+slung between two tripods.  Injin Charley had fashioned a number of
+thin, flexible cedar strips of certain arbitrary lengths and widths.
+Beginning with the smallest of these, Thorpe and his companion were
+catching one end under the beech oval, bending the strip bow-shape
+inside the sac, and catching again the other side of the oval.  Thus
+the spring of the bent cedar, pressing against the inside of the
+birch-bark sac, distended it tightly.  The cut of the sac and the
+length of the cedar strips gave to the canoe its graceful shape.
+
+The two men bent there at their task, the dull glow of evening
+falling upon them.  Behind them the knoll stood out in picturesque
+relief against the darker pine, the little shelters, the fire-places
+of green spruce, the blankets, the guns, a deer's carcass suspended
+by the feet from a cross pole, the drying buckskin on either side.
+The river rushed by with a never-ending roar and turmoil.  Through
+its shouting one perceived, as through a mist, the still lofty peace
+of evening.
+
+A young fellow, hardly more than a boy, exclaimed with keen delight
+of the picturesque as his canoe shot around the bend into sight of it.
+
+The canoe was large and powerful, but well filled.  An Indian knelt
+in the stern; amidships was well laden with duffle of all
+descriptions;
+then the young fellow sat in the bow.  He was a bright-faced, eager-
+eyed, curly-haired young fellow, all enthusiasm and fire.  His figure
+was trim and clean, but rather slender; and his movements were quick
+but nervous.  When he stepped carefully out on the flat rock to which
+his guide brought the canoe with a swirl of the paddle, one initiated
+would have seen that his clothes, while strong and serviceable, had
+been bought from a sporting catalogue.  There was a trimness, a
+neatness, about them.
+
+"This is a good place," he said to the guide, "we'll camp here."
+Then he turned up the steep bank without looking back.
+
+"Hullo!" he called in a cheerful, unembarrassed fashion to Thorpe
+and Charley.  "How are you?  Care if I camp here?  What you making?
+By Jove! I never saw a canoe made before.  I'm going to watch you.
+Keep right at it."
+
+He sat on one of the outcropping boulders and took off his hat.
+
+"Say! you've got a great place here!  You here all summer?  Hullo!
+you've got a deer hanging up.  Are there many of 'em around here?
+I'd like to kill a deer first rate.  I never have.  It's sort of
+out of season now, isn't it?"
+
+"We only kill the bucks," replied Thorpe.
+
+"I like fishing, too," went on the boy; "are there any here?  In
+the pool?  John," he called to his guide, "bring me my fishing
+tackle."
+
+In a few moments he was whipping the pool with long, graceful drops
+of the fly.  He proved to be adept.  Thorpe and Injin Charley stopped
+work to watch him.  At first the Indian's stolid countenance seemed
+a trifle doubtful.  After a time it cleared.
+
+"Good!  he grunted.
+
+"You do that well," Thorpe remarked.  "Is it difficult?"
+
+"It takes practice," replied the boy.  "See that riffle?"  He whipped
+the fly lightly within six inches of a little suction hole; a fish at
+once rose and struck.
+
+The others had been little fellows and easily handled.  At the end
+of fifteen minutes the newcomer landed a fine two-pounder.
+
+"That must be fun," commented Thorpe.  "I never happened to get in
+with fly-fishing.  I'd like to try it sometime."
+
+"Try it now!" urged the boy, enchanted that he could teach a woodsman
+anything.
+
+"No," Thorpe declined, "not to-night, to-morrow perhaps."
+
+The other Indian had by now finished the erection of a tent, and
+had begun to cook supper over a little sheet-iron camp stove.
+Thorpe and Charley could smell ham.
+
+"You've got quite a pantry," remarked Thorpe.
+
+"Won't you eat with me?" proffered the boy hospitably.
+
+But Thorpe declined.  He could, however, see canned goods, hard
+tack, and condensed milk.
+
+In the course of the evening the boy approached the older man's
+camp, and, with a charming diffidence, asked permission to sit
+awhile at their fire.
+
+He was full of delight over everything that savored of the woods,
+or woodscraft.  The most trivial and everyday affairs of the life
+interested him.  His eager questions, so frankly proffered, aroused
+even the taciturn Charley to eloquence.  The construction of the
+shelter, the cut of a deer's hide, the simple process of "jerking"
+venison,--all these awakened his enthusiasm.
+
+"It must be good to live in the woods," he said with a sigh, "to do
+all things for yourself.  It's so free!"
+
+The men's moccasins interested him.  He asked a dozen questions
+about them,--how they were cut, whether they did not hurt the feet,
+how long they would wear.  He seemed surprised to learn that they
+are excellent in cold weather.
+
+"I thought ANY leather would wet through in the snow!" he cried.
+"I wish I could get a pair somewhere!" he exclaimed.  "You don't
+know where I could buy any, do you?" he asked of Thorpe.
+
+"I don't know," answered he, "perhaps Charley here will make you
+a pair."
+
+"WILL you, Charley?" cried the boy.
+
+"I mak' him," replied the Indian stolidly.
+
+The many-voiced night of the woods descended close about the little
+camp fire, and its soft breezes wafted stray sparks here and there
+like errant stars.  The newcomer, with shining eyes, breathed deep
+in satisfaction.  He was keenly alive to the romance, the grandeur,
+the mystery, the beauty of the littlest things, seeming to derive a
+deep and solid contentment from the mere contemplation of the woods
+and its ways and creatures.
+
+"I just DO love this!" he cried again and again.  "Oh, it's great,
+after all that fuss down there!" and he cried it so fervently that
+the other men present smiled; but so genuinely that the smile had
+in it nothing but kindliness.
+
+"I came out for a month," said he suddenly, "and I guess I'll stay
+the rest of it right here.  You'll let me go with you sometimes
+hunting, won't you?" he appealed to them with the sudden open-
+heartedness of a child.  "I'd like first rate to kill a deer."
+
+"Sure," said Thorpe, "glad to have you."
+
+"My name is Wallace Carpenter," said the boy with a sudden
+unmistakable air of good-breeding.
+
+"Well," laughed Thorpe, "two old woods loafers like us haven't got
+much use for names.  Charley here is called Geezigut, and mine's
+nearly as bad; but I guess plain Charley and Harry will do."
+
+"All right, Harry," replied Wallace.
+
+After the young fellow had crawled into the sleeping bag which his
+guide had spread for him over a fragrant layer of hemlock and
+balsam, Thorpe and his companion smoked one more pipe.  The whip-
+poor-wills called back and forth across the river.  Down in the
+thicket, fine, clear, beautiful, like the silver thread of a dream,
+came the notes of the white-throat--the nightingale of the North.
+Injin Charley knocked the last ashes from his pipe.
+
+"Him nice boy!" said he.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+
+The young fellow stayed three weeks, and was a constant joy to Thorpe.
+His enthusiasms were so whole-souled; his delight so perpetual; his
+interest so fresh!  The most trivial expedients of woods lore seemed
+to him wonderful.  A dozen times a day he exclaimed in admiration or
+surprise over some bit of woodcraft practiced by Thorpe or one of the
+Indians.
+
+"Do you mean to say you have lived here six weeks and only brought
+in what you could carry on your backs!" he cried.
+
+"Sure," Thorpe replied.
+
+"Harry, you're wonderful!  I've got a whole canoe load, and imagined
+I was travelling light and roughing it.  You beat Robinson Crusoe!
+He had a whole ship to draw from."
+
+"My man Friday helps me out," answered Thorpe, laughingly indicating
+Injin Charley.
+
+Nearly a week passed before Wallace managed to kill a deer.  The
+animals were plenty enough; but the young man's volatile and eager
+attention stole his patience.  And what few running shots offered,
+he missed, mainly because of buck fever.  Finally, by a lucky chance,
+he broke a four-year-old's neck, dropping him in his tracks.  The
+hunter was delighted.  He insisted on doing everything for himself--
+cruel hard work it was too--including the toting and skinning.  Even
+the tanning he had a share in.  At first he wanted the hide cured,
+"with the hair on." Injin Charley explained that the fur would drop
+out.  It was the wrong season of the year for pelts.
+
+"Then we'll have buckskin and I'll get a buckskin shirt out of
+it," suggested Wallace.
+
+Injin Charley agreed.  One day Wallace returned from fishing in
+the pool to find that the Indian had cut out the garment, and was
+already sewing it together.
+
+"Oh!" he cried, a little disappointed, "I wanted to see it done!"
+
+Injin Charley merely grunted.  To make a buckskin shirt requires the
+hides of three deer.  Charley had supplied the other two, and wished
+to keep the young man from finding it out.
+
+Wallace assumed the woods life as a man would assume an unaccustomed
+garment.  It sat him well, and he learned fast, but he was always
+conscious of it.  He liked to wear moccasins, and a deer knife; he
+liked to cook his own supper, or pluck the fragrant hemlock browse
+for his pillow.  Always he seemed to be trying to realize and to
+savor fully the charm, the picturesqueness, the romance of all that
+he was doing and seeing.  To Thorpe these things were a part of
+everyday life; matters of expedient or necessity.  He enjoyed them,
+but subconsciously, as one enjoys an environment.  Wallace trailed
+the cloak of his glories in frank admiration of their splendor.
+
+This double point of view brought the men very close together.
+Thorpe liked the boy because he was open-hearted, free from
+affectation, assumptive of no superiority,--in short, because he
+was direct and sincere, although in a manner totally different from
+Thorpe's own directness and sincerity.  Wallace, on his part, adored
+in Thorpe the free, open-air life, the adventurous quality, the
+quiet hidden power, the resourcefulness and self-sufficiency of the
+pioneer.  He was too young as yet to go behind the picturesque or
+romantic; so he never thought to inquire of himself what Thorpe
+did there in the wilderness, or indeed if he did anything at all.
+He accepted Thorpe for what he thought him to be, rather than for
+what he might think him to be.  Thus he reposed unbounded confidence
+in him.
+
+After a while, observing the absolute ingenuousness of the boy,
+Thorpe used to take him from time to time on some of his daily
+trips to the pines.  Necessarily he explained partially his position
+and the need of secrecy.  Wallace was immensely excited and important
+at learning a secret of such moment, and deeply flattered at being
+entrusted with it.
+
+Some may think that here, considering the magnitude of the
+interests involved, Thorpe committed an indiscretion.  It may be;
+but if so, it was practically an inevitable indiscretion.  Strong,
+reticent characters like Thorpe's prove the need from time to time
+of violating their own natures, of running counter to their ordinary
+habits of mind and deed.  It is a necessary relaxation of the
+strenuous, a debauch of the soul.  Its analogy in the lower plane
+is to be found in the dissipations of men of genius; or still lower
+in the orgies of fighters out of training.  Sooner or later Thorpe
+was sure to emerge for a brief space from that iron-bound silence
+of the spirit, of which he himself was the least aware.  It was
+not so much a hunger for affection, as the desire of a strong man
+temporarily to get away from his strength.  Wallace Carpenter became
+in his case the exception to prove the rule.
+
+Little by little the eager questionings of the youth extracted a
+full statement of the situation.  He learned of the timber-thieves
+up the river, of their present operations; and their probable
+plans; of the valuable pine lying still unclaimed; of Thorpe's
+stealthy raid into the enemy's country.  It looked big to him,
+epic!--These were tremendous forces in motion, here was intrigue,
+here was direct practical application of the powers he had been
+playing with.
+
+"Why, it's great!  It's better than any book I ever read!"
+
+He wanted to know what he could do to help.
+
+"Nothing except keep quiet," replied Thorpe, already uneasy, not
+lest the boy should prove unreliable, but lest his very eagerness
+to seem unconcerned should arouse suspicion.  "You mustn't try to
+act any different.  If the men from up-river come by, be just as
+cordial to them as you can, and don't act mysterious and important."
+
+"All right," agreed Wallace, bubbling with excitement.  "And then
+what do you do--after you get the timber estimated?"
+
+"I'll go South and try, quietly, to raise some money.  That will be
+difficult, because, you see, people don't know me; and I am not in
+a position to let them look over the timber.  Of course it will be
+merely a question of my judgment.  They can go themselves to the
+Land Office and pay their money.  There won't be any chance of my
+making way with that.  The investors will become possessed of certain
+'descriptions' lying in this country, all right enough.  The rub is,
+will they have enough confidence in me and my judgment to believe the
+timber to be what I represent it?"
+
+"I see," commented Wallace, suddenly grave.
+
+That evening Injin Charley went on with his canoe building.  He
+melted together in a pot, resin and pitch.  The proportion he
+determined by experiment, for the mixture had to be neither hard
+enough to crack nor soft enough to melt in the sun.  Then he daubed
+the mess over all the seams.  Wallace superintended the operation
+for a time in silence.
+
+"Harry," he said suddenly with a crisp decision new to his voice,
+"will you take a little walk with me down by the dam.  I want to
+talk with you."
+
+They strolled to the edge of the bank and stood for a moment
+looking at the swirling waters.
+
+"I want you to tell me all about logging," began Wallace.  "Start
+from the beginning.  Suppose, for instance, you had bought this pine
+here we were talking about,--what would be your first move?"
+
+They sat side by side on a log, and Thorpe explained.  He told of
+the building of the camps, the making of the roads; the cutting,
+swamping, travoying, skidding; the banking and driving.  Unconsciously
+a little of the battle clang crept into his narrative.  It became a
+struggle, a gasping tug and heave for supremacy between the man and
+the wilderness.  The excitement of war was in it.  When he had
+finished, Wallace drew a deep breath.
+
+"When I am home," said he simply, "I live in a big house on the
+Lake Shore Drive.  It is heated by steam and lighted by electricity.
+I touch a button or turn a screw, and at once I am lighted and warmed.
+At certain hours meals are served me.  I don't know how they are
+cooked, or where the materials come from.  Since leaving college I
+have spent a little time down town every day; and then I've played
+golf or tennis or ridden a horse in the park.  The only real thing
+left is the sailing.  The wind blows just as hard and the waves mount
+just as high to-day as they did when Drake sailed.  All the rest is
+tame.  We do little imitations of the real thing with blue ribbons
+tied to them, and think we are camping or roughing it.  This life
+of yours is glorious, is vital, it means something in the march of
+the world;--and I doubt whether ours does.  You are subduing the
+wilderness, extending the frontier.  After you will come the backwoods
+farmer to pull up the stumps, and after him the big farmer and the
+cities."
+
+The young follow spoke with unexpected swiftness and earnestness.
+Thorpe looked at him in surprise.
+
+"I know what you are thinking," said the boy, flushing.  "You are
+surprised that I can be in earnest about anything.  I'm out of school
+up here.  Let me shout and play with the rest of the children."
+
+Thorpe watched him with sympathetic eyes, but with lips that
+obstinately refused to say one word.  A woman would have felt
+rebuffed.  The boy's admiration, however, rested on the foundation
+of the more manly qualities he had already seen in his friend.
+Perhaps this very aloofness, this very silent, steady-eyed power
+appealed to him.
+
+"I left college at nineteen because my father died," said he.  "I
+am now just twenty-one.  A large estate descended to me, and I have
+had to care for its investments all alone.  I have one sister,that
+is all."
+
+"So have I," cried Thorpe, and stopped.
+
+"The estates have not suffered," went on the boy simply.  "I have
+done well with them.  But," he cried fiercely, "I HATE it!  It is
+petty and mean and worrying and nagging!  That's why I was so glad
+to get out in the woods."
+
+He paused.
+
+"Have some tobacco," said Thorpe.
+
+Wallace accepted with a nod.
+
+"Now, Harry, I have a proposal to make to you.  It is this; you
+need thirty thousand dollars to buy your land.  Let me supply it,
+and come in as half partner."
+
+An expression of doubt crossed the landlooker's face.
+
+"Oh PLEASE!" cried the boy, "I do want to get in something real!
+It will be the making of me!"
+
+"Now see here," interposed Thorpe suddenly, "you don't even know
+my name."
+
+"I know YOU," replied the boy.
+
+"My name is Harry Thorpe," pursued the other.  "My father was
+Henry Thorpe, an embezzler."
+
+"Harry," replied Wallace soberly, "I am sorry I made you say that.
+I do not care for your name--except perhaps to put it in the articles
+of partnership,--and I have no concern with your ancestry.  I tell
+you it is a favor to let me in on this deal.  I don't know anything
+about lumbering, but I've got eyes.  I can see that big timber
+standing up thick and tall, and I know people make profits in the
+business.  It isn't a question of the raw material surely, and you
+have experience."
+
+"Not so much as you think," interposed Thorpe.
+
+"There remains," went on Wallace without attention to Thorpe's
+remark, "only the question of---"
+
+"My honesty," interjected Thorpe grimly.
+
+"No!" cried the boy hotly, "of your letting me in on a good thing!"
+
+Thorpe considered a few moments in silence.
+
+"Wallace," he said gravely at last, "I honestly do think that
+whoever goes into this deal with me will make money.  Of course
+there's always chances against it.  But I am going to do my best.
+I've seen other men fail at it, and the reason they've failed is
+because they did not demand success of others and of themselves.
+That's it; success!  When a general commanding troops receives a
+report on something he's ordered done, he does not trouble himself
+with excuses;--he merely asks whether or not the thing was
+accomplished.  Difficulties don't count.  It is a soldier's duty
+to perform the impossible.  Well, that's the way it ought to be with
+us.  A man has no right to come to me and say, 'I failed because
+such and such things happened.'  Either he should succeed in spite
+of it all; or he should step up and take his medicine without
+whining.  Well, I'm going to succeed!"
+
+The man's accustomed aloofness had gone.  His eye flashed, his brow
+frowned, the muscles of his cheeks contracted under his beard.  In
+the bronze light of evening he looked like a fire-breathing statue
+to that great ruthless god he had himself invoked,--Success.
+
+Wallace gazed at him with fascinated admiration.
+
+"Then you will?" he asked tremulously.
+
+"Wallace," he replied again, "they'll say you have been the victim
+of an adventurer, but the result will prove them wrong.  If I weren't
+perfectly sure of this, I wouldn't think of it, for I like you, and
+I know you want to go into this more out of friendship for me and
+because your imagination is touched, than from any business sense.
+But I'll accept, gladly.  And I'll do my best!"
+
+"Hooray!" cried the boy, throwing his cap up in the air.  "We'll do
+'em up in the first round!"
+
+At last when Wallace Carpenter reluctantly quitted his friends on
+the Ossawinamakee, he insisted on leaving with them a variety of
+the things he had brought.
+
+"I'm through with them," said he.  "Next time I come up here we'll
+have a camp of our own, won't we, Harry?  And I do feel that I am
+awfully in you fellows' debt.  You've given me the best time I have
+ever had in my life, and you've refused payment for the moccasins
+and things you've made for me.  I'd feel much better if you'd accept
+them,--just as keepsakes."
+
+"All right, Wallace," replied Thorpe, "and much obliged."
+
+"Don't forget to come straight to me when you get through estimating,
+now, will you?  Come to the house and stay.  Our compact holds now,
+honest Injin; doesn't it?" asked the boy anxiously.
+
+"Honest Injin," laughed Thorpe.  "Good-by."
+
+The little canoe shot away down the current.  The last Injin Charley
+and Thorpe saw of the boy was as he turned the curve.  His hat was
+off and waving in his hand, his curls were blowing in the breeze,
+his eyes sparkled with bright good-will, and his lips parted in a
+cheery halloo of farewell.
+
+"Him nice boy," repeated Injin CharIey, turning to his canoe.
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+
+Thus Thorpe and the Indian unexpectedly found themselves in the
+possession of luxury.  The outfit had not meant much to Wallace
+Carpenter, for he had bought it in the city, where such things are
+abundant and excite no remark; but to the woodsman each article
+possessed a separate and particular value.  The tent, an iron
+kettle, a side of bacon, oatmeal, tea, matches, sugar, some canned
+goods, a box of hard-tack,--these, in the woods, represented wealth.
+Wallace's rifle chambered the .38 Winchester cartridge, which was
+unfortunate, for Thorpe's .44 had barely a magazineful left.
+
+The two men settled again into their customary ways of life.  Things
+went much as before, except that the flies and mosquitoes became
+thick.  To men as hardened as Thorpe and the Indian, these pests
+were not as formidable as they would have been to anyone directly
+from the city, but they were sufficiently annoying.  Thorpe's old
+tin pail was pressed into service as a smudge-kettle.  Every evening
+about dusk, when the insects first began to emerge from the dark
+swamps, Charley would build a tiny smoky fire in the bottom of
+the pail, feeding it with peat, damp moss, punk maple, and other
+inflammable smoky fuel.  This censer swung twice or thrice about the
+tent, effectually cleared it.  Besides, both men early established on
+their cheeks an invulnerable glaze of a decoction of pine tar, oil,
+and a pungent herb.  Towards the close of July, however, the insects
+began sensibly to diminish, both in numbers and persistency.
+
+Up to the present Thorpe had enjoyed a clear field.  Now two men
+came down from above and established a temporary camp in the woods
+half a mile below the dam.  Thorpe soon satisfied himself that they
+were picking out a route for the logging road.  Plenty which could
+be cut and travoyed directly to the banking ground lay exactly
+along the bank of the stream; but every logger possessed of a tract
+of timber tries each year to get in some that is easy to handle and
+some that is difficult.  Thus the average of expense is maintained.
+
+The two men, of course, did not bother themselves with the timber
+to be travoyed, but gave their entire attention to that lying
+further back.  Thorpe was enabled thus to avoid them entirely.  He
+simply transferred his estimating to the forest by the stream.  Once
+he met one of the men; but was fortunately in a country that lent
+itself to his pose of hunter.  The other he did not see at all.
+
+But one day he heard him.  The two up-river men were following
+carefully but noisily the bed of a little creek.  Thorpe happened to
+be on the side-hill, so he seated himself quietly until they should
+have moved on down.  One of the men shouted to the other, who,
+crashing through a thicket, did not hear.  "Ho-o-o! DYER!" the
+first repeated.  "Here's that infernal comer; over here!"
+
+"Yop!" assented the other.  "Coming!"
+
+Thorpe recognized the voice instantly as that of Radway's scaler.
+His hand crisped in a gesture of disgust.  The man had always been
+obnoxious to him.
+
+Two days later he stumbled on their camp.  He paused in wonder at
+what he saw.
+
+The packs lay open, their contents scattered in every direction.
+The fire had been hastily extinguished with a bucket of water,
+and a frying pan lay where it had been overturned.  If the thing
+had been possible, Thorpe would have guessed at a hasty and
+unpremeditated flight.
+
+He was about to withdraw carefully lest he be discovered, when
+he was startled by a touch on his elbow.  It was Injin Charley.
+
+"Dey go up river," he said.  "I come see what de row."
+
+The Indian examined rapidly the condition of the little camp.
+
+"Dey look for somethin'," said he, making his hand revolve as
+though rummaging, and indicating the packs.
+
+"I t'ink dey see you in de woods," he concluded.  "Dey go camp
+gettum boss.  Boss he gone on river trail two t'ree hour."
+
+"You're right, Charley," replied Thorpe, who had been drawing his
+own conclusions.  "One of them knows me.  They've been looking in
+their packs for their note-books with the descriptions of these
+sections in them.  Then they piled out for the boss.  If I know
+anything at all, the boss'll make tracks for Detroit."
+
+"W'ot you do?" asked Injin Charley curiously.
+
+"I got to get to Detroit before they do; that's all."
+
+Instantly the Indian became all action.
+
+"You come," he ordered, and set out at a rapid pace for camp.
+
+There, with incredible deftness, he packed together about twelve
+pounds of the jerked venison and a pair of blankets, thrust Thorpe's
+waterproof match safe in his pocket, and turned eagerly to the
+young man.
+
+"You come," he repeated.
+
+Thorpe hastily unearthed his "descriptions" and wrapped them up.
+The Indian, in silence, rearranged the displaced articles in such a
+manner as to relieve the camp of its abandoned air.
+
+It was nearly sundown.  Without a word the two men struck off into
+the forest, the Indian in the lead.  Their course was southeast, but
+Thorpe asked no questions.  He followed blindly.  Soon he found that
+if he did even that adequately, he would have little attention left
+for anything else.  The Indian walked with long, swift strides, his
+knees always slightly bent, even at the finish of the step, his back
+hollowed, his shoulders and head thrust forward.  His gait had a
+queer sag in it, up and down in a long curve from one rise to the
+other.  After a time Thorpe became fascinated in watching before him
+this easy, untiring lope, hour after hour, without the variation of
+a second's fraction in speed nor an inch in length.  It was as though
+the Indian were made of steel springs.  He never appeared to hurry;
+but neither did he ever rest.
+
+At first Thorpe followed him with comparative ease, but at the end
+of three hours he was compelled to put forth decided efforts to
+keep pace.  His walking was no longer mechanical, but conscious.
+When it becomes so, a man soon tires.  Thorpe resented the
+inequalities, the stones, the roots, the patches of soft ground
+which lay in his way.  He felt dully that they were not fair.  He
+could negotiate the distance; but anything else was a gratuitous
+insult.
+
+Then suddenly he gained his second wind.  He felt better and stronger
+and moved freer.  For second wind is only to a very small degree a
+question of the breathing power.  It is rather the response of the
+vital forces to a will that refuses to heed their first grumbling
+protests.  Like dogs by the fire they do their utmost to convince
+their master that the limit of freshness is reached; but at last,
+under the whip, spring to their work.
+
+At midnight Injin Charley called a halt.  He spread his blanket;
+leaned on one elbow long enough to eat strip of dried meat, and fell
+asleep.  Thorpe imitated his example.  Three hours later the Indian
+roused his companion, and the two set out again.
+
+Thorpe had walked a leisurely ten days through the woods far to
+the north.  In that journey he had encountered many difficulties.
+Sometimes he had been tangled for hours at a time in a dense and
+almost impenetrable thicket.  Again he had spent a half day in
+crossing a treacherous swamp.  Or there had interposed in his trail
+abattises of down timber a quarter of a mile wide over which it had
+been necessary to pick a precarious way eight or ten feet from the
+ground.
+
+This journey was in comparison easy.  Most of the time the travellers
+walked along high beech ridges or through the hardwood forests.
+Occasionally they were forced to pass into the lowlands, but always
+little saving spits of highland reaching out towards each other
+abridged the necessary wallowing.  Twice they swam rivers.
+
+At first Thorpe thought this was because the country was more open;
+but as he gave better attention to their route, he learned to
+ascribe it entirely to the skill of his companion.  The Indian
+seemed by a species of instinct to select the most practicable
+routes.  He seemed to know how the land ought to lie, so that he was
+never deceived by appearances into entering a cul de sac.  His beech
+ridges always led to other beech ridges; his hardwood never petered
+out into the terrible black swamps.  Sometimes Thorpe became sensible
+that they had commenced a long detour; but it was never an abrupt
+detour, unforeseen and blind.
+
+From three o'clock until eight they walked continually without a
+pause, without an instant's breathing spell.  Then they rested a
+half hour, ate a little venison, and smoked a pipe.
+
+An hour after noon they repeated the rest.  Thorpe rose with a
+certain physical reluctance.  The Indian seemed as fresh--or as
+tired--as when he started.  At sunset they took an hour.  Then
+forward again by the dim intermittent light of the moon and stars
+through the ghostly haunted forest, until Thorpe thought he would
+drop with weariness, and was mentally incapable of contemplating
+more than a hundred steps in advance.
+
+"When I get to that square patch of light, I'll quit," he would
+say to himself, and struggle painfully the required twenty rods.
+
+"No, I won't quit here," he would continue, "I'll make it that
+birch.  Then I'll lie down and die."
+
+And so on.  To the actual physical exhaustion of Thorpe's muscles
+was added that immense mental weariness which uncertainty of the
+time and distance inflicts on a man.  The journey might last a week,
+for all he knew.  In the presence of an emergency these men of action
+had actually not exchanged a dozen words.  The Indian led; Thorpe
+followed.
+
+When the halt was called, Thorpe fell into his blanket too weary
+even to eat.  Next morning sharp, shooting pains, like the stabs
+of swords, ran through his groin.
+
+"You come," repeated the Indian, stolid as ever.
+
+When the sun was an hour high the travellers suddenly ran into a
+trail, which as suddenly dived into a spruce thicket.  On the other
+side of it Thorpe unexpectedly found himself in an extensive
+clearing, dotted with the blackened stumps of pines.  Athwart the
+distance he could perceive the wide blue horizon of Lake Michigan.
+He had crossed the Upper Peninsula on foot!
+
+"Boat come by to-day," said Injin Charley, indicating the tall stacks
+of a mill.  "Him no stop.  You mak' him stop take you with him.
+You get train Mackinaw City tonight.  Dose men, dey on dat train."
+
+Thorpe calculated rapidly.  The enemy would require, even with their
+teams, a day to cover the thirty miles to the fishing village of
+Munising, whence the stage ran each morning to Seney, the present
+terminal of the South Shore Railroad.  He, Thorpe, on foot and three
+hours behind, could never have caught the stage.  But from Seney
+only one train a day was despatched to connect at Mackinaw City with
+the Michigan Central, and on that one train, due to leave this very
+morning, the up-river man was just about pulling out.  He would arrive
+at Mackinaw City at four o'clock of the afternoon, where he would be
+forced to wait until eight in the evening.  By catching a boat at the
+mill to which Injin Charley had led him, Thorpe could still make the
+same train.  Thus the start in the race for Detroit's Land Office
+would be fair.
+
+"All right," he cried, all his energy returning to him.  "Here
+goes!  We'll beat him out yet!"
+
+"You come back?" inquired the Indian, peering with a certain anxiety
+into his companion's eyes.
+
+"Come back!" cried Thorpe.  "You bet your hat!"
+
+"I wait," replied the Indian, and was gone.
+
+"Oh, Charley!" shouted Thorpe in surprise.  "Come on and get a square
+meal, anyway."
+
+But the Indian was already on his way back to the distant
+Ossawinamakee.
+
+Thorpe hesitated in two minds whether to follow and attempt further
+persuasion, for he felt keenly the interest the other had displayed.
+Then he saw, over the headland to the east, a dense trail of black
+smoke.  He set off on a stumbling run towards the mill.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+
+
+He arrived out of breath in a typical little mill town consisting
+of the usual unpainted houses, the saloons, mill, office, and
+general store.  To the latter he addressed himself for information.
+
+The proprietor, still sleepy, was mopping out the place.
+
+"Does that boat stop here?" shouted Thorpe across the suds.
+
+"Sometimes," replied the man somnolently.
+
+"Not always?"
+
+"Only when there's freight for her."
+
+"Doesn't she stop for passengers?"
+
+"Nope."
+
+"How does she know when there's freight?"
+
+"Oh, they signal her from the mill--" but Thorpe was gone.
+
+At the mill Thorpe dove for the engine room.  He knew that elsewhere
+the clang of machinery and the hurry of business would leave scant
+attention for him.  And besides, from the engine room the signals
+would be given.  He found, as is often the case in north-country
+sawmills, a Scotchman in charge.
+
+"Does the boat stop here this morning?" he inquired.
+
+"Weel," replied the engineer with fearful deliberation, "I canna
+say.  But I hae received na orders to that effect."
+
+"Can't you whistle her in for me?" asked Thorpe.
+
+"I canna," answered the engineer, promptly enough this time.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Ye're na what a body might call freight."
+
+"No other way out of it?"
+
+"Na."
+
+Thorpe was seized with an idea.
+
+"Here!" he cried.  See that boulder over there?  I want to ship that
+to Mackinaw City by freight on this boat."
+
+The Scotchman's eyes twinkled appreciatively.
+
+"I'm dootin' ye hae th' freight-bill from the office," he objected
+simply.
+
+"See here," replied Thorpe, "I've just got to get that boat.  It's
+worth twenty dollars to me, and I'll square it with the captain.
+There's your twenty."
+
+The Scotchman deliberated, looking aslant at the ground and
+thoughtfully oiling a cylinder with a greasy rag.
+
+"It'll na be a matter of life and death?" he asked hopefully.  "She
+aye stops for life and death."
+
+"No," replied Thorpe reluctantly.  Then with an explosion, "Yes, by
+God, it is!  If I don't make that boat, I'll kill YOU."
+
+The Scotchman chuckled and pocketed the money.  "I'm dootin' that's
+in order," he replied.  "I'll no be party to any such proceedin's.
+I'm goin' noo for a fresh pail of watter," he remarked, pausing at
+the door, "but as a wee item of information: yander's th' wheestle
+rope; and a mon wheestles one short and one long for th' boat."
+
+He disappeared.  Thorpe seized the cord and gave the signal.  Then
+he ran hastily to the end of the long lumber docks, and peered with
+great eagerness in the direction of the black smoke.
+
+The steamer was as yet concealed behind a low spit of land which
+ran out from the west to form one side of the harbor.  In a moment,
+however, her bows appeared, headed directly down towards the Straits
+of Mackinaw.  When opposite the little bay Thorpe confidently looked
+to see her turn in, but to his consternation she held her course.
+He began to doubt whether his signal had been heard.  Fresh black
+smoke poured from the funnel; the craft seemed to gather speed as
+she approached the eastern point.  Thorpe saw his hopes sailing away.
+He wanted to stand up absurdly and wave his arms to attract attention
+at that impossible distance.  He wanted to sink to the planks in
+apathy.  Finally he sat down, and with dull eyes watched the distance
+widen between himself and his aims.
+
+And then with a grand free sweep she turned and headed directly for
+him.
+
+Other men might have wept or shouted.  Thorpe merely became himself,
+imperturbable, commanding, apparently cold.  He negotiated briefly
+with the captain, paid twenty dollars more for speed and the
+privilege of landing at Mackinaw City.  Then he slept for eight
+hours on end and was awakened in time to drop into a small boat
+which deposited him on the broad sand beach of the lower peninsula.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII
+
+
+The train was just leisurely making up for departure.  Thorpe,
+dressed as he was in old "pepper and salt" garments patched with
+buckskin, his hat a flopping travesty on headgear, his moccasins,
+worn and dirty, his face bearded and bronzed, tried as much as
+possible to avoid attention.  He sent an instant telegram to
+Wallace Carpenter conceived as follows:
+
+"Wire thirty thousand my order care Land Office, Detroit, before
+nine o'clock to-morrow morning.  Do it if you have to rustle all
+night.  Important."
+
+Then he took a seat in the baggage car on a pile of boxes and
+philosophically waited for the train to start.  He knew that sooner
+or later the man, provided he were on the train, would stroll through
+the car, and he wanted to be out of the way.  The baggage man proved
+friendly, so Thorpe chatted with him until after bedtime.  Then he
+entered the smoking car and waited patiently for morning.
+
+So far the affair had gone very well.  It had depended on personal
+exertions, and he had made it go.  Now he was forced to rely on
+outward circumstances.  He argued that the up-river man would have
+first to make his financial arrangements before he could buy in the
+land, and this would give the landlooker a chance to get in ahead at
+the office.  There would probably be no difficulty about that.  The
+man suspected nothing.  But Thorpe had to confess himself fearfully
+uneasy about his own financial arrangements.  That was the rub.
+Wallace Carpenter had been sincere enough in his informal striking
+of partnership, but had he retained his enthusiasm?  Had second
+thought convicted him of folly?  Had conservative business friends
+dissuaded him?  Had the glow faded in the reality of his accustomed
+life?  And even if his good-will remained unimpaired, would he be
+able, at such short notice, to raise so large a sum?  Would he
+realize from Thorpe's telegram the absolute necessity of haste?
+
+At the last thought, Thorpe decided to send a second message from
+the next station.  He did so.  It read: "Another buyer of timber on
+same train with me.  Must have money at nine o'clock or lose land."
+He paid day rates on it to insure immediate delivery.  Suppose the
+boy should be away from home!
+
+Everything depended on Wallace Carpenter; and Thorpe could not but
+confess the chance slender.  One other thought made the night seem
+long.  Thorpe had but thirty dollars left.
+
+Morning came at last, and the train drew in and stopped.  Thorpe,
+being in the smoking car, dropped off first and stationed himself
+near the exit where he could look over the passengers without being
+seen.  They filed past.  Two only he could accord the role of master
+lumbermen--the rest were plainly drummers or hayseeds.  And in
+these two Thorpe recognized Daly and Morrison themselves.  They
+passed within ten feet of him, talking earnestly together.  At the
+curb they hailed a cab and drove away.  Thorpe with satisfaction
+heard them call the name of a hotel.
+
+It was still two hours before the Land Office would be open.  Thorpe
+ate breakfast at the depot and wandered slowly up Jefferson Avenue
+to Woodward, a strange piece of our country's medievalism in modern
+surroundings.  He was so occupied with his own thoughts that for some
+time he remained unconscious of the attention he was attracting.
+Then, with a start, he felt that everyone was staring at him.  The
+hour was early, so that few besides the working classes were abroad,
+but he passed one lady driving leisurely to an early train whose
+frank scrutiny brought him to himself.  He became conscious that his
+broad hat was weather-soiled and limp, that his flannel shirt was
+faded, that his "pepper and salt" trousers were patched, that
+moccasins must seem as anachronistic as chain mail.  It abashed him.
+He could not know that it was all wild and picturesque, that his
+straight and muscular figure moved with a grace quite its own and
+the woods', that the bronze of his skin contrasted splendidly with
+the clearness of his eye, that his whole bearing expressed the
+serene power that comes only from the confidence of battle.  The
+woman in the carriage saw it, however.
+
+"He is magnificent!" she cried.  "I thought such men had died
+with Cooper!"
+
+Thorpe whirled sharp on his heel and returned at once to a boarding-
+house off Fort Street, where he had "outfitted" three months before.
+There he reclaimed his valise, shaved, clothed himself in linen and
+cheviot once more, and sauntered slowly over to the Land Office to
+await its opening.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII
+
+
+At nine o'clock neither of the partners had appeared.  Thorpe entered
+the office and approached the desk.
+
+"Is there a telegram here for Harry Thorpe?" he inquired.
+
+The clerk to whom he addressed himself merely motioned with his
+head toward a young fellow behind the railing in a corner.  The
+latter, without awaiting the question, shifted comfortably and
+replied:
+
+"No."
+
+At the same instant steps were heard in the corridor, the door opened,
+and Mr. Morrison appeared on the sill.  Then Thorpe showed the stuff
+of which he was made.
+
+"Is this the desk for buying Government lands?" he asked hurriedly.
+
+"Yes," replied the clerk.
+
+"I have some descriptions I wish to buy in."
+
+"Very well," replied the clerk, "what township?"
+
+Thorpe detailed the figures, which he knew by heart, the clerk took
+from a cabinet the three books containing them, and spread them out
+on the counter.  At this moment the bland voice of Mr. Morrison made
+itself heard at Thorpe's elbow.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Smithers," it said with the deliberation of the
+consciously great man.  "I have a few descriptions I would like to
+buy in the northern peninsula."
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Morrison.  Archie there will attend to you.
+Archie, see what Mr. Morrison wishes."
+
+The lumberman and the other clerk consulted in a low voice, after
+which the official turned to fumble among the records.  Not finding
+what he wanted, he approached Smithers.  A whispered consultation
+ensued between these two.  Then Smithers called:
+
+"Take a seat, Mr. Morrison.  This gentleman is looking over these
+townships, and will have finished in a few minutes."
+
+Morrison's eye suddenly became uneasy.
+
+"I am somewhat busy this morning," he objected with a shade of
+command in his voice.
+
+"If this gentleman---?" suggested the clerk delicately.
+
+"I am sorry," put in Thorpe with brevity, "my time, too, is
+valuable."
+
+Morrison looked at him sharply.
+
+"My deal is a big one," he snapped.  "I can probably arrange with
+this gentleman to let him have his farm."
+
+"I claim precedence," replied Thorpe calmly.
+
+"Well," said Morrison swift as light, "I'll tell you, Smithers.
+I'll leave my list of descriptions and a check with you.  Give me
+a receipt, and mark my lands off after you've finished with this
+gentleman."
+
+Now Government and State lands are the property of the man who pays
+for them.  Although the clerk's receipt might not give Morrison a
+valid claim; nevertheless it would afford basis for a lawsuit.
+Thorpe saw the trap, and interposed.
+
+"Hold on," he interrupted, "I claim precedence.  You can give no
+receipt for any land in these townships until after my business is
+transacted.  I have reason to believe that this gentleman and myself
+are both after the same descriptions."
+
+"What!" shouted Morrison, assuming surprise.
+
+"You will have to await your turn, Mr. Morrison," said the clerk,
+virtuous before so many witnesses.
+
+The business man was in a white rage of excitement.
+
+"I insist on my application being filed at once!" he cried waving
+his check.  "I have the money right here to pay for every acre of
+it; and if I know the law, the first man to pay takes the land."
+
+He slapped the check down on the rail, and hit it a number of times
+with the flat of his hand.  Thorpe turned and faced him with a steel
+look in his level eyes.
+
+"Mr. Morrison," he said, "you are quite right.  The first man who
+pays gets the land; but I have won the first chance to pay.  You
+will kindly step one side until I finish my business with Mr.
+Smithers here."
+
+"I suppose you have the amount actually with you," said the clerk,
+quite respectfully, "because if you have not, Mr. Morrison's claim
+will take precedence."
+
+"I would hardly have any business in a land office, if I did not know
+that," replied Thorpe, and began his dictation of the description as
+calmly as though his inside pocket contained the required amount in
+bank bills.
+
+Thorpe's hopes had sunk to zero.  After all, looking at the matter
+dispassionately, why should he expect Carpenter to trust him, a
+stranger, with so large a sum?  It had been madness.  Only the blind
+confidence of the fighting man led him further into the struggle.
+Another would have given up, would have stepped aside from the path
+of this bona-fide purchaser with the money in his hand.
+
+But Thorpe was of the kind that hangs on until the last possible
+second, not so much in the expectation of winning, as in sheer
+reluctance to yield.  Such men shoot their last cartridge before
+surrendering, swim the last ounce of strength from their arms
+before throwing them up to sink, search coolly until the latest
+moment for a way from the burning building,--and sometimes come
+face to face with miracles.
+
+Thorpe's descriptions were contained in the battered little note-
+book he had carried with him in the woods.  For each piece of land
+first there came the township described by latitude and east-and-
+west range.  After this generic description followed another figure
+representing the section of that particular district.  So 49--17
+W--8, meant section 8, of the township on range 49 north, 17 west.
+If Thorpe wished to purchase the whole section, that description
+would suffice.  On the other hand, if he wished to buy only one
+forty, he described its position in the quarter-section.  Thus SW--
+NW 49--17--8, meant the southwest forty of the northwest quarter of
+section 8 in the township already described.
+
+The clerk marked across each square of his map as Thorpe read them,
+the date and the purchaser's name.
+
+In his note-book Thorpe had, of course, entered the briefest
+description possible.  Now, in dictating to the clerk, he conceived
+the idea of specifying each subdivision.  This gained some time.
+Instead of saying simply, "Northwest quarter of section 8," he made
+of it four separate descriptions, as follows:--Northwest quarter of
+northwest quarter; northeast of northwest quarter; southwest of
+northwest quarter; and southeast of northwest quarter.
+
+He was not so foolish as to read the descriptions in succession,
+but so scattered them that the clerk, putting down the figures
+mechanically, had no idea of the amount of unnecessary work he was
+doing.  The minute hands of the clock dragged around.  Thorpe droned
+down the long column.  The clerk scratched industriously, repeating
+in a half voice each description as it was transcribed.
+
+At length the task was finished.  It became necessary to type
+duplicate lists of the descriptions.  While the somnolent youth
+finished this task, Thorpe listened for the messenger boy on the
+stairs.
+
+A faint slam was heard outside the rickety old building.  Hasty
+steps sounded along the corridor.  The landlooker merely stopped
+the drumming of his fingers on the broad arm of the chair.  The
+door flew open, and Wallace Carpenter walked quickly to him.
+
+Thorpe's face lighted up as he rose to greet his partner.  The
+boy had not forgotten their compact after all.
+
+"Then it's all right?" queried the latter breathlessly.
+
+"Sure," answered Thorpe heartily, "got 'em in good shape."
+
+At the same time he was drawing the youth beyond the vigilant
+watchfulness of Mr. Morrison.
+
+"You're just in time," he said in an undertone.  "Never had so
+close a squeak.  I suppose you have cash or a certified check:
+that's all they'll take here."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Carpenter blankly.
+
+"Haven't you that money?" returned Thorpe quick as a hawk.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, isn't it here?" cried Wallace in consternation.
+"I wired Duncan, my banker, here last night, and received a reply
+from him.  He answered that he'd see to it.  Haven't you seen him?"
+
+"No," repeated Thorpe in his turn.
+
+"What can we do?"
+
+"Can you get your check certified here near at hand?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, go do it.  And get a move on you.  You have precisely until
+that boy there finishes clicking that machine.  Not a second longer."
+
+"Can't you get them to wait a few minutes?"
+
+"Wallace," said Thorpe, "do you see that white whiskered old lynx in
+the corner?  That's Morrison, the man who wants to get our land.  If
+I fail to plank down the cash the very instant it is demanded, he gets
+his chance.  And he'll take it.  Now, go.  Don't hurry until you get
+beyond the door: then FLY!"
+
+Thorpe sat down again in his broad-armed chair and resumed his
+drumming.  The nearest bank was six blocks away.  He counted over
+in his mind the steps of Carpenter's progress; now to the door, now
+in the next block, now so far beyond.  He had just escorted him to
+the door of the bank, when the clerk's voice broke in on him.
+
+"Now," Smithers was saying, "I'll give you a receipt for the
+amount, and later will send to your address the title deeds of
+the descriptions."
+
+Carpenter had yet to find the proper official, to identify himself,
+to certify the check, and to return.  It was hopeless.  Thorpe
+dropped his hands in surrender.
+
+Then he saw the boy lay the two typed lists before his principal,
+and dimly he perceived that the youth, shamefacedly, was holding
+something bulky toward himself.
+
+"Wh--what is it?" he stammered, drawing his hand back as though from
+a red-hot iron.
+
+"You asked me for a telegram," said the boy stubbornly, as though
+trying to excuse himself, "and I didn't just catch the name, anyway.
+When I saw it on those lists I had to copy, I thought of this here."
+
+"Where'd you get it?" asked Thorpe breathlessly.
+
+"A fellow came here early and left it for you while I was sweeping
+out," explained the boy.  "Said he had to catch a train.  It's yours
+all right, ain't it?"
+
+"Oh, yes," replied Thorpe.
+
+He took the envelope and walked uncertainly to the tall window.  He
+looked out at the chimneys.  After a moment he tore open the envelope.
+
+"I hope there's no bad news, sir?" said the clerk, startled at the
+paleness of the face Thorpe turned to the desk.
+
+"No," replied the landlooker.  "Give me a receipt.  There's a
+certified check for your money!"
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV
+
+
+Now that the strain was over, Thorpe experienced a great weariness.
+The long journey through the forest, his sleepless night on the
+train, the mental alertness of playing the game with shrewd foes
+all these stretched his fibers out one by one and left them limp.
+He accepted stupidly the clerk's congratulations on his success,
+left the name of the little hotel off Fort Street as the address
+to which to send the deeds, and dragged himself off with infinite
+fatigue to his bed-room.  There he fell at once into profound
+unconsciousness.
+
+He was awakened late in the afternoon by the sensation of a strong
+pair of young arms around his shoulders, and the sound of Wallace
+Carpenter's fresh voice crying in his ears:
+
+"Wake up, wake up! you Indian!  You've been asleep all day, and I've
+been waiting here all that time.  I want to hear about it.  Wake up,
+I say!"
+
+Thorpe rolled to a sitting posture on the edge of the bed, and
+smiled uncertainly.  Then as the sleep drained from his brain,
+he reached out his hand.
+
+"You bet we did 'em, Wallace," said he, "but it looked like a hard
+proposition for a while."
+
+"How was it?  Tell me about it!" insisted the boy eagerly.  "You
+don't know how impatient I've been.  The clerk at the Land Office
+merely told me it was all right.  How did you fix it?"
+
+While Thorpe washed and shaved and leisurely freshened himself, he
+detailed his experiences of the last week.
+
+"And," he concluded gravely, "there's only one man I know or ever
+heard of to whom I would have considered it worth while even to
+think of sending that telegram, and you are he.  Somehow I knew
+you'd come to the scratch."
+
+"It's the most exciting thing I ever heard of," sighed Wallace
+drawing a full breath, "and I wasn't in it!  It's the sort of thing
+I long for.  If I'd only waited another two weeks before coming
+down!"
+
+"In that case we couldn't have gotten hold of the money, remember,"
+smiled Thorpe.
+
+"That's so."  Wallace brightened.  "I did count, didn't I?"
+
+"I thought so about ten o'clock this morning," Thorpe replied.
+
+"Suppose you hadn't stumbled on their camp; suppose Injin Charley
+hadn't seen them go up-river; suppose you hadn't struck that little
+mill town JUST at the time you did!" marvelled Wallace.
+
+"That's always the way," philosophized Thorpe in reply.  "It's the
+old story of 'if the horse-shoe nail hadn't been lost,' you know.
+But we got there; and that's the important thing."
+
+"We did!" cried the boy, his enthusiasm rekindling, "and to-night
+we'll celebrate with the best dinner we ran buy in town!"
+
+Thorpe was tempted, but remembered the thirty dollars in his pocket,
+and looked doubtful.
+
+Carpenter possessed, as part of his volatile enthusiastic temperament,
+keen intuitions.
+
+"Don't refuse!" he begged.  "I've set my heart on giving my senior
+partner a dinner.  Surely you won't refuse to be my guest here, as I
+was yours in the woods!"
+
+"Wallace," said Thorpe, "I'll go you.  I'd like to dine with you;
+but moreover, I'll confess, I should like to eat a good dinner again.
+It's been more than a year since I've seen a salad, or heard of
+after-dinner coffee."
+
+"Come on then," cried Wallace.
+
+Together they sauntered through the lengthening shadows to a certain
+small restaurant near Woodward Avenue, then much in vogue among
+Detroit's epicures.  It contained only a half dozen tables, but was
+spotlessly clean, and its cuisine was unrivalled.  A large fireplace
+near the center of the room robbed it of half its restaurant air; and
+a thick carpet on the floor took the rest.  The walls were decorated
+in dark colors after the German style.  Several easy chairs grouped
+before the fireplace, and a light wicker table heaped with magazines
+and papers invited the guests to lounge while their orders were
+being prepared.
+
+Thorpe was not in the least Sybaritic in his tastes, but he could
+not stifle a sigh of satisfaction at sinking so naturally into the
+unobtrusive little comforts which the ornamental life offers to its
+votaries.  They rose up around him and pillowed him, and were grateful
+to the tired fibers of his being.  His remoter past had enjoyed these
+things as a matter of course.  They had framed the background to his
+daily habit.  Now that the background had again slid into place on
+noiseless grooves, Thorpe for the first time became conscious that
+his strenuous life had indeed been in the open air, and that the
+winds of earnest endeavor, while bracing, had chilled.  Wallace
+Carpenter, with the poet's insight and sympathy, saw and understood
+this feeling.
+
+"I want you to order this dinner," said he, handing over to Thorpe
+the card which an impossibly correct waiter presented him.  "And I
+want it a good one.  I want you to begin at the beginning and skip
+nothing.  Pretend you are ordering just the dinner you would like
+to offer your sister," he suggested on a sudden inspiration.  "I
+assure you I'll try to be just as critical and exigent as she would
+be."
+
+Thorpe took up the card dreamily.
+
+"There are no oysters and clams now," said he, "so we'll pass
+right on to the soup.  It seems to me a desecration to pretend to
+replace them.  We'll have a bisque," he told the waiter, "rich and
+creamy.  Then planked whitefish, and have them just a light crisp,
+brown.  You can bring some celery, too, if you have it fresh and
+good.  And for entree tell your cook to make some macaroni au gratin,
+but the inside must be soft and very creamy, and the outside very
+crisp.  I know it's a queer dish for a formal dinner like ours," he
+addressed Wallace with a little laugh, "but it's very, very good.
+We'll have roast beef, rare and juicy;--if you bring it any way but
+a cooked red, I'll send it back;--and potatoes roasted with the meat
+and brown gravy.  Then the breast of chicken with the salad, in the
+French fashion.  And I'll make the dressing.  We'll have an ice and
+some fruit for dessert.  Black coffee."
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the waiter, his pencil poised.  "And the wines?"
+
+Thorpe ruminated sleepily.
+
+"A rich red Burgundy," he decided, "for all the dinner.  If your
+cellar contains a very good smooth Beaune, we'll have that."
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the waiter, and departed.
+
+Thorpe sat and gazed moodily into the wood fire, Wallace respected
+his silence.  It was yet too early for the fashionable world, so the
+two friends had the place to themselves.  Gradually the twilight
+fell; strange shadows leaped and died on the wall.  A boy dressed
+all in white turned on the lights.  By and by the waiter announced
+that their repast awaited them.
+
+Thorpe ate, his eyes half closed, in somnolent satisfaction.
+Occasionally he smiled contentedly across at Wallace, who smiled
+in response.  After the coffee he had the waiter bring cigars.
+They went back between the tables to a little upholstered smoking
+room, where they sank into the depths of leather chairs, and blew
+the gray clouds of smoke towards the ceiling.  About nine o'clock
+Thorpe spoke the first word.
+
+"I'm stupid this evening, I'm afraid," said he, shaking himself.
+"Don't think on that account I am not enjoying your dinner.  I
+believe," he asserted earnestly, "that I never had such an altogether
+comfortable, happy evening before in my life."
+
+"I know," replied Wallace sympathetically.
+
+"It seems just now," went on Thorpe, sinking more luxuriously into
+his armchair, "that this alone is living--to exist in an environment
+exquisitely toned; to eat, to drink, to smoke the best, not like a
+gormand, but delicately as an artist would.  It is the flower of our
+civilization."
+
+Wallace remembered the turmoil of the wilderness brook; the little
+birch knoll, yellow in the evening glow; the mellow voice of the
+summer night crooning through the pines.  But he had the rare tact
+to say nothing.
+
+"Did it ever occur to you that what you needed, when sort of tired
+out this way," he said abruptly after a moment, "is a woman to
+understand and sympathize?  Wouldn't it have made this evening
+perfect to have seen opposite you a being whom you loved, who
+understood your moments of weariness, as well as your moments of
+strength?"
+
+"No," replied Thorpe, stretching his arms over his head, "a woman
+would have talked.  It takes a friend and a man, to know when to
+keep silent for three straight hours."
+
+The waiter brought the bill on a tray, and Carpenter paid it.
+
+"Wallace," said Thorpe suddenly after a long interval, "we'll
+borrow enough by mortgaging our land to supply the working
+expenses.  I suppose capital will have to investigate, and that'll
+take time; but I can begin to pick up a crew and make arrangements
+for transportation and supplies.  You can let me have a thousand
+dollars on the new Company's note for initial expenses.  We'll
+draw up articles of partnership to-morrow."
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV
+
+
+Next day the articles of partnership were drawn; and Carpenter gave
+his note for the necessary expenses.  Then in answer to a pencilled
+card which Mr. Morrison had evidently left at Thorpe's hotel in
+person, both young men called at the lumberman's place of business.
+They were ushered immediately into the private office.
+
+Mr. Morrison was a smart little man with an ingratiating manner and
+a fishy eye.  He greeted Thorpe with marked geniality.
+
+"My opponent of yesterday!" he cried jocularly.  "Sit down, Mr.
+Thorpe!
+Although you did me out of some land I had made every preparation to
+purchase, I can't but admire your grit and resourcefulness.  How did
+you get here ahead of us?"
+
+"I walked across the upper peninsula, and caught a boat," replied
+Thorpe briefly.
+
+"Indeed, INDEED!" replied Mr. Morrison, placing the tips of his
+fingers together.  "Extraordinary! Well, Mr. Thorpe, you overreached
+us nicely; and I suppose we must pay for our carelessness.  We must
+have that pine, even though we pay stumpage on it.  Now what would
+you consider a fair price for it?"
+
+"It is not for sale," answered Thorpe.
+
+"We'll waive all that.  Of course it is to your interest to make
+difficulties and run the price up as high as you can.  But my time
+is somewhat occupied just at present, so I would be very glad to
+hear your top price--we will come to an agreement afterwards."
+
+"You do not understand me, Mr. Morrison.  I told you the pine is
+not for sale, and I mean it."
+
+"But surely--What did you buy it for, then?" cried Mr. Morrison,
+with evidences of a growing excitement.
+
+"We intend to manufacture it."
+
+Mr. Morrison's fishy eyes nearly popped out of his head.  He
+controlled himself with an effort.
+
+"Mr. Thorpe," said he, "let us try to be reasonable.  Our case
+stands this way.  We have gone to a great deal of expense on
+the Ossawinamakee in expectation of undertaking very extensive
+operations there.  To that end we have cleared the stream, built
+three dams, and have laid the foundations of a harbor and boom.
+This has been very expensive.  Now your purchase includes most of
+what we had meant to log.  You have, roughly speaking, about three
+hundred millions in your holding, in addition to which there are
+several millions scattering near it, which would pay nobody but
+yourself to get in.  Our holdings are further up stream, and
+comprise only about the equal of yours."
+
+"Three hundred millions are not to be sneezed at," replied Thorpe.
+
+"Certainly not," agreed Morrison, suavely, gaining confidence from
+the sound of his own voice.  "Not in this country.  But you must
+remember that a man goes into the northern peninsula only because
+he can get something better there than here.  When the firm of
+Morrison & Daly establishes itself now, it must be for the last
+time.  We want enough timber to do us for the rest of the time we
+are in business."
+
+"In that case, you will have to hunt up another locality," replied
+Thorpe calmly.
+
+Morrison's eyes flashed.  But he retained his appearance of geniality,
+and appealed to Wallace Carpenter.
+
+"Then you will retain the advantage of our dams and improvements,"
+said he.  "Is that fair?"
+
+"No, not on the face of it," admitted Thorpe.  "But you did your
+work in a navigable stream for private purposes, without the consent
+of the Board of Control.  Your presence on the river is illegal.
+You should have taken out a charter as an Improvement Company.  Then
+as long as you 'tended to business and kept the concern in repair,
+we'd have paid you a toll per thousand feet.  As soon as you let it
+slide, however, the works would revert to the State.  I won't hinder
+your doing that yet; although I might.  Take out your charter and
+fix your rate of toll."
+
+"In other words, you force us to stay there and run a little two-by-
+four Improvement Company for your benefit, or else lose the value of
+our improvements?"
+
+"Suit yourself," answered Thorpe carelessly.  "You can always log
+your present holdings."
+
+"Very well," cried Morrison, so suddenly in a passion that Wallace
+started back.  "It's war!  And let me tell you this, young man;
+you're a new concern and we're an old one.  We'll crush you like
+THAT!"  He crisped an envelope vindictively, and threw it in the
+waste-basket.
+
+"Crush ahead," replied Thorpe with great good humor.  "Good-day,
+Mr. Morrison," and the two went out.
+
+Wallace was sputtering and trembling with nervous excitement.  His
+was one of those temperaments which require action to relieve the
+stress of a stormy interview.  He was brave enough, but he would
+always tremble in the presence of danger until the moment for
+striking arrived.  He wanted to do something at once.
+
+"Hadn't we better see a lawyer?" he asked.  "Oughtn't we to look
+out that they don't take some of our pine?  Oughtn't we---"
+
+"You just leave all that to me," replied Thorpe.  "The first thing
+we want to do is to rustle some money."
+
+"And you can leave THAT to ME," echoed Wallace.  "I know a little
+of such things, and I have business connections who know more.  You
+just get the camp running."
+
+"I'll start for Bay City to-night," submitted Thorpe.  "There
+ought to be a good lot of lumber-jacks lying around idle at this
+time of year; and it's a good place to outfit from because we can
+probably get freight rates direct by boat.  We'll be a little late
+in starting, but we'll get in SOME logs this winter, anyway."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+THE BLAZING OF THE TRAIL
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI
+
+
+A lumbering town after the drive is a fearful thing.  Men just
+off the river draw a deep breath, and plunge into the wildest
+reactionary dissipation.  In droves they invade the cities,--wild,
+picturesque, lawless.  As long as the money lasts, they blow it in.
+
+"Hot money!" is the cry.  "She's burnt holes in all my pockets
+already!"
+
+The saloons are full, the gambling houses overflow, all the places
+of amusement or crime run full blast.  A chip rests lightly on
+everyone's shoulder.  Fights are as common as raspberries in August.
+Often one of these formidable men, his muscles toughened and
+quickened by the active, strenuous river work, will set out to "take
+the town apart."  For a time he leaves rack and ruin, black eyes and
+broken teeth behind him, until he meets a more redoubtable "knocker"
+and is pounded and kicked into unconsciousness.  Organized gangs go
+from house to house forcing the peaceful inmates to drink from their
+bottles.  Others take possession of certain sections of the street
+and resist "a l'outrance" the attempts of others to pass.  Inoffensive
+citizens are stood on their heads, or shaken upside down until the
+contents of their pockets rattle on the street.  Parenthetically,
+these contents are invariably returned to their owners.  The
+riverman's object is fun, not robbery.
+
+And if rip-roaring, swashbuckling, drunken glory is what he is after,
+he gets it.  The only trouble is, that a whole winter's hard work
+goes in two or three weeks.  The only redeeming feature is, that he
+is never, in or out of his cups, afraid of anything that walks the
+earth.
+
+A man comes out of the woods or off the drive with two or three
+hundred dollars, which he is only too anxious to throw away by the
+double handful.  It follows naturally that a crew of sharpers are
+on hand to find out who gets it.  They are a hard lot.  Bold,
+unprincipled men, they too are afraid of nothing; not even a
+drunken lumber-jack, which is one of the dangerous wild animals
+of the American fauna.  Their business is to relieve the man of
+his money as soon as possible.  They are experts at their business.
+
+The towns of Bay City and Saginaw alone in 1878 supported over
+fourteen hundred tough characters.  Block after block was devoted
+entirely to saloons.  In a radius of three hundred feet from the
+famous old Catacombs could be numbered forty saloons, where drinks
+were sold by from three to ten "pretty waiter girls."  When the
+boys struck town, the proprietors and waitresses stood in their
+doorways to welcome them.
+
+"Why, Jack!" one would cry, "when did you drift in?  Tickled to
+death to see you!  Come in an' have a drink.  That your chum?  Come
+in, old man, and have a drink.  Never mind the pay; that's all right."
+
+And after the first drink, Jack, of course, had to treat, and then
+the chum.
+
+Or if Jack resisted temptation and walked resolutely on, one of the
+girls would remark audibly to another.
+
+"He ain't no lumber-jack!  You can see that easy 'nuff!  He's jest
+off th' hay-trail!"
+
+Ten to one that brought him, for the woodsman is above all things
+proud and jealous of his craft.
+
+In the center of this whirlpool of iniquity stood the Catacombs as
+the hub from which lesser spokes in the wheel radiated.  Any old
+logger of the Saginaw Valley can tell you of the Catacombs, just
+as any old logger of any other valley will tell you of the "Pen,"
+the "White Row," the "Water Streets" of Alpena, Port Huron,
+Ludington, Muskegon, and a dozen other lumber towns.
+
+The Catacombs was a three-story building.  In the basement were
+vile, ill-smelling, ill-lighted dens, small, isolated, dangerous.
+The shanty boy with a small stake, far gone in drunkenness, there
+tasted the last drop of wickedness, and thence was flung unconscious
+and penniless on the streets.  A trap-door directly into the river
+accommodated those who were inconsiderate enough to succumb under
+rough treatment.
+
+The second story was given over to drinking.  Polly Dickson there
+reigned supreme, an anomaly.  She was as pretty and fresh and
+pure-looking as a child; and at the same time was one of the most
+ruthless and unscrupulous of the gang.  She could at will exercise
+a fascination the more terrible in that it appealed at once to her
+victim's nobler instincts of reverence, his capacity for what might
+be called aesthetic fascination, as well as his passions.  When she
+finally held him, she crushed him as calmly as she would a fly.
+
+Four bars supplied the drinkables.  Dozens of "pretty waiter girls"
+served the customers.  A force of professional fighters was maintained
+by the establishment to preserve that degree of peace which should
+look to the preservation of mirrors and glassware.
+
+The third story contained a dance hall and a theater.  The character
+of both would better be left to the imagination.
+
+Night after night during the season, this den ran at top-steam.
+
+By midnight, when the orgy was at its height, the windows brilliantly
+illuminated, the various bursts of music, laughing, cursing, singing,
+shouting, fighting, breaking in turn or all together from its open
+windows, it was, as Jackson Hines once expressed it to me, like hell
+let out for noon.
+
+The respectable elements of the towns were powerless.  They could
+not control the elections.  Their police would only have risked
+total annihilation by attempting a raid.  At the first sign of
+trouble they walked straightly in the paths of their own affairs,
+awaiting the time soon to come when, his stake "blown-in," the
+last bitter dregs of his pleasure gulped down, the shanty boy would
+again start for the woods.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII
+
+
+Now in August, however, the first turmoil had died.  The "jam" had
+boiled into town, "taken it apart," and left the inhabitants to
+piece it together again as they could; the "rear" had not yet
+arrived.  As a consequence, Thorpe found the city comparatively
+quiet.
+
+Here and there swaggered a strapping riverman, his small felt hat
+cocked aggressively over one eye, its brim curled up behind; a
+cigar stump protruding at an angle from beneath his sweeping
+moustache; his hands thrust into the pockets of his trousers,
+"stagged" off at the knee; the spikes of his river boots cutting
+little triangular pieces from the wooden sidewalk.  His eye was
+aggressively humorous, and the smile of his face was a challenge.
+
+For in the last month he had faced almost certain death a dozen
+times a day.  He had ridden logs down the rapids where a loss of
+balance meant in one instant a ducking and in the next a blow on
+the back from some following battering-ram; he had tugged and
+strained and jerked with his peavey under a sheer wall of tangled
+timber twenty feet high,--behind which pressed the full power of
+the freshet,--only to jump with the agility of a cat from one bit
+of unstable footing to another when the first sharp CRACK warned him
+that he had done his work, and that the whole mass was about to
+break down on him like a wave on the shore; he had worked fourteen
+hours a day in ice-water, and had slept damp; he had pried at the
+key log in the rollways on the bank until the whole pile had begun
+to rattle down into the river like a cascade, and had jumped, or
+ridden, or even dived out of danger at the last second.  In a
+hundred passes he had juggled with death as a child plays with a
+rubber balloon.  No wonder that he has brought to the town and his
+vices a little of the lofty bearing of an heroic age.  No wonder
+that he fears no man, since nature's most terrible forces of the
+flood have hurled a thousand weapons at him in vain.  His muscles
+have been hardened, his eye is quiet and sure, his courage is
+undaunted, and his movements are as quick and accurate as a panther's.
+Probably nowhere in the world is a more dangerous man of his hands
+than the riverman.  He would rather fight than eat, especially when
+he is drunk, as, like the cow-boy, he usually is when he gets into
+town.  A history could be written of the feuds, the wars, the raids
+instituted by one camp or one town against another.
+
+The men would go in force sometimes to another city with the avowed
+purpose of cleaning it out.  One battle I know of lasted nearly all
+night.  Deadly weapons were almost never resorted to, unless indeed
+a hundred and eighty pounds of muscle behind a fist hard as iron
+might be considered a deadly weapon.  A man hard pressed by numbers
+often resorted to a billiard cue, or an ax, or anything else that
+happened to be handy, but that was an expedient called out by
+necessity.  Knives or six-shooters implied a certain premeditation
+which was discountenanced.
+
+On the other hand, the code of fair fighting obtained hardly at
+all.  The long spikes of river-boots made an admirable weapon in the
+straight kick.  I have seen men whose faces were punctured as thickly
+as though by small-pox, where the steel points had penetrated.  In a
+free-for-all knock-down-and-drag-out, kicking, gouging, and biting
+are all legitimate.  Anything to injure the other man, provided
+always you do not knife him.  And when you take a half dozen of these
+enduring, active, muscular, and fiery men, not one entertaining in
+his innermost heart the faintest hesitation or fear, and set them at
+each other with the lightning tirelessness of so many wild-cats, you
+get as hard a fight as you could desire.  And they seem to like it.
+
+One old fellow, a good deal of a character in his way, used to be
+on the "drive" for a firm lumbering near Six Lakes.   He was
+intensely loyal to his "Old Fellows," and every time he got a
+little "budge" in him, he instituted a raid on the town owned by
+a rival firm.  So frequent and so severe did these battles become
+that finally the men were informed that another such expedition
+would mean instant discharge.  The rule had its effect.  The raids
+ceased.
+
+But one day old Dan visited the saloon once too often.  He became
+very warlike.  The other men merely laughed, for they were strong
+enough themselves to recognize firmness in others, and it never
+occurred to them that they could disobey so absolute a command.
+So finally Dan started out quite alone.
+
+He invaded the enemy's camp, attempted to clean out the saloon with
+a billiard cue single handed, was knocked down, and would have been
+kicked to death as he lay on the floor if he had not succeeded in
+rolling under the billiard table where the men's boots could not
+reach him.  As it was, his clothes were literally torn to ribbons,
+one eye was blacked, his nose broken, one ear hung to its place by
+a mere shred of skin, and his face and flesh were ripped and torn
+everywhere by the "corks" on the boots.  Any but a riverman would
+have qualified for the hospital.  Dan rolled to the other side of
+the table, made a sudden break, and escaped.
+
+But his fighting blood was not all spilled.  He raided the butcher-
+shop, seized the big carving knife, and returned to the battle field.
+
+The enemy decamped--rapidly--some of them through the window.  Dan
+managed to get in but one blow.  He ripped the coat down the man's
+back as neatly as though it had been done with shears, one clean
+straight cut from collar to bottom seam.  A quarter of an inch
+nearer would have split the fellow's backbone.  As it was, he
+escaped without even a scratch.
+
+Dan commandeered two bottles of whisky, and, gory and wounded as he
+was, took up the six-mile tramp home, bearing the knife over his
+shoulder as a banner of triumph.
+
+Next morning, weak from the combined effects of war and whisky, he
+reported to headquarters.
+
+"What is it, Dan?" asked the Old Fellow without turning.
+
+"I come to get my time," replied the riverman humbly.
+
+"What for?" inquired the lumberman.
+
+"I have been over to Howard City," confessed Dan.
+
+The owner turned and looked him over.
+
+"They sort of got ahead of me a little," explained Dan sheepishly.
+
+The lumberman took stock of the old man's cuts and bruises, and
+turned away to hide a smile.
+
+"I guess I'll let you off this trip," said he.  "Go to work--when
+you can.  I don't believe you'll go back there again."
+
+"No, sir," replied Dan humbly."
+
+And so the life of alternate work and pleasure, both full of personal
+danger, develops in time a class of men whose like is be found only
+among the cowboys, scouts, trappers, and Indian fighters of our other
+frontiers.  The moralists will always hold up the hands of horror at
+such types; the philosopher will admire them as the last incarnation
+of the heroic age, when the man is bigger than his work.  Soon the
+factories, the machines, the mechanical structures and constructions,
+the various branches of co-operation will produce quasi-automatically
+institutions evidently more important than the genius or force of
+any one human being.  The personal element will have become nearly
+eliminated.  In the woods and on the frontier still are many whose
+powers are greater than their works; whose fame is greater than their
+deeds.  They are men, powerful, virile, even brutal at times; but
+magnificent with the strength of courage and resource.
+
+All this may seem a digression from the thread of our tale, but as
+a matter of fact it is necessary that you understand the conditions
+of the time and place in which Harry Thorpe had set himself the duty
+of success.
+
+He had seen too much of incompetent labor to be satisfied with
+anything but the best.  Although his ideas were not as yet
+formulated, he hoped to be able to pick up a crew of first-class
+men from those who had come down with the advance, or "jam," of the
+spring's drive.  They should have finished their orgies by now, and,
+empty of pocket, should be found hanging about the boarding-houses
+and the quieter saloons.  Thorpe intended to offer good wages for
+good men.  He would not need more than twenty at first, for during
+the approaching winter he purposed to log on a very small scale
+indeed.  The time for expansion would come later.
+
+With this object in view he set out from his hotel about half-past
+seven on the day of his arrival, to cruise about in the lumber-jack
+district already described.  The hotel clerk had obligingly given him
+the names of a number of the quieter saloons, where the boys "hung
+out" between bursts of prosperity.  In the first of these Thorpe was
+helped materially in his vague and uncertain quest by encountering
+an old acquaintance.
+
+From the sidewalk he heard the vigorous sounds of a one-sided
+altercation punctuated by frequent bursts of quickly silenced
+laughter.  Evidently some one was very angry, and the rest amused.
+After a moment Thorpe imagined he recognized the excited voice.  So
+he pushed open the swinging screen door and entered.
+
+The place was typical.  Across one side ran the hard-wood bar with
+foot-rest and little towels hung in metal clasps under its edge.
+Behind it was a long mirror, a symmetrical pile of glasses, a
+number of plain or ornamental bottles, and a miniature keg or so of
+porcelain containing the finer whiskys and brandies.  The bar-keeper
+drew beer from two pumps immediately in front of him, and rinsed
+glasses in some sort of a sink under the edge of the bar.  The
+center of the room was occupied by a tremendous stove capable of
+burning whole logs of cordwood.  A stovepipe led from the stove here
+and there in wire suspension to a final exit near the other corner.
+On the wall were two sporting chromos, and a good variety of
+lithographed calendars and illuminated tin signs advertising beers
+and spirits.  The floor was liberally sprinkled with damp sawdust,
+and was occupied, besides the stove, by a number of wooden chairs
+and a single round table.
+
+The latter, a clumsy heavy affair beyond the strength of an ordinary
+man, was being deftly interposed between himself and the attacks of
+the possessor of the angry voice by a gigantic young riverman in the
+conventional stagged (i.e., chopped off) trousers, "cork" shoes, and
+broad belt typical of his craft.  In the aggressor Thorpe recognized
+old Jackson Hines.
+
+"Damn you!" cried the old man, qualifying the oath, "let me get at
+you, you great big sock-stealer, I'll make you hop high!  I'll snatch
+you bald-headed so quick that you'll think you never had any hair!"
+
+"I'll settle with you in the morning, Jackson," laughed the riverman.
+
+"You want to eat a good breakfast, then, because you won't have no
+appetite for dinner."
+
+The men roared, with encouraging calls.  The riverman put on a
+ludicrous appearance of offended dignity.
+
+"Oh, you needn't swell up like a poisoned pup!" cried old Jackson
+plaintively, ceasing his attacks from sheer weariness.  "You know
+you're as safe as a cow tied to a brick wall behind that table."
+
+Thorpe seized the opportunity to approach.
+
+"Hello, Jackson," said he.
+
+The old man peered at him out of the blur of his excitement.
+
+"Don't you know me?" inquired Thorpe.
+
+"Them lamps gives 'bout as much light as a piece of chalk,"
+complained Jackson testily.  "Knows you?  You bet I do! How are
+you, Harry?  Where you been keepin' yourself?  You look 'bout as
+fat as a stall-fed knittin' needle."
+
+"I've been landlooking in the upper peninsula," explained Thorpe,
+"on the Ossawinamakee, up in the Marquette country."
+
+"Sho'" commented Jackson in wonder, "way up there where the moon
+changes!"
+
+"It's a fine country," went on Thorpe so everyone could hear, "with
+a great cutting of white pine.  It runs as high as twelve hundred
+thousand to the forty sometimes."
+
+"Trees clean an' free of limbs?" asked Jackson.
+
+"They're as good as the stuff over on seventeen; you remember that."
+
+"Clean as a baby's leg," agreed Jackson.
+
+"Have a glass of beer?" asked Thorpe.
+
+"Dry as a tobacco box," confessed Hines.
+
+"Have something, the rest of you?" invited Thorpe.
+
+So they all drank.
+
+On a sudden inspiration Thorpe resolved to ask the old man's advice
+as to crew and horses.  It might not be good for much, but it would
+do no harm.
+
+Jackson listened attentively to the other's brief recital.
+
+"Why don't you see Tim Shearer?  He ain't doin' nothin' since the
+jam came down," was his comment.
+
+"Isn't he with the M. & D. people?" asked Thorpe.
+
+"Nope.  Quit."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"'Count of Morrison.  Morrison he comes up to run things some.  He
+does.  Tim he's getting the drive in shape, and he don't want to be
+bothered, but old Morrison he's as busy as hell beatin' tan-bark.
+Finally Tim, he calls him.  "'Look here, Mr. Morrison,' says he,
+'I'm runnin' this drive.  If I don't get her there, all right; you
+can give me my time.  'Till then you ain't got nothin' to say.'
+
+"Well, that makes the Old Fellow as sore as a scalded pup.  He's
+used to bossin' clerks and such things, and don't have much of an
+idea of lumber-jacks.  He has big ideas of respect, so he 'calls'
+Tim dignified like.
+
+"Tim didn't hit him; but I guess he felt like th' man who met the
+bear without any weapon,--even a newspaper would 'a' come handy.  He
+hands in his time t' once and quits.  Sence then he's been as mad as
+a bar-keep with a lead quarter, which ain't usual for Tim.  He's been
+filin' his teeth for M. & D. right along.  Somethin's behind it all,
+I reckon."
+
+"Where'll I find him?" asked Thorpe.
+
+Jackson gave the name of a small boarding-house.  Shortly after,
+Thorpe left him to amuse the others with his unique conversation,
+and hunted up Shearer's stopping-place.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII
+
+
+The boarding-house proved to be of the typical lumber-jack class, a
+narrow "stoop," a hall-way and stairs in the center, and an office
+and bar on either side.  Shearer and a half dozen other men about
+his own age sat, their chairs on two legs and their "cork" boots on
+the rounds of the chairs, smoking placidly in the tepid evening air.
+The light came from inside the building, so that while Thorpe was
+in plain view, he could not make out which of the dark figures on
+the piazza was the man he wanted.  He approached, and attempted an
+identifying scrutiny.  The men, with the taciturnity of their class
+in the presence of a stranger, said nothing.
+
+"Well, bub," finally drawled a voice from the corner, "blowed that
+stake you made out of Radway, yet?"
+
+"That you, Shearer?" inquired Thorpe advancing.  "You're the man I'm
+looking for."
+
+"You've found me," replied the old man dryly.
+
+Thorpe was requested elaborately to "shake hands" with the owners
+of six names.  Then he had a chance to intimate quietly to Shearer
+that he wanted a word with him alone.  The riverman rose silently
+and led the way up the straight, uncarpeted stairs, along a narrow,
+uncarpeted hall, to a square, uncarpeted bedroom.  The walls and
+ceiling of this apartment were of unpainted planed pine.  It
+contained a cheap bureau, one chair, and a bed and washstand to
+match the bureau.  Shearer lit the lamp and sat on the bed.
+
+"What is it?" he asked.
+
+"I have a little pine up in the northern peninsula within walking
+distance of Marquette," said Thorpe, "and I want to get a crew of
+about twenty men.  It occurred to me that you might be willing to
+help me."
+
+The riverman frowned steadily at his interlocutor from under his
+bushy brows.
+
+"How much pine you got?" he asked finally.
+
+"About three hundred millions," replied Thorpe quietly.
+
+The old man's blue eyes fixed themselves with unwavering steadiness
+on Thorpe's face.
+
+"You're jobbing some of it, eh?" he submitted finally as the only
+probable conclusion.  "Do you think you know enough about it?  Who
+does it belong to?"
+
+"It belongs to a man named Carpenter and myself."
+
+The riverman pondered this slowly for an appreciable interval, and
+then shot out another question.
+
+"How'd you get it?"
+
+Thorpe told him simply, omitting nothing except the name of the firm
+up-river.  When he had finished, Shearer evinced no astonishment nor
+approval.
+
+"You done well," he commented finally.  Then after another interval:
+
+"Have you found out who was the men stealin' the pine?"
+
+"Yes," replied Thorpe quietly, "it was Morrison & Daly."
+
+The old man flickered not an eyelid.  He slowly filled his pipe and
+lit it.
+
+"I'll get you a crew of men," said he, "if you'll take me as foreman."
+
+"But it's a little job at first," protested Thorpe.  "I only want
+a camp of twenty.  It wouldn't be worth your while."
+
+"That's my look-out.  I'll take th' job," replied the logger grimly.
+"You got three hundred million there, ain't you?  And you're goin'
+to cut it?  It ain't such a small job."
+
+Thorpe could hardly believe his good-fortune in having gained so
+important a recruit.  With a practical man as foreman, his mind
+would be relieved of a great deal of worry over unfamiliar detail.
+He saw at once that he would himself be able to perform all the
+duties of scaler, keep in touch with the needs of the camp, and
+supervise the campaign.  Nevertheless he answered the older man's
+glance with one as keen, and said:
+
+"Look here, Shearer, if you take this job, we may as well understand
+each other at the start.  This is going to be my camp, and I'm going
+to be boss.  I don't know much about logging, and I shall want you
+to take charge of all that, but I shall want to know just why you do
+each thing, and if my judgment advises otherwise, my judgment goes.
+If I want to discharge a man, he WALKS without any question.  I know
+about what I shall expect of each man; and I intend to get it out of
+him.  And in questions of policy mine is the say-so every trip.  Now
+I know you're a good man, one of the best there is,and I presume I
+shall find your judgment the best, but I don't want any mistakes to
+start with.  If you want to be my foreman on those terms, just say
+so, and I'll be tickled to death to have you."
+
+For the first time the lumberman's face lost, during a single
+instant, its mask of immobility.  His steel-blue eyes flashed, his
+mouth twitched with some strong emotion.  For the first time, too,
+he spoke without his contemplative pause of preparation.
+
+"That's th' way to talk!" he cried.  "Go with you?  Well I should
+rise to remark!  You're the boss; and I always said it.  I'll get
+you a gang of bully boys that will roll logs till there's skating
+in hell!"
+
+Thorpe left, after making an appointment at his own hotel for the
+following day, more than pleased with his luck.  Although he had by
+now fairly good and practical ideas in regard to the logging of a
+bunch of pine, he felt himself to be very deficient in the details.
+In fact, he anticipated his next step with shaky confidence.  He
+would now be called upon to buy four or five teams of horses, and
+enough feed to last them the entire winter; he would have to arrange
+for provisions in abundance and variety for his men; he would have to
+figure on blankets, harness, cook-camp utensils, stoves, blacksmith
+tools, iron, axes, chains, cant-hooks, van-goods, pails, lamps, oil,
+matches, all sorts of hardware,--in short, all the thousand and one
+things, from needles to court-plaster, of which a self-sufficing
+community might come in need.  And he would have to figure out his
+requirements for the entire winter.  After navigation closed, he
+could import nothing more.
+
+How could he know what to buy,--how many barrels of flour, how much
+coffee, raisins, baking powder, soda, pork, beans, dried apples,
+sugar, nutmeg, pepper, salt, crackers, molasses, ginger, lard, tea,
+corned beef, catsup, mustard,--to last twenty men five or six months?
+How could he be expected to think of each item of a list of two
+hundred, the lack of which meant measureless bother, and the
+desirability of which suggested itself only when the necessity
+arose?  It is easy, when the mind is occupied with multitudinous
+detail, to forget simple things, like brooms or iron shovels.  With
+Tim Shearer to help his inexperience, he felt easy.  He knew he
+could attend to advantageous buying, and to making arrangements
+with the steamship line to Marquette for the landing of his goods
+at the mouth of the Ossawinamakee.
+
+Deep in these thoughts, he wandered on at random.  He suddenly came
+to himself in the toughest quarter of Bay City.
+
+Through the summer night shrilled the sound of cachinations painted
+to the colors of mirth.  A cheap piano rattled and thumped through
+an open window.  Men's and women's voices mingled in rising and
+falling gradations of harshness.  Lights streamed irregularly across
+the dark.
+
+Thorpe became aware of a figure crouched in the door-way almost at
+his feet.  The sill lay in shadow so the bulk was lost, but the
+flickering rays of a distant street lamp threw into relief the
+high-lights of a violin, and a head.  The face upturned to him was
+thin and white and wolfish under a broad white brow.  Dark eyes
+gleamed at him with the expression of a fierce animal.  Across the
+forehead ran a long but shallow cut from which blood dripped.  The
+creature clasped both arms around a violin.  He crouched there and
+stared up at Thorpe, who stared down at him.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked the latter finally.
+
+The creature made no reply, but drew his arms closer about his
+instrument, and blinked his wolf eyes.
+
+Moved by some strange, half-tolerant whim of compassion, Thorpe
+made a sign to the unknown to rise.
+
+"Come with me," said he, "and I'll have your forehead attended to."
+
+The wolf eyes gleamed into his with a sudden savage concentration.
+Then their owner obediently arose.
+
+Thorpe now saw that the body before him was of a cripple, short-
+legged, hunch-backed, long-armed, pigeon-breasted.  The large
+head sat strangely top-heavy between even the broad shoulders.
+It confirmed the hopeless but sullen despair that brooded on the
+white countenance.
+
+At the hotel Thorpe, examining the cut, found it more serious in
+appearance than in reality.  With a few pieces of sticking plaster
+he drew its edges together.
+
+Then he attempted to interrogate his find.
+
+"What is your name?" he asked.
+
+"Phil."
+
+"Phil what?"
+
+Silence.
+
+"How did you get hurt?"
+
+No reply.
+
+"Were you playing your fiddle in one of those houses?"
+
+The cripple nodded slowly.
+
+"Are you hungry?" asked Thorpe, with a sudden thoughtfulness.
+
+"Yes," replied the cripple, with a lightning gleam in his wolf eyes.
+
+Thorpe rang the bell.  To the boy who answered it he said:
+
+"Bring me half a dozen beef sandwiches and a glass of milk, and be
+quick about it."
+
+"Do you play the fiddle much?" continued Thorpe.
+
+The cripple nodded again.
+
+"Let's hear what you can do."
+
+"They cut my strings!" cried Phil with a passionate wail.
+
+The cry came from the heart, and Thorpe was touched by it.  The price
+of strings was evidently a big sum.
+
+"I'll get you more in the morning," said he.  "Would you like to
+leave Bay City?"
+
+"Yes" cried the boy with passion.
+
+"You would have to work.  You would have to be chore-boy in a lumber
+camp, and play fiddle for the men when they wanted you to."
+
+"I'll do it," said the cripple.
+
+"Are you sure you could?  You will have to split all the wood for
+the men, the cook, and the office; you will have to draw the water,
+and fill the lamps, and keep the camps clean.  You will be paid for
+it, but it is quite a job.  And you would have to do it well.  If
+you did not do it well, I would discharge you."
+
+"I will do it!" repeated the cripple with a shade more earnestness.
+
+"All right, then I'll take you," replied Thorpe.
+
+The cripple said nothing, nor moved a muscle of his face, but the
+gleam of the wolf faded to give place to the soft, affectionate glow
+seen in the eyes of a setter dog.  Thorpe was startled at the change.
+
+A knock announced the sandwiches and milk.  The cripple fell upon
+them with both hands in a sudden ecstacy of hunger.  When he had
+finished, he looked again at Thorpe, and this time there were tears
+in his eyes.
+
+A little later Thorpe interviewed the proprietor of the hotel.
+
+"I wish you'd give this boy a good cheap room and charge his keep
+to me," said he.  "He's going north with me."
+
+Phil was led away by the irreverent porter, hugging tightly his
+unstrung violin to his bosom.
+
+Thorpe lay awake for some time after retiring.  Phil claimed a
+share of his thoughts.
+
+Thorpe's winter in the woods had impressed upon him that a good
+cook and a fiddler will do more to keep men contented than high
+wages and easy work.  So his protection of the cripple was not
+entirely disinterested.  But his imagination persisted in occupying
+itself with the boy.  What terrible life of want and vicious
+associates had he led in this terrible town?  What treatment could
+have lit that wolf-gleam in his eyes?  What hell had he inhabited
+that he was so eager to get away?  In an hour or so he dozed.  He
+dreamed that the cripple had grown to enormous proportions and was
+overshadowing his life.  A slight noise outside his bed-room door
+brought him to his feet.
+
+He opened the door and found that in the stillness of the night the
+poor deformed creature had taken the blankets from his bed and had
+spread them across the door-sill of the man who had befriended him.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX
+
+
+Three weeks later the steam barge Pole Star sailed down the reach
+of Saginaw Bay.
+
+Thorpe had received letters from Carpenter advising him of a credit
+to him at a Marquette bank, and inclosing a draft sufficient for
+current expenses.  Tim Shearer had helped make out the list of
+necessaries.  In time everything was loaded, the gang-plank hauled
+in, and the little band of Argonauts set their faces toward the
+point where the Big Dipper swings.
+
+The weather was beautiful.  Each morning the sun rose out of the
+frosty blue lake water, and set in a sea of deep purple.  The moon,
+once again at the full, drew broad paths across the pathless waste.
+From the southeast blew daily the lake trades, to die at sunset,
+and then to return in the soft still nights from the west.  A more
+propitious beginning for the adventure could not be imagined.
+
+The ten horses in the hold munched their hay and oats as peaceably
+as though at home in their own stables.  Jackson Hines had helped
+select them from the stock of firms changing locality or going out
+of business.  His judgment in such matters was infallible, but he
+had resolutely refused to take the position of barn-boss which
+Thorpe offered him.
+
+"No," said he, "she's too far north.  I'm gettin' old, and the
+rheumatics ain't what you might call abandonin' of me.  Up there
+it's colder than hell on a stoker's holiday."
+
+So Shearer had picked out a barn-boss of his own.  This man was
+important, for the horses are the mainstay of logging operations.
+He had selected also, a blacksmith, a cook, four teamsters, half
+a dozen cant-hook men, and as many handy with ax or saw.
+
+"The blacksmith is also a good wood-butcher (carpenter)," explained
+Shearer.  "Four teams is all we ought to keep going at a clip.  If
+we need a few axmen, we can pick 'em up at Marquette.  I think this
+gang'll stick.  I picked 'em."
+
+There was not a young man in the lot.  They were most of them in the
+prime of middle life, between thirty and forty, rugged in appearance,
+"cocky" in manner, with the swagger and the oath of so many
+buccaneers,
+hard as nails.  Altogether Thorpe thought them about as rough a set
+of customers as he had ever seen.  Throughout the day they played
+cards on deck, and spat tobacco juice abroad, and swore incessantly.
+Toward himself and Shearer their manner was an odd mixture of
+independent equality and a slight deference.  It was as much as
+to say, "You're the boss, but I'm as good a man as you any day."
+They would be a rough, turbulent, unruly mob to handle, but under
+a strong man they might accomplish wonders.
+
+Constituting the elite of the profession, as it were,--whose swagger
+every lad new to the woods and river tried to emulate, to whom
+lesser lights looked up as heroes and models, and whose lofty, half-
+contemptuous scorn of everything and everybody outside their circle
+of "bully boys" was truly the aristocracy of class,--Thorpe might
+have wondered at their consenting to work for an obscure little camp
+belonging to a greenhorn.  Loyalty to and pride in the firm for
+which he works is a strong characteristic of the lumber-jack.  He
+will fight at the drop of a hat on behalf of his "Old Fellows"; brag
+loud and long of the season's cut, the big loads, the smart methods
+of his camps; and even after he has been discharged for some flagrant
+debauch, he cherishes no rancor, but speaks with a soft reminiscence
+to the end of his days concerning "that winter in '8I when the Old
+Fellows put in sixty million on Flat River."
+
+For this reason he feels that he owes it to his reputation to ally
+himself only with firms of creditable size and efficiency.  The small
+camps are for the youngsters.  Occasionally you will see two or three
+of the veterans in such a camp, but it is generally a case of lacking
+something better.
+
+The truth is, Shearer had managed to inspire in the minds of his
+cronies an idea that they were about to participate in a fight.  He
+re-told Thorpe's story artistically, shading the yellows and the
+reds.  He detailed the situation as it existed.  The men agreed that
+the "young fellow had sand enough for a lake front."  After that
+there needed but a little skillful maneuvering to inspire them with
+the idea that it would be a great thing to take a hand, to "make a
+camp" in spite of the big concern up-river.
+
+Shearer knew that this attitude was tentative.  Everything depended
+on how well Thorpe lived up to his reputation at the outset,--how
+good a first impression of force and virility he would manage to
+convey,--for the first impression possessed the power of transmuting
+the present rather ill-defined enthusiasm into loyalty or
+dissatisfaction.  But Tim himself believed in Thorpe blindly.  So he
+had no fears.
+
+A little incident at the beginning of the voyage did much to reassure
+him.  It was on the old question of whisky.
+
+Thorpe had given orders that no whisky was to be brought aboard,
+as he intended to tolerate no high-sea orgies.  Soon after leaving
+dock he saw one of the teamsters drinking from a pint flask.  Without
+a word he stepped briskly forward, snatched the bottle from the man's
+lips, and threw it overboard.  Then he turned sharp on his heel and
+walked away, without troubling himself as to how the fellow was going
+to take it.
+
+The occurrence pleased the men, for it showed them they had made no
+mistake.  But it meant little else.  The chief danger really was
+lest they become too settled in the protective attitude.  As they
+took it, they were about, good-naturedly, to help along a worthy
+greenhorn.  This they considered exceedingly generous on their part,
+and in their own minds they were inclined to look on Thorpe much as
+a grown man would look on a child.  There needed an occasion for him
+to prove himself bigger than they.
+
+Fine weather followed them up the long blue reach of Lake Huron;
+into the noble breadth of the Detour Passage, past the opening
+through the Thousand Islands of the Georgian Bay; into the St.
+Mary's River.  They were locked through after some delay on
+account of the grain barges from Duluth, and at last turned their
+prow westward in the Big Sea Water, beyond which lay Hiawatha's
+Po-ne-mah, the Land of the Hereafter.
+
+Thorpe was about late that night, drinking in the mystic beauty of
+the scene.  Northern lights, pale and dim, stretched their arc
+across beneath the Dipper.  The air, soft as the dead leaves of
+spring, fanned his cheek.  By and by the moon, like a red fire
+at sea, lifted itself from the waves.  Thorpe made his way to the
+stern, beyond the square deck house, where he intended to lean on
+the rail in silent contemplation of the moon-path.
+
+He found another before him.  Phil, the little cripple, was peering
+into the wonderful east, its light in his eyes.  He did not look at
+Thorpe when the latter approached, but seemed aware of his presence,
+for he moved swiftly to give room.
+
+"It is very beautiful; isn't it, Phil?" said Thorpe after a moment.
+
+"It is the Heart Song of the Sea," replied the cripple in a hushed
+voice.
+
+Thorpe looked down surprised.
+
+"Who told you that?" he asked.
+
+But the cripple, repeating the words of a chance preacher, could
+explain himself no farther.  In a dim way the ready-made phrase had
+expressed the smothered poetic craving of his heart,--the belief
+that the sea, the sky, the woods, the men and women, you, I, all
+have our Heart Songs, the Song which is most beautiful.
+
+"The Heart Song of the Sea," he repeated gropingly.  "I don't know
+. . .I play it," and he made the motion of drawing a bow across
+strings, "very still and low."  And this was all Thorpe's question
+could elicit.
+
+Thorpe fell silent in the spell of the night, and pondered over
+the chances of life which had cast on the shores of the deep as
+driftwood the soul of a poet.
+
+"Your Song," said the cripple timidly, "some day I will hear it.
+Not yet.  That night in Bay City, when you took me in, I heard it
+very dim.  But I cannot play it yet on my violin."
+
+"Has your violin a song of its own?" queried the man.
+
+"I cannot hear it.  It tries to sing, but there is something in the
+way.  I cannot.  Some day I will hear it and play it, but--" and he
+drew nearer Thorpe and touched his arm--"that day will be very bad
+for me.  I lose something."  His eyes of the wistful dog were big
+and wondering.
+
+"Queer little Phil!" cried Thorpe laughing whimsically.  "Who tells
+you these things?"
+
+"Nobody," said the cripple dreamily, "they come when it is like to-
+night.  In Bay City they do not come."
+
+At this moment a third voice broke in on them.
+
+"Oh, it's you, Mr. Thorpe," said the captain of the vessel.  "Thought
+it was some of them lumber-jacks, and I was going to fire 'em below.
+Fine night."
+
+"It is that," answered Thorpe, again the cold, unresponsive man of
+reticence.  "When do you expect to get in, Captain?"
+
+"About to-morrow noon," replied the captain, moving away.  Thorpe
+followed him a short distance, discussing the landing.  The cripple
+stood all night, his bright, luminous eyes gazing clear and unwinking
+at the moonlight, listening to his Heart Song of the Sea.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX
+
+
+Next morning continued the traditions of its calm predecessors.
+Therefore by daybreak every man was at work.  The hatches were
+opened, and soon between-decks was cumbered with boxes, packing
+cases, barrels, and crates.  In their improvised stalls, the patient
+horses seemed to catch a hint of shore-going and whinnied.  By ten
+o'clock there loomed against the strange coast line of the Pictured
+Rocks, a shallow bay and what looked to be a dock distorted by the
+northern mirage.
+
+"That's her," said the captain.
+
+Two hours later the steamboat swept a wide curve, slid between the
+yellow waters of two outlying reefs, and, with slackened speed,
+moved slowly toward the wharf of log cribs filled with stone.
+
+The bay or the dock Thorpe had never seen.  He took them on the
+captain's say-so.  He knew very well that the structure had been
+erected by and belonged to Morrison & Daly, but the young man had
+had the foresight to purchase the land lying on the deep water side
+of the bay.  He therefore anticipated no trouble in unloading; for
+while Morrison & Daly owned the pier itself, the land on which it
+abutted belonged to him.
+
+From the arms of the bay he could make out a dozen figures standing
+near the end of the wharf.  When, with propeller reversed, the Pole
+Star bore slowly down towards her moorings, Thorpe recognized Dyer
+at the head of eight or ten woodsmen.  The sight of Radway's old
+scaler somehow filled him with a quiet but dangerous anger, especially
+since that official, on whom rested a portion at least of the
+responsibility of the jobber's failure, was now found in the employ
+of the very company which had attempted that failure.  It looked
+suspicious.
+
+"Catch this line!" sung out the mate, hurling the coil of a handline
+on the wharf.
+
+No one moved, and the little rope, after a moment, slid overboard
+with a splash.
+
+The captain, with a curse, signalled full speed astern.
+
+"Captain Morse!" cried Dyer, stepping forward.  "My orders are that
+you are to land here nothing but M. & D. merchandise."
+
+"I have a right to land," answered Thorpe.  "The shore belongs to
+me."
+
+"This dock doesn't," retorted the other sharply, "and you can't
+set foot on her."
+
+"You have no legal status.  You had no business building in the
+first place---" began Thorpe, and then stopped with a choke of
+anger at the futility of arguing legality in such a case.
+
+The men had gathered interestedly in the waist of the ship, cool,
+impartial, severely critical.  The vessel, gathering speed astern,
+but not yet obeying her reversed helm, swung her bow in towards the
+dock.  Thorpe ran swiftly forward, and during the instant of rubbing
+contact, leaped.
+
+He alighted squarely upon his feet.  Without an instant's hesitation,
+hot with angry energy at finding his enemy within reach of his hand,
+he rushed on Dyer, and with one full, clean in-blow stretched him
+stunned on the dock.  For a moment there was a pause of astonishment.
+Then the woodsmen closed upon him.
+
+During that instant Thorpe had become possessed of a weapon  It came
+hurling through the air from above to fall at his feet.  Shearer,
+with the cool calculation of the pioneer whom no excitement can
+distract from the main issue, had seen that it would be impossible
+to follow his chief, and so had done the next best thing,--thrown
+him a heavy iron belaying pin.
+
+Thorpe was active, alert, and strong.  The men could come at him
+only in front.  As offset, he could not give ground, even for one
+step.  Still, in the hands of a powerful man, the belaying pin is by
+no means a despicable weapon.  Thorpe hit with all his strength and
+quickness.  He was conscious once of being on the point of defeat.
+Then he had cleared a little space for himself.  Then the men were
+on him again more savagely than ever.  One fellow even succeeded in
+hitting him a glancing blow on the shoulder.
+
+Then came a sudden crash.  Thorpe was nearly thrown from his feet.
+The next instant a score of yelling men leaped behind and all
+around him.  There ensued a moment's scuffle, the sound of dull
+blows; and the dock was clear of all but Dyer and three others
+who were, like himself, unconscious.  The captain, yielding to
+the excitement, had run his prow plump against the wharf.
+
+Some of the crew received the mooring lines.  All was ready for
+disembarkation.
+
+Bryan Moloney, a strapping Irish-American of the big-boned, red-
+cheeked type, threw some water over the four stunned combatants.
+Slowly they came to life.  They were promptly yanked to their feet
+by the irate rivermen, who commenced at once to bestow sundry
+vigorous kicks and shakings by way of punishment.  Thorpe interposed.
+
+"Quit it!" he commanded.  "Let them go!"
+
+The men grumbled.  One or two were inclined to be openly rebellious.
+
+"If I hear another peep out of you," said Thorpe to these latter,
+"you can climb right aboard and take the return trip."  He looked
+them in the eye until they muttered, and then went on: "Now, we've
+got to get unloaded and our goods ashore before those fellows report
+to camp.  Get right moving, and hustle!"
+
+If the men expected any comment, approval, or familiarity from their
+leader on account of their little fracas, they were disappointed.
+This was a good thing.  The lumber-jack demands in his boss a
+certain fundamental unapproachability, whatever surface bonhomie
+he may evince.
+
+So Dyer and his men picked themselves out of the trouble sullenly
+and departed.  The ex-scaler had nothing to say as long as he was
+within reach, but when he had gained the shore, he turned.
+
+"You won't think this is so funny when you get in the law-courts!"
+he shouted.
+
+Thorpe made no reply.  "I guess we'll keep even," he muttered.
+
+"By the jumping Moses," snarled Scotty Parsons turning in threat.
+
+"Scotty!" said Thorpe sharply.
+
+Scotty turned back to his task, which was to help the blacksmith
+put together the wagon, the component parts of which the others had
+trundled out.
+
+With thirty men at the job it does not take a great while to move
+a small cargo thirty or forty feet.  By three o'clock the Pole Star
+was ready to continue her journey.  Thorpe climbed aboard, leaving
+Shearer in charge.
+
+Keep the men at it, Tim," said he.  "Put up the walls of the warehouse
+good and strong, and move the stuff in.  If it rains, you can spread
+the tent over the roof, and camp in with the provisions.  If you get
+through before I return, you might take a scout up the river and fix
+on a camp site.  I'll bring back the lumber for roofs, floors, and
+trimmings with me, and will try to pick up a few axmen for swamping.
+Above all things, have a good man or so always in charge.  Those
+fellows won't bother us any more for the present, I think; but it
+pays to be on deck.  So long."
+
+In Marquette, Thorpe arranged for the cashing of his time checks
+and orders; bought lumber at the mills; talked contract with old
+Harvey, the mill-owner and prospective buyer of the young man's
+cut; and engaged four axmen whom he found loafing about, waiting
+for the season to open.
+
+When he returned to the bay he found the warehouse complete except
+for the roofs and gables.  These, with their reinforcement of tar-
+paper, were nailed on in short order.  Shearer and Andrews, the
+surveyor, were scouting up the river.
+
+"No trouble from above, boys?" asked Thorpe.
+
+"Nary trouble," they replied.
+
+The warehouse was secured by padlocks, the wagon loaded with the
+tent and the necessaries of life and work.  Early in the morning
+the little procession laughing, joking, skylarking with the high
+spirits of men in the woods took its way up the river-trail.  Late
+that evening, tired, but still inclined to mischief, they came to
+the first dam, where Shearer and Andrews met them.
+
+"How do you like it, Tim?" asked Thorpe that evening.
+
+"She's all right," replied the riverman with emphasis; which, for
+him, was putting it strong.
+
+At noon of the following day the party arrived at the second dam.
+Here Shearer had decided to build the permanent camp.  Injin Charley
+was constructing one of his endless series of birch-bark canoes.
+Later he would paddle the whole string to Marquette, where he would
+sell them to a hardware dealer for two dollars and a half apiece.
+
+To Thorpe, who had walked on ahead with his foreman, it seemed that
+he had never been away.  There was the knoll; the rude camp with the
+deer hides; the venison hanging suspended from the pole; the endless
+broil and tumult of the clear north-country stream; the yellow glow
+over the hill opposite.  Yet he had gone a nearly penniless
+adventurer;
+he returned at the head of an enterprise.
+
+Injin Charley looked up and grunted as Thorpe approached.
+
+"How are you, Charley?" greeted Thorpe reticently.
+
+"You gettum pine?  Good!" replied Charley in the same tone.
+
+That was all; for strong men never talk freely of what is in their
+hearts.  There is no need; they understand.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXI
+
+
+Two months passed away.  Winter set in.  The camp was built and
+inhabited.  Routine had established itself, and all was going well.
+
+The first move of the M. & D. Company had been one of conciliation.
+Thorpe was approached by the walking-boss of the camps up-river.  The
+man made no reference to or excuse for what had occurred, nor did he
+pretend to any hypocritical friendship for the younger firm.  His
+proposition was entirely one of mutual advantage.  The Company had
+gone to considerable expense in constructing the pier of stone cribs.
+It would be impossible for the steamer to land at any other point.
+Thorpe had undisputed possession of the shore, but the Company could
+as indisputably remove the dock.  Let it stay where it was.  Both
+companies could then use it for their mutual convenience.
+
+To this Thorpe agreed.  Baker, the walking-boss, tried to get him to
+sign a contract to that effect.  Thorpe refused.
+
+"Leave your dock where it is and use it when you want to," said
+he.  "I'll agree not to interfere as long as you people behave
+yourselves."
+
+The actual logging was opening up well.  Both Shearer and Thorpe
+agreed that it would not do to be too ambitious the first year.
+They set about clearing their banking ground about a half mile
+below the first dam; and during the six weeks before snow-fall cut
+three short roads of half a mile each.  Approximately two million
+feet would be put in from these--roads which could be extended in
+years to come--while another million could be travoyed directly to
+the landing from its immediate vicinity.
+
+"We won't skid them," said Tim.  "We'll haul from the stump to the
+bank.  And we'll tackle only a snowroad proposition:--we ain't got
+time to monkey with buildin' sprinklers and plows this year.  We'll
+make a little stake ahead, and then next year we'll do it right and
+get in twenty million.  That railroad'll get along a ways by then,
+and men'll be more plenty."
+
+Through the lengthening evenings they sat crouched on wooden boxes
+either side of the stove, conversing rarely, gazing at one spot
+with a steady persistency which was only an outward indication of
+the persistency with which their minds held to the work in hand.
+Tim, the older at the business, showed this trait more strongly
+than Thorpe.  The old man thought of nothing but logging.  From
+the stump to the bank, from the bank to the camp, from the camp
+to the stump again, his restless intelligence travelled tirelessly,
+picking up, turning over, examining the littlest details with an
+ever-fresh curiosity and interest.  Nothing was too small to escape
+this deliberate scrutiny.  Nothing was in so perfect a state that it
+did not bear one more inspection.  He played the logging as a chess
+player his game.  One by one he adopted the various possibilities,
+remote and otherwise, as hypotheses, and thought out to the uttermost
+copper rivet what would be the best method of procedure in case that
+possibility should confront him.
+
+Occasionally Thorpe would introduce some other topic of conversation.
+The old man would listen to his remark with the attention of courtesy;
+would allow a decent period of silence to intervene; and then,
+reverting to the old subject without comment on the new, would emit
+one of his terse practical suggestions, result of a long spell of
+figuring.  That is how success is made.
+
+In the men's camp the crew lounged, smoked, danced, or played cards.
+In those days no one thought of forbidding gambling.  One evening
+Thorpe, who had been too busy to remember Phil's violin,--although
+he noticed, as he did every other detail of the camp, the cripple's
+industry, and the precision with which he performed his duties,--
+strolled over and looked through the window.  A dance was in progress.
+The men were waltzing, whirling solemnly round and round, gripping
+firmly each other's loose sleeves just above the elbow.  At every
+third step of the waltz they stamped one foot.
+
+Perched on a cracker box sat Phil.  His head was thrust forward
+almost aggressively over his instrument, and his eyes glared at the
+dancing men with the old wolf-like gleam.  As he played, he drew the
+bow across with a swift jerk, thrust it back with another, threw
+his shoulders from one side to the other in abrupt time to the
+music.  And the music!  Thorpe unconsciously shuddered; then sighed
+in pity.  It was atrocious.  It was not even in tune.  Two out of
+three of the notes were either sharp or flat, not so flagrantly as
+to produce absolute disharmony, but just enough to set the teeth on
+edge.  And the rendition was as colorless as that of a poor hand-
+organ.
+
+The performer seemed to grind out his fearful stuff with a fierce
+delight, in which appeared little of the esthetic pleasure of the
+artist.  Thorpe was at a loss to define it.
+
+"Poor Phil," he said to himself.  "He has the musical soul without
+even the musical ear!"
+
+Next day, while passing out of the cook camp he addressed one of
+the men:
+
+"Well, Billy," he inquired, "how do you like your fiddler?"
+
+"All RIGHT!" replied Billy with emphasis.  "She's got some go to her."
+
+In the woods the work proceeded finely.  From the travoy sledges and
+the short roads a constant stream of logs emptied itself on the
+bank.  There long parallel skidways had been laid the whole width
+of the river valley.  Each log as it came was dragged across those
+monster andirons and rolled to the bank of the river.  The cant-hook
+men dug their implements into the rough bark, leaned, lifted, or
+clung to the projecting stocks until slowly the log moved, rolling
+with gradually increasing momentum.  Then they attacked it with fury
+lest the momentum be lost.  Whenever it began to deviate from the
+straight rolling necessary to keep it on the center of the skids,
+one of the workers thrust the shoe of his cant-hook under one end
+of the log.  That end promptly stopped; the other, still rolling,
+soon caught up; and the log moved on evenly, as was fitting.
+
+At the end of the rollway the log collided with other logs and
+stopped with the impact of one bowling ball against another.  The
+men knew that being caught between the two meant death or crippling
+for life.  Nevertheless they escaped from the narrowing interval at
+the latest possible moment, for it is easier to keep a log rolling
+than to start it.
+
+Then other men piled them by means of long steel chains and horses,
+just as they would have skidded them in the woods.  Only now the logs
+mounted up and up until the skidways were thirty or forty feet high.
+Eventually the pile of logs would fill the banking ground utterly,
+burying the landing under a nearly continuous carpet of timber as
+thick as a two-story house is tall.  The work is dangerous.  A saw
+log containing six hundred board feet weighs about one ton.  This is
+the weight of an ordinary iron safe.  When one of them rolls or falls
+from even a moderate height, its force is irresistible.  But when
+twenty or thirty cascade down the bold front of a skidway, carrying
+a man or so with them, the affair becomes a catastrophe.
+
+Thorpe's men, however, were all old-timers, and nothing of the sort
+occurred.  At first it made him catch his breath to see the apparent
+chances they took; but after a little he perceived that seeming
+luck was in reality a coolness of judgment and a long experience in
+the peculiar ways of that most erratic of inanimate cussedness--the
+pine log.  The banks grew daily.  Everybody was safe and sound.
+
+The young lumberman had sense enough to know that, while a crew
+such as his is supremely effective, it requires careful handling to
+keep it good-humored and willing.  He knew every man by his first
+name, and each day made it a point to talk with him for a moment
+or so.  The subject was invariably some phase of the work.  Thorpe
+never permitted himself the familiarity of introducing any other
+topic.  By this course he preserved the nice balance between too
+great reserve, which chills the lumber-jack's rather independent
+enthusiasm, and the too great familiarity, which loses his respect.
+He never replied directly to an objection or a request, but listened
+to it non-committally; and later, without explanation or reasoning,
+acted as his judgment dictated.  Even Shearer, with whom he was in
+most intimate contact, respected this trait in him.  Gradually he
+came to feel that he was making a way with his men.  It was a
+status, not assured as yet nor even very firm, but a status for
+all that.
+
+Then one day one of the best men, a teamster, came in to make some
+objection to the cooking.  As a matter of fact, the cooking was
+perfectly good.  It generally is, in a well-conducted camp, but
+the lumber-jack is a great hand to growl, and he usually begins
+with his food.
+
+Thorpe listened to his vague objections in silence.
+
+"All right," he remarked simply.
+
+Next day he touched the man on the shoulder just as he was starting
+to work.
+
+"Step into the office and get your time," said he.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked the man.
+
+"I don't need you any longer."
+
+The two entered the little office.  Thorpe looked through the ledger
+and van book, and finally handed the man his slip.
+
+"Where do I get this?" asked the teamster, looking at it uncertainly.
+
+"At the bank in Marquette," replied Thorpe without glancing around.
+
+"Have I got to go 'way up to Marquette?"
+
+"Certainly," replied Thorpe briefly.
+
+"Who's going to pay my fare south?"
+
+"You are.  You can get work at Marquette."
+
+"That ain't a fair shake," cried the man excitedly.
+
+"I'll have no growlers in this camp," said Thorpe with decision.
+
+"By God!" cried the man, "you damned---"
+
+"You get out of here!" cried Thorpe with a concentrated blaze of
+energetic passion that made the fellow step back.
+
+"I ain't goin' to get on the wrong side of the law by foolin' with
+this office," cried the other at the door, "but if I had you
+outside for a minute---"
+
+"Leave this office!" shouted Thorpe.
+
+"S'pose you make me!" challenged the man insolently.
+
+In a moment the defiance had come, endangering the careful structure
+Thorpe had reared with such pains.  The young man was suddenly angry
+in exactly the same blind, unreasoning manner as when he had leaped
+single-handed to tackle Dyer's crew.
+
+Without a word he sprang across the shack, seized a two-bladed ax
+from the pile behind the door, swung it around his head and cast
+it full at the now frightened teamster.  The latter dodged, and the
+swirling steel buried itself in the snowbank beyond.  Without an
+instant's hesitation Thorpe reached back for another.  The man took
+to his heels.
+
+"I don't want to see you around here again!" shouted Thorpe after
+him.
+
+Then in a moment he returned to the office and sat down overcome
+with contrition.
+
+"It might have been murder!" he told himself, awe-stricken.
+
+But, as it happened, nothing could have turned out better.
+
+Thorpe had instinctively seized the only method by which these
+strong men could be impressed.  A rough-and-tumble attempt at
+ejectment would have been useless.  Now the entire crew looked with
+vast admiration on their boss as a man who intended to have his own
+way no matter what difficulties or consequences might tend to deter
+him.  And that is the kind of man they liked.  This one deed was
+more effective in cementing their loyalty than any increase of
+wages would have been.
+
+Thorpe knew that their restless spirits would soon tire of the
+monotony of work without ultimate interest.  Ordinarily the hope of
+a big cut is sufficient to keep men of the right sort working for a
+record.  But these men had no such hope--the camp was too small, and
+they were too few.  Thorpe adopted the expedient, now quite common,
+of posting the results of each day's work in the men's shanty.
+
+Three teams were engaged in travoying, and two in skidding the logs,
+either on the banking ground, or along the road.  Thorpe divided his
+camp into four sections, which he distinguished by the names of the
+teamsters.  Roughly speaking, each of the three hauling teams had its
+own gang of sawyers and skidders to supply it with logs and to take
+them from it, for of the skidding teams, one was split;--the horses
+were big enough so that one of them to a skidway sufficed.  Thus
+three gangs of men were performing each day practically the same
+work.  Thorpe scaled the results, and placed them conspicuously for
+comparison.
+
+Red Jacket, the teamster of the sorrels, one day was credited with
+11,OOO feet; while Long Pine Jim and Rollway Charley had put in
+but 1O,500 and 1O,250 respectively.  That evening all the sawyers,
+swampers, and skidders belonging to Red Jacket's outfit were
+considerably elated; while the others said little and prepared
+for business on the morrow.
+
+Once Long Pine Jim lurked at the bottom for three days.  Thorpe
+happened by the skidway just as Long Pine arrived with a log.  The
+young fellow glanced solicitously at the splendid buckskins, the
+best horses in camp.
+
+"I'm afraid I didn't give you a very good team, Jimmy," said he,
+and passed on.
+
+That was all; but men of the rival gangs had heard.  In camp Long
+Pine Jim and his crew received chaffing with balefully red glares.
+Next day they stood at the top by a good margin, and always after
+were competitors to be feared.
+
+Injin Charley, silent and enigmatical as ever, had constructed a
+log shack near a little creek over in the hardwood.  There he
+attended diligently to the business of trapping.  Thorpe had brought
+him a deer knife from Detroit; a beautiful instrument made of the
+best tool steel, in one long piece extending through the buck-horn
+handle.  One could even break bones with it.  He had also lent the
+Indian the assistance of two of his Marquette men in erecting the
+shanty; and had given him a barrel of flour for the winter.  From
+time to time Injin Charley brought in fresh meat, for which he was
+paid.  This with his trapping, and his manufacture of moccasins,
+snowshoes and birch canoes, made him a very prosperous Indian indeed.
+Thorpe rarely found time to visit him, but he often glided into the
+office, smoked a pipeful of the white man's tobacco in friendly
+fashion by the stove, and glided out again without having spoken a
+dozen words.
+
+Wallace made one visit before the big snows came, and was charmed.
+He ate with gusto of the "salt-horse," baked beans, stewed prunes,
+mince pie, and cakes.  He tramped around gaily in his moccasins or
+on the fancy snowshoes he promptly purchased of Injin Chariey.
+There was nothing new to report in regard to financial matters.
+The loan had been negotiated easily on the basis of a mortgage
+guaranteed by Carpenter's personal signature.  Nothing had been
+heard from Morrison & Daly.
+
+When he departed, he left behind him four little long-eared,
+short-legged beagle hounds.  They were solemn animals, who took
+life seriously.  Never a smile appeared in their questioning eyes.
+Wherever one went, the others followed, pattering gravely along in
+serried ranks.  Soon they discovered that the swamp over the knoll
+contained big white hares.  Their mission in life was evident.
+Thereafter from the earliest peep of daylight until the men quit
+work at night they chased rabbits.  The quest was hopeless, but they
+kept obstinately at it, wallowing with contained excitement over a
+hundred paces of snow before they would get near enough to scare
+their quarry to another jump.  It used to amuse the hares.  All day
+long the mellow bell-tones echoed over the knoll.  It came in time
+to be part of the color of the camp, just as were the pines and
+birches, or the cold northern sky.  At the fall of night, exhausted,
+trailing their long ears almost to the ground, they returned to the
+cook, who fed them and made much of them.  Next morning they were
+at it as hard as ever.  To them it was the quest for the Grail,--
+hopeless, but glorious.
+
+Little Phil, entrusted with the alarm clock, was the first up in
+the morning  In the fearful biting cold of an extinct camp, he
+lighted his lantern and with numb hands raked the ashes from the
+stove.  A few sticks of dried pine topped by split wood of birch or
+maple, all well dashed with kerosene, took the flame eagerly.  Then
+he awakened the cook, and stole silently into the office, where
+Thorpe and Shearer and Andrews, the surveyor, lay asleep.  There
+quietly he built another fire, and filled the water-pail afresh.
+By the time this task was finished, the cook sounded many times
+a conch, and the sleeping camp awoke.
+
+Later Phil drew water for the other shanties, swept out all three,
+split wood and carried it in to the cook and to the living-camps,
+filled and trimmed the lamps, perhaps helped the cook.  About half
+the remainder of the day he wielded an ax, saw and wedge in the
+hardwood, collecting painfully--for his strength was not great--
+material for the constant fires it was his duty to maintain.  Often
+he would stand motionless in the vast frozen, creaking forest,
+listening with awe to the voices which spoke to him alone.  There
+was something uncanny in the misshapen dwarf with the fixed marble
+white face and the expressive changing eyes,--something uncanny,
+and something indefinably beautiful.
+
+He seemed to possess an instinct which warned him of the approach
+of wild animals.  Long before a white man, or even an Indian, would
+have suspected the presence of game, little Phil would lift his
+head with a peculiar listening toss.  Soon, stepping daintily
+through the snow near the swamp edge, would come a deer; or pat-
+apat-patting on his broad hairy paws, a lynx would steal by.
+Except Injin Charley, Phil was the only man in that country who
+ever saw a beaver in the open daylight.
+
+At camp sometimes when all the men were away and his own work was
+done, he would crouch like a raccoon in the far corner of his deep
+square bunk with the board ends that made of it a sort of little
+cabin, and play to himself softly on his violin.  No one ever heard
+him.  After supper he was docilely ready to fiddle to the men's
+dancing.  Always then he gradually worked himself to a certain pitch
+of excitement.  His eyes glared with the wolf-gleam, and the music
+was vulgarly atrocious and out of tune.
+
+As Christmas drew near, the weather increased in severity.  Blinding
+snow-squalls swept whirling from the northeast, accompanied by a
+high wind.  The air was full of it,--fine, dry, powdery, like the
+dust of glass.  The men worked covered with it as a tree is covered
+after a sleet.  Sometimes it was impossible to work at all for hours
+at a time, but Thorpe did not allow a bad morning to spoil a good
+afternoon.  The instant a lull fell on the storm, he was out with
+his scaling rule, and he expected the men to give him something to
+scale.  He grappled the fierce winter by the throat, and shook from
+it the price of success.
+
+Then came a succession of bright cold days and clear cold nights.
+The aurora gleamed so brilliantly that the forest was as bright as
+by moonlight.  In the strange weird shadow cast by its waverings the
+wolves stole silently, or broke into wild ululations as they struck
+the trail of game.  Except for these weird invaders, the silence of
+death fell on the wilderness.  Deer left the country.  Partridges
+crouched trailing under the snow.  All the weak and timid creatures
+of the woods shrank into concealment and silence before these fierce
+woods-marauders with the glaring famine-struck eyes.
+
+Injin Charley found his traps robbed.  In return he constructed
+deadfalls, and dried several scalps.  When spring came, he would
+send them out for the bounty In the night, from time to time, the
+horses would awake trembling at an unknown terror.  Then the long
+weird howl would shiver across the starlight near at hand, and the
+chattering man who rose hastily to quiet the horses' frantic
+kicking, would catch a glimpse of gaunt forms skirting the edge
+of the forest.
+
+And the little beagles were disconsolate, for their quarry had
+fled.  In place of the fan-shaped triangular trail for which they
+sought, they came upon dog-like prints.  These they sniffed at
+curiously, and then departed growling, the hair on their backbones
+erect and stiff.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXII
+
+
+By the end of the winter some four million feet of logs were piled
+in the bed or upon the banks of the stream.  To understand what that
+means, you must imagine a pile of solid timber a mile in length.
+This tremendous mass lay directly in the course of the stream.  When
+the winter broke up, it had to be separated and floated piecemeal
+down the current.  The process is an interesting and dangerous one,
+and one of great delicacy.  It requires for its successful completion
+picked men of skill, and demands as toll its yearly quota of crippled
+and dead.  While on the drive, men work fourteen hours a day, up to
+their waists in water filled with floating ice.
+
+On the Ossawinamakee, as has been stated, three dams had been
+erected to simplify the process of driving.  When the logs were in
+right distribution, the gates were raised, and the proper head of
+water floated them down.
+
+Now the river being navigable, Thorpe was possessed of certain
+rights on it.  Technically he was entitled to a normal head of
+water, whenever he needed it; or a special head, according to
+agreement with the parties owning the dam.  Early in the drive, he
+found that Morrison & Daly intended to cause him trouble.  It began
+in a narrows of the river between high, rocky banks.  Thorpe's drive
+was floating through close-packed.  The situation was ticklish.
+Men with spiked boots ran here and there from one bobbing log to
+another, pushing with their peaveys, hurrying one log, retarding
+another, working like beavers to keep the whole mass straight.
+The entire surface of the water was practically covered with the
+floating timbers.  A moment's reflection will show the importance
+of preserving a full head of water.  The moment the stream should
+drop an inch or so, its surface would contract, the logs would then
+be drawn close together in the narrow space; and, unless an immediate
+rise should lift them up and apart from each other, a jam would form,
+behind which the water, rapidly damming, would press to entangle it
+the more.
+
+This is exactly what happened.  In a moment, as though by magic, the
+loose wooden carpet ground together.  A log in the advance up-ended;
+another thrust under it.  The whole mass ground together, stopped,
+and began rapidly to pile up.  The men escaped to the shore in a
+marvellous manner of their own.
+
+Tim Shearer found that the gate at the dam above had been closed.
+The man in charge had simply obeyed orders.  He supposed M. & D.
+wished to back up the water for their own logs.
+
+Tim indulged in some picturesque language.
+
+"You ain't got no right to close off more'n enough to leave us th'
+nat'ral flow unless by agreement," he concluded, and opened the gates.
+
+Then it was a question of breaking the jam.  This had to be done
+by pulling out or chopping through certain "key" logs which locked
+the whole mass.  Men stood under the face of imminent ruin--over
+them a frowning sheer wall of bristling logs, behind which pressed
+the weight of the rising waters--and hacked and tugged calmly until
+the mass began to stir.  Then they escaped.  A moment later, with a
+roar, the jam vomited down on the spot where they had stood.  It was
+dangerous work.  Just one half day later it had to be done again,
+and for the same reason.
+
+This time Thorpe went back with Shearer.  No one was at the dam, but
+the gates were closed.  The two opened them again.
+
+That very evening a man rode up on horseback inquiring for Mr. Thorpe.
+
+"I'm he," said the young fellow.
+
+The man thereupon dismounted and served a paper.  It proved to be
+an injunction issued by Judge Sherman enjoining Thorpe against
+interfering with the property of Morrison & Daly,--to wit, certain
+dams erected at designated points on the Ossawinamakee.  There had
+not elapsed sufficient time since the commission of the offense for
+the other firm to secure the issuance of this interesting document,
+so it was at once evident that the whole affair had been pre-arranged
+by the up-river firm for the purpose of blocking off Thorpe's drive.
+After serving the injunction, the official rode away.
+
+Thorpe called his foreman.  The latter read the injunction attentively
+through a pair of steel-bowed spectacles.
+
+"Well, what you going to do?" he asked.
+
+"Of all the consummate gall!" exploded Thorpe.  "Trying to enjoin me
+from touching a dam when they're refusing me the natural flow!  They
+must have bribed that fool judge.  Why, his injunction isn't worth
+the powder to blow it up!"
+
+"Then you're all right, ain't ye?" inquired Tim.
+
+"It'll be the middle of summer before we get a hearing in court,"
+said he.  "Oh, they're a cute layout!  They expect to hang me up
+until it's too late to do anything with the season's cut!"
+
+He arose and began to pace back and forth.
+
+"Tim," said he, "is there a man in the crew who's afraid of nothing
+and will obey orders?"
+
+"A dozen," replied Tim promptly.
+
+"Who's the best?"
+
+"Scotty Parsons."
+
+"Ask him to step here."
+
+In a moment the man entered the office.
+
+"Scotty," said Thorpe, "I want you to understand that I stand
+responsible for whatever I order you to do."
+
+"All right, sir," replied the man.
+
+"In the morning," said Thorpe, "you take two men and build some
+sort of a shack right over the sluice-gate of that second dam,--
+nothing very fancy, but good enough to camp in.  I want you to
+live there day and night.  Never leave it, not even for a minute.
+The cookee will bring you grub.  Take this Winchester.  If any of
+the men from up-river try to go out on the dam, you warn them off.
+If they persist, you shoot near them.  If they keep coming, you
+shoot at them.  Understand?"
+
+"You bet," answered Scotty with enthusiasm.
+
+"All right," concluded Thorpe.
+
+Next day Scotty established himself, as had been agreed.  He did not
+need to shoot anybody.  Daly himself came down to investigate the
+state of affairs, when his men reported to him the occupancy of the
+dam.  He attempted to parley, but Scotty would have none of it.
+
+"Get out!" was his first and last word.
+
+Daly knew men.  He was at the wrong end of the whip.  Thorpe's game
+was desperate, but so was his need, and this was a backwoods country
+a long ways from the little technicalities of the law.  It was one
+thing to serve an injunction; another to enforce it.  Thorpe finished
+his drive with no more of the difficulties than ordinarily bother a
+riverman.
+
+At the mouth of the river, booms of logs chained together at the
+ends had been prepared.  Into the enclosure the drive was floated
+and stopped.  Then a raft was formed by passing new manila ropes
+over the logs, to each one of which the line was fastened by a
+hardwood forked pin driven astride of it.  A tug dragged the raft
+to Marquette.
+
+Now Thorpe was summoned legally on two counts.  First, Judge Sherman
+cited him for contempt of court.  Second, Morrison & Daly sued him
+for alleged damages in obstructing their drive by holding open the
+dam-sluice beyond the legal head of water.
+
+Such is a brief but true account of the coup-de-force actually
+carried out by Thorpe's lumbering firm in northern Michigan.  It
+is better known to the craft than to the public at large, because
+eventually the affair was compromised.  The manner of that
+compromise is to follow.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIII
+
+
+Pending the call of trial, Thorpe took a three weeks' vacation to
+visit his sister.  Time, filled with excitement and responsibility,
+had erased from his mind the bitterness of their parting.  He had
+before been too busy, too grimly in earnest, to allow himself the
+luxury of anticipation.  Now he found himself so impatient that he
+could hardly wait to get there.  He pictured their meeting, the
+things they would say to each other.
+
+As formerly, he learned on his arrival that she was not at home.  It
+was the penalty of an attempted surprise.  Mrs. Renwick proved not
+nearly so cordial as the year before; but Thorpe, absorbed in his
+eagerness, did not notice it.  If he had, he might have guessed the
+truth: that the long propinquity of the fine and the commonplace,
+however safe at first from the insulation of breeding and natural
+kindliness, was at last beginning to generate sparks.
+
+No, Mrs. Renwick did not know where Helen was: thought she had gone
+over to the Hughes's.  The Hughes live two blocks down the street
+and three to the right, in a brown house back from the street.
+Very well, then; she would expect Mr. Thorpe to spend the night.
+
+The latter wandered slowly down the charming driveways of the little
+western town.  The broad dusty street was brown with sprinkling from
+numberless garden hose.  A double row of big soft maples met over it,
+and shaded the sidewalk and part of the wide lawns.  The grass was
+fresh and green.  Houses with capacious verandas on which were
+glimpsed easy chairs and hammocks, sent forth a mild glow from a
+silk-shaded lamp or two.  Across the evening air floated the sounds
+of light conversation and laughter from these verandas, the tinkle
+of a banjo, the thrum of a guitar.  Automatic sprinklers whirled and
+hummed here and there.  Their delicious artificial coolness struck
+refreshingly against the cheek.
+
+Thorpe found the Hughes residence without difficulty, and turned up
+the straight walk to the veranda.  On the steps of the latter a rug
+had been spread.  A dozen youths and maidens lounged in well-bred
+ease on its soft surface.  The gleam of white summer dresses, of
+variegated outing clothes, the rustle o frocks, the tinkle of low,
+well-bred laughter confused Thorpe, so that, as he approached the
+light from a tall lamp just inside the hall, he hesitated, vainly
+trying to make out the figures before him.
+
+So it was that Helen Thorpe saw him first, and came fluttering to
+meet him.
+
+"Oh, Harry!  What a surprise!" she cried, and flung her arms about
+his neck to kiss him.
+
+"How do you do, Helen," he replied sedately.
+
+This was the meeting he had anticipated so long.  The presence of
+others brought out in him, irresistibly, the repression of public
+display which was so strong an element of his character.
+
+A little chilled, Helen turned to introduce him to her friends.  In
+the cold light of her commonplace reception she noticed what in a
+warmer effusion of feelings she would never have seen,--that her
+brother's clothes were out of date and worn; and that, though his
+carriage was notably strong and graceful, the trifling constraint
+and dignity of his younger days had become almost an awkwardness
+after two years among uncultivated men.  It occurred to Helen to be
+just a little ashamed of him.
+
+He took a place on the steps and sat without saying a word all the
+evening.  There was nothing for him to say.  These young people
+talked thoughtlessly, as young people do, of the affairs belonging
+to their own little circle.  Thorpe knew nothing of the cotillion,
+or the brake ride, or of the girl who visited Alice Southerland;
+all of which gave occasion for so much lively comment.  Nor was
+the situation improved when some of them, in a noble effort at
+politeness, turned the conversation into more general channels.
+The topics of the day's light talk were absolutely unknown to him.
+The plays, the new books, the latest popular songs, jokes depending
+for their point on an intimate knowledge of the prevailing vaudeville
+mode, were as unfamiliar to him as Miss Alice Southerland's guest.
+He had thought pine and forest and the trail so long, that he found
+these square-elbowed subjects refusing to be jostled aside by any
+trivialities.
+
+So he sat there silent in the semi-darkness.  This man, whose
+lightest experience would have aroused the eager attention of the
+entire party, held his peace because he thought he had nothing to
+say.
+
+He took Helen back to Mrs. Renwick's about ten o'clock.  They
+walked slowly beneath the broad-leaved maples, whose shadows
+danced under the tall electric lights,--and talked.
+
+Helen was an affectionate, warm-hearted girl.  Ordinarily she would
+have been blind to everything except the delight of having her
+brother once more with her.  But his apparently cold reception had
+first chilled, then thrown her violently into a critical mood.  His
+subsequent social inadequacy had settled her into the common-sense
+level of everyday life.
+
+"How have you done, Harry?" she inquired anxiously.  "Your letters
+have been so vague."
+
+"Pretty well," he replied.  "If things go right, I hope some day
+to have a better place for you than this."
+
+Her heart contracted suddenly.  It was all she could do to keep
+from bursting into tears.  One would have to realize perfectly her
+youth, the life to which she had been accustomed, the lack of
+encouragement she had labored under, the distastefulness of her
+surroundings, the pent-up dogged patience she had displayed during
+the last two years, the hopeless feeling of battering against a
+brick wall she always experienced when she received the replies
+to her attempts on Harry's confidence, to appreciate how the
+indefiniteness of his answer exasperated her and filled her
+with sullen despair.  She said nothing for twenty steps.  Then:
+
+"Harry," she said quietly, "can't you take me away from Mrs.
+Renwick's this year?"
+
+"I don't know, Helen.  I can't tell yet.  Not just now, at any rate."
+
+"Harry," she cried, "you don't know what you're doing.  I tell you
+I can't STAND Mrs. Renwick any longer."  She calmed herself with an
+effort, and went on more quietly.  "Really, Harry, she's awfully
+disagreeable.  If you can't afford to keep me anywhere else--" she
+glanced timidly at his face and for the first time saw the strong
+lines about the jaw and the tiny furrows between the eyebrows.  "I
+know you've worked hard, Harry dear," she said with a sudden
+sympathy, "and that you'd give me more, if you could.  But so have
+I worked hard.  Now we ought to change this in some way.  I can get
+a position as teacher, or some other work somewhere.  Won't you let
+me do that?"
+
+Thorpe was thinking that it would be easy enough to obtain Wallace
+Carpenter's consent to his taking a thousand dollars from the
+profits of the year.  But he knew also that the struggle in the
+courts might need every cent the new company could spare.  It would
+look much better were he to wait until after the verdict.  If
+favorable, there would be no difficulty about sparing the money.  If
+adverse, there would be no money to spare.  The latter contingency
+he did not seriously anticipate, but still it had to be considered.
+And so, until the thing was absolutely certain, he hesitated to
+explain the situation to Helen for fear of disappointing her!
+
+"I think you'd better wait, Helen," said he.  "There'll be time
+enough for all that later when it becomes necessary.  You are very
+young yet, and it will not hurt you a bit to continue your education
+for a little while longer."
+
+"And in the meantime stay with Mrs. Renwick?" flashed Helen.
+
+"Yes.  I hope it will not have to be for very long."
+
+"How long do you think, Harry?" pleaded the girl.
+
+"That depends on circumstances," replied Thorpe
+
+"Oh!" she cried indignantly.
+
+"Harry," she ventured after a time, "why not write to Uncle Amos?"
+
+Thorpe stopped and looked at her searchingly.
+
+"You can't mean that, Helen," he said, drawing a long breath.
+
+"But why not?" she persisted.
+
+"You ought to know."
+
+"Who would have done any different?  If you had a brother and
+discovered that he had--appropriated--most all the money of a
+concern of which you were president, wouldn't you think it your
+duty to have him arrested?"
+
+"No!" cried Thorpe suddenly excited.  "Never!  If he was my brother,
+I'd help him, even if he'd committed murder!"
+
+"We differ there," replied the girl coldly.  "I consider that Uncle
+Amos was a strong man who did his duty as he saw it, in spite of his
+feelings.  That he had father arrested is nothing against him in my
+eyes.  And his wanting us to come to him since, seems to me very
+generous.  I am going to write to him."
+
+"You will do nothing of the kind," commanded Thorpe sternly.  "Amos
+Thorpe is an unscrupulous man who became unscrupulously rich.  He
+deliberately used our father as a tool, and then destroyed him.  I
+consider that anyone of our family who would have anything to do
+with him is a traitor!"
+
+The girl did not reply.
+
+Next morning Thorpe felt uneasily repentant for his strong language.
+After all, the girl did lead a monotonous life, and he could not
+blame her for rebelling against it from time to time.  Her remarks
+had been born of the rebellion; they had meant nothing in themselves.
+He could not doubt for a moment her loyalty to the family.
+
+But he did not tell her so.  That is not the way of men of his stamp.
+Rather he cast about to see what he could do.
+
+Injin Charley had, during the winter just past, occupied odd
+moments in embroidering with beads and porcupine quills a wonderful
+outfit of soft buckskin gauntlets, a shirt of the same material, and
+moccasins of moose-hide.  They were beautifully worked, and Thorpe,
+on receiving them, had at once conceived the idea of giving them
+to his sister.  To this end he had consulted another Indian near
+Marquette, to whom he had confided the task of reducing the gloves
+and moccasins.  The shirt would do as it was, for it was intended
+to be worn as a sort of belted blouse.  As has been said, all were
+thickly beaded, and represented a vast quantity of work.  Probably
+fifty dollars could not have bought them, even in the north country.
+
+Thorpe tendered this as a peace offering.  Not understanding women
+in the least, he was surprised to see his gift received by a burst
+of tears and a sudden exit from the room.  Helen thought he had
+bought the things; and she was still sore from the pinch of the
+poverty she had touched the evening before.  Nothing will exasperate
+a woman more than to be presented with something expensive for which
+she does not particularly care, after being denied, on the ground of
+economy, something she wants very much.
+
+Thorpe stared after her in hurt astonishment.  Mrs. Renwick sniffed.
+
+That afternoon the latter estimable lady attempted to reprove Miss
+Helen, and was snubbed; she persisted, and an open quarrel ensued.
+
+"I will not be dictated to by you, Mrs. Renwick," said Helen, "and I
+don't intend to have you interfere in any way with my family affairs."
+
+"They won't stand MUCH investigation," replied Mrs. Renwick, goaded
+out of her placidity.
+
+Thorpe entered to hear the last two speeches.  He said nothing, but
+that night he wrote to Wallace Carpenter for a thousand dollars.
+Every stroke of the pen hurt him.  But of course Helen could not
+stay here now.
+
+"And to think, just to THINK that he let that woman insult me so,
+and didn't say a word!" cried Helen to herself.
+
+Her method would have been to have acted irrevocably on the spot,
+and sought ways and means afterwards.  Thorpe's, however, was to
+perfect all his plans before making the first step.
+
+Wallace Carpenter was not in town.  Before the letter had followed
+him to his new address, and the answer had returned, a week had
+passed.  Of course the money was gladly put at Thorpe's disposal.
+The latter at once interviewed his sister.
+
+"Helen," he said, "I have made arrangements for some money.  What
+would you like to do this year?"
+
+She raised her head and looked at him with clear bright gaze.  If
+he could so easily raise the money, why had he not done so before?
+He knew how much she wanted it.  Her happiness did not count.  Only
+when his quixotic ideas of family honor were attacked did he bestir
+himself.
+
+"I am going to Uncle Amos's," she replied distinctly.
+
+"What?" asked Thorpe incredulously.
+
+For answer she pointed to a letter lying open on the table.  Thorpe
+took it and read:
+
+"My dear Niece:
+
+"Both Mrs. Thorpe and myself more than rejoice that time and
+reflection have removed that, I must confess, natural prejudice
+which the unfortunate family affair, to which I will not allude,
+raised in your mind against us.  As we said long ago, our home is
+your's when you may wish to make it so.  You state your present
+readiness to come immediately.  Unless you wire to the contrary, we
+shall expect you next Tuesday evening on the four-forty train.  I
+shall be at the Central Station myself to meet you.  If your brother
+is now with you, I should be pleased to see him also, and will be
+most happy to give him a position with the firm.
+
+"Aff. your uncle,
+
+"Amos Thorpe.
+
+"New York, June 6, 1883."
+
+On finishing the last paragraph the reader crumpled the letter and
+threw it into the grate.
+
+"I am sorry you did that, Helen," said he, "but I don't blame you,
+and it can't be helped.  We won't need to take advantage of his
+'kind offer' now."
+
+"I intend to do so, however," replied the girl coldly.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean," she cried, "that I am sick of waiting on your good
+pleasure.  I waited, and slaved, and stood unbearable things for
+two years.  I did it cheerfully.  And in return I don't get a civil
+word, not a decent explanation, not even a--caress," she fairly
+sobbed out the last word.  "I can't stand it any longer.  I have
+tried and tried and tried, and then when I've come to you for the
+littlest word of encouragement, you have pecked at me with those
+stingy little kisses, and have told me I was young and ought to
+finish my education.  You put me in uncongenial surroundings, and
+go off into the woods camping yourself.  You refuse me money enough
+to live in a three-dollar boarding-house, and you buy expensive
+rifles and fishing tackle for yourself.  You can't afford to send
+me away somewhere for the summer, but you bring me back gee-gaws
+you have happened to fancy, worth a month's board in the country.
+You haven't a cent when it is a question of what I want; but you
+raise money quick enough when your old family is insulted.  Isn't
+it my family too?  And then you blame me because, after waiting in
+vain two years for you to do something, I start out to do the best
+I can for myself.  I'm not of age but you're not my guardian!"
+
+During this long speech Thorpe had stood motionless, growing paler
+and paler.  Like most noble natures, when absolutely in the right,
+he was incapable of defending himself against misunderstandings.
+He was too wounded; he was hurt to the soul.
+
+"You know that is not true, Helen," he replied, almost sternly.
+
+
+"It IS true!" she asseverated, "and I'm THROUGH!"
+
+"It's a little hard," said Thorpe passing his hand wearily before
+his eyes, "to work hard this way for years, and then---"
+
+She laughed with a hard little note of scorn.
+
+"Helen," said Thorpe with new energy, "I forbid you to have anything
+to do with Amos Thorpe.  I think he is a scoundrel and a sneak."
+
+"What grounds have you to think so?"
+
+"None," he confessed, "that is, nothing definite.  But I know men;
+and I know his type.  Some day I shall be able to prove something.
+I do not wish you to have anything to do with him."
+
+"I shall do as I please," she replied, crossing her hands behind her.
+
+Thorpe's eyes darkened.
+
+"We have talked this over a great many times," he warned, "and
+you've always agreed with me.  Remember, you owe something to the
+family."
+
+"Most of the family seem to owe something," she replied with a
+flippant laugh.  "I'm sure I didn't choose the family.  If I had,
+I'd have picked out a better one!"
+
+The flippancy was only a weapon which she used unconsciously,
+blindly, in her struggle.  The man could not know this.  His
+face hardened, and his voice grew cold.
+
+"You may take your choice, Helen," he said formally.  "If you go
+into the household of Amos Thorpe, if you deliberately prefer your
+comfort to your honor, we will have nothing more in common."
+
+They faced each other with the cool, deadly glance of the race, so
+similar in appearance but so unlike in nature.
+
+"I, too, offer you a home, such as it is," repeated the man.
+"Choose!"
+
+At the mention of the home for which means were so quickly
+forthcoming when Thorpe, not she, considered it needful, the girl's
+eyes flashed.  She stooped and dragged violently from beneath the
+bed a flat steamer trunk, the lid of which she threw open.  A dress
+lay on the bed.  With a fine dramatic gesture she folded the garment
+and laid it in the bottom of the trunk.  Then she knelt, and without
+vouchsafing another glance at her brother standing rigid by the door,
+she began feverishly to arrange the folds.
+
+The choice was made.  He turned and went out.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIV
+
+
+With Thorpe there could be no half-way measure.  He saw that the
+rupture with his sister was final, and the thrust attained him
+in one of his few unprotected points.  It was not as though he
+felt either himself or his sister consciously in the wrong.  He
+acquitted her of all fault, except as to the deadly one of
+misreading and misunderstanding.  The fact argued not a perversion
+but a lack in her character.  She was other than he had thought her.
+
+As for himself, he had schemed, worked, lived only for her.  He had
+come to her from the battle expecting rest and refreshment.  To the
+world he had shown the hard, unyielding front of the unemotional;
+he had looked ever keenly outward; he had braced his muscles in the
+constant tension of endeavor.  So much the more reason why, in the
+hearts of the few he loved, he, the man of action, should find
+repose; the man of sternness, should discover that absolute peace
+of the spirit in which not the slightest motion of the will is
+necessary, the man of repression should be permitted affectionate,
+care-free expansion of the natural affection, of the full sympathy
+which will understand and not mistake for weakness.  Instead of this,
+he was forced into refusing where he would rather have given; into
+denying where he would rather have assented; and finally into
+commanding where he longed most ardently to lay aside the cloak of
+authority.  His motives were misread; his intentions misjudged; his
+love doubted.
+
+But worst of all, Thorpe's mind could see no possibility of an
+explanation.  If she could not see of her own accord how much he
+loved her, surely it was a hopeless task to attempt an explanation
+through mere words.  If, after all, she was capable of misconceiving
+the entire set of his motives during the past two years, expostulation
+would be futile.  In his thoughts of her he fell into a great
+spiritual dumbness.  Never, even in his moments of most theoretical
+imaginings, did he see himself setting before her fully and calmly
+the hopes and ambitions of which she had been the mainspring.  And
+before a reconciliation, many such rehearsals must take place in the
+secret recesses of a man's being.
+
+Thorpe did not cry out, nor confide in a friend, nor do anything
+even so mild as pacing the floor.  The only outward and visible sign
+a close observer might have noted was a certain dumb pain lurking in
+the depths of his eyes like those of a wounded spaniel.  He was hurt,
+but did not understand.  He suffered in silence, but without anger.
+This is at once the noblest and the most pathetic of human suffering.
+
+At first the spring of his life seemed broken.  He did not care for
+money; and at present disappointment had numbed his interest in the
+game.  It seemed hardly worth the candle.
+
+Then in a few days, after his thoughts had ceased to dwell constantly
+on the one subject, he began to look about him mentally.  Beneath his
+other interests he still felt constantly a dull ache, something
+unpleasant, uncomfortable.  Strangely enough it was almost identical
+in quality with the uneasiness that always underlay his surface-
+thoughts when he was worried about some detail of his business.
+Unconsciously,--again as in his business,--the combative instinct
+aroused.  In lack of other object on which to expend itself, Thorpe's
+fighting spirit turned with energy to the subject of the lawsuit.
+
+Under the unwonted stress of the psychological condition just
+described, he thought at white heat.  His ideas were clear, and
+followed each other quickly, almost feverishly.
+
+After his sister left the Renwicks, Thorpe himself went to Detroit,
+where he interviewed at once Northrop, the brilliant young lawyer
+whom the firm had engaged to defend its case.
+
+"I'm afraid we have no show," he replied to Thorpe's question.
+"You see, you fellows were on the wrong side of the fence in trying
+to enforce the law yourselves.  Of course you may well say that
+justice was all on your side.  That does not count.  The only
+recourse recognized for injustice lies in the law courts.  I'm
+afraid you are due to lose your case."
+
+"Well," said Thorpe, "they can't prove much damage."
+
+"I don't expect that they will be able to procure a very heavy
+judgment," replied Northrop.  "The facts I shall be able to adduce
+will cut down damages.  But the costs will be very heavy."
+
+"Yes," agreed Thorpe.
+
+"And," then pursued Northrop with a dry smile, "they practically own
+Sherman.  You may be in for contempt of court at their instigation.
+As I understand it, they are trying rather to injure you than to
+get anything out of it themselves."
+
+"That's it," nodded Thorpe.
+
+"In other words, it's a case for compromise."
+
+"Just what I wanted to get at," said Thorpe with satisfaction.
+"Now answer me a question.  Suppose a man injures Government or
+State land by trespass.  The land is afterwards bought by another
+party.  Has the latter any claim for damage against the trespasser?
+Understand me, the purchaser bought AFTER the trespass was committed."
+
+"Certainly," answered Northrop without hesitation.
+
+"Provided suit is brought within six years of the time the trespass
+was committed."
+
+"Good!  Now see here.  These M. & D. people stole about a section of
+Government pine up on that river, and I don't believe they've ever
+bought in the land it stood on.  In fact I don't believe they
+suspect that anyone knows they've been stealing.  How would it do,
+if I were to buy that section at the Land Office, and threaten to
+sue them for the value of the pine that originally stood on it?"
+
+The lawyer's eyes glimmered behind the lenses of his pince-nez;
+but, with the caution of the professional man he made no other
+sign of satisfaction.
+
+"It would do very well indeed," he replied, "but you'd have to
+prove they did the cutting, and you'll have to pay experts to
+estimate the probable amount of the timber.  Have you the
+description of the section?"
+
+"No," responded Thorpe, "but I can get it; and I can pick up
+witnesses from the woodsmen as to the cutting."
+
+"The more the better.  It is rather easy to discredit the testimony
+of one or two.  How much, on a broad guess, would you estimate the
+timber to come to?"
+
+"There ought to be about eight or ten million," guessed Thorpe
+after an instant's silence, "worth in the stump anywhere from
+sixteen to twenty thousand dollars.  It would cost me only eight
+hundred to buy it."
+
+"Do so, by all means.  Get your documents and evidence all in shape,
+and let me have them.  I'll see that the suit is discontinued then.
+Will you sue them?"
+
+"No, I think not," replied Thorpe.  "I'll just hold it back as a
+sort of club to keep them in line."
+
+The next day, he took the train north.  He had something definite
+and urgent to do, and, as always with practical affairs demanding
+attention and resource, he threw himself whole-souled into the
+accomplishment of it.  By the time he had bought the sixteen forties
+constituting the section, searched out a dozen witnesses to the
+theft, and spent a week with the Marquette expert in looking over
+the ground, he had fallen into the swing of work again.  His
+experience still ached; but dully.
+
+Only now he possessed no interests outside of those in the new
+country; no affections save the half-protecting, good-natured
+comradeship with Wallace, the mutual self-reliant respect that
+subsisted between Tim Shearer and himself, and the dumb,
+unreasoning dog-liking he shared with Injin Charley.  His eye
+became clearer and steadier; his methods more simple and direct.
+The taciturnity of his mood redoubled in thickness.  He was less
+charitable to failure on the part of subordinates.  And the new
+firm on the Ossawinamakee prospered.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXV
+
+
+Five years passed.
+
+In that time Thorpe had succeeded in cutting a hundred million feet
+of pine.  The money received for this had all been turned back into
+the Company's funds.  From a single camp of twenty-five men with
+ten horses and a short haul of half a mile, the concern had
+increased to six large, well-equipped communities of eighty to a
+hundred men apiece, using nearly two hundred horses, and hauling
+as far as eight or nine miles.
+
+Near the port stood a mammoth sawmill capable of taking care of
+twenty-two million feet a year, about which a lumber town had
+sprung up.  Lake schooners lay in a long row during the summer
+months, while busy loaders passed the planks from one to the other
+into the deep holds.  Besides its original holding, the company had
+acquired about a hundred and fifty million more, back near the
+headwaters of tributaries to the Ossawinamakee.  In the spring and
+early summer months, the drive was a wonderful affair.
+
+During the four years in which the Morrison & Daly Company shared
+the stream with Thorpe, the two firms lived in complete amity and
+understanding.  Northrop had played his cards skillfully.  The older
+capitalists had withdrawn suit.  Afterwards they kept scrupulously
+within their rights, and saw to it that no more careless openings
+were left for Thorpe's shrewdness.  They were keen enough business
+men, but had made the mistake, common enough to established power,
+of underrating the strength of an apparently insignificant opponent.
+Once they understood Thorpe's capacity, that young man had no more
+chance to catch them napping.
+
+And as the younger man, on his side, never attempted to overstep
+his own rights, the interests of the rival firms rarely clashed.  As
+to the few disputes that did arise, Thorpe found Mr. Daly singularly
+anxious to please.  In the desire was no friendliness, however.
+Thorpe was watchful for treachery, and could hardly believe the
+affair finished when at the end of the fourth year the M. & D.
+sold out the remainder of its pine to a firm from Manistee, and
+transferred its operations to another stream a few miles east,
+where it had acquired more considerable holdings.
+
+"They're altogether too confounded anxious to help us on that
+freight, Wallace," said Thorpe wrinkling his brow uneasily.  "I
+don't like it.  It isn't natural."
+
+"No," laughed Wallace, "neither is it natural for a dog to draw a
+sledge.  But he does it--when he has to.  They're afraid of you,
+Harry: that's all."
+
+Thorpe shook his head, but had to acknowledge that he could
+evidence no grounds for his mistrust.
+
+The conversation took place at Camp One, which was celebrated in
+three states.  Thorpe had set out to gather around him a band of
+good woodsmen.  Except on a pinch he would employ no others.
+
+"I don't care if I get in only two thousand feet this winter, and
+if a boy does that," he answered Shearer's expostulations, "it's
+got to be a good boy."
+
+The result of his policy began to show even in the second year.
+Men were a little proud to say that they had put in a winter at
+"Thorpe's One."  Those who had worked there during the first year
+were loyally enthusiastic over their boss's grit and resourcefulness,
+their camp's order, their cook's good "grub."  As they were
+authorities, others perforce had to accept the dictum.  There grew
+a desire among the better class to see what Thorpe's "One" might be
+like.  In the autumn Harry had more applicants than he knew what to
+do with.  Eighteen of the old men returned.  He took them all, but
+when it came to distribution, three found themselves assigned to
+one or the other of the new camps.  And quietly the rumor gained
+that these three had shown the least willing spirit during the
+previous winter.  The other fifteen were sobered to the industry
+which their importance as veterans might have impaired.
+
+Tim Shearer was foreman of Camp One; Scotty Parsons was drafted
+from the veterans to take charge of Two; Thorpe engaged two men
+known to Tim to boss Three and Four.  But in selecting the "push"
+for Five he displayed most strikingly his keen appreciation of a
+man's relation to his environment.  He sought out John Radway and
+induced him to accept the commission.
+
+"You can do it, John," said he, "and I know it.  I want you to
+try; and if you don't make her go, I'll call it nobody's fault
+but my own."
+
+"I don't see how you dare risk it, after that Cass Branch deal,
+Mr. Thorpe," replied Radway, almost brokenly.  "But I would like
+to tackle it, I'm dead sick of loafing.  Sometimes it seems like
+I'd die, if I don't get out in the woods again."
+
+"We'll call it a deal, then," answered Thorpe.
+
+The result proved his sagacity.  Radway was one of the best foremen
+in the outfit.  He got more out of his men, he rose better to
+emergencies, and he accomplished more with the same resources than
+any of the others, excepting Tim Shearer.  As long as the work was
+done for someone else, he was capable and efficient.  Only when he
+was called upon to demand on his own account, did the paralyzing
+shyness affect him.
+
+But the one feature that did more to attract the very best element
+among woodsmen, and so make possible the practice of Thorpe's theory
+of success, was Camp One.  The men's accommodations at the other
+five were no different and but little better than those in a
+thousand other typical lumber camps of both peninsulas.  They slept
+in box-like bunks filled with hay or straw over which blankets were
+spread; they sat on a narrow hard bench or on the floor; they read
+by the dim light of a lamp fastened against the big cross beam;
+they warmed themselves at a huge iron stove in the center of the
+room around which suspended wires and poles offered space for the
+drying of socks; they washed their clothes when the mood struck them.
+It was warm and comparatively clean.  But it was dark, without
+ornament, cheerless.
+
+The lumber-jack never expects anything different.  In fact, if he
+were pampered to the extent of ordinary comforts, he would be apt
+at once to conclude himself indispensable; whereupon he would
+become worthless.
+
+Thorpe, however, spent a little money--not much--and transformed
+Camp One.  Every bunk was provided with a tick, which the men could
+fill with hay, balsam, or hemlock, as suited them.  Cheap but
+attractive curtains on wires at once brightened the room and shut
+each man's "bedroom" from the main hall.  The deacon seat remained
+but was supplemented by a half-dozen simple and comfortable chairs.
+In the center of the room stood a big round table over which glowed
+two hanging lamps.  The table was littered with papers and magazines.
+Home life was still further suggested by a canary bird in a gilt cage,
+a sleepy cat, and two pots of red geraniums.  Thorpe had further
+imported a washerwoman who dwelt in a separate little cabin under
+the hill.  She washed the men's belongings at twenty-five cents a
+week, which amount Thorpe deducted from each man's wages, whether he
+had the washing done or not.  This encouraged cleanliness.  Phil
+scrubbed out every day, while the men were in the woods.
+
+Such was Thorpe's famous Camp One in the days of its splendor.  Old
+woodsmen will still tell you about it, with a longing reminiscent
+glimmer in the corners of their eyes as they recall its glories and
+the men who worked in it.  To have "put in" a winter in Camp One
+was the mark of a master; and the ambition of every raw recruit to
+the forest.  Probably Thorpe's name is remembered to-day more on
+account of the intrepid, skillful, loyal men his strange genius
+gathered about it, than for the herculean feat of having carved a
+great fortune from the wilderness in but five years' time.
+
+But Camp One was a privilege.  A man entered it only after having
+proved himself; he remained in it only as long as his efficiency
+deserved the honor.  Its members were invariably recruited from one
+of the other four camps; never from applicants who had not been in
+Thorpe's employ.  A raw man was sent to Scotty, or Jack Hyland, or
+Radway, or Kerlie.  There he was given a job, if he happened to
+suit, and men were needed.  By and by, perhaps, when a member of
+Camp One fell sick or was given his time, Tim Shearer would send
+word to one of the other five that he needed an axman or a sawyer,
+or a loader, or teamster, as the case might be.  The best man in
+the other camps was sent up.
+
+So Shearer was foreman of a picked crew.  Probably no finer body of
+men was ever gathered at one camp.  In them one could study at his
+best the American pioneer.  It was said at that time that you had
+never seen logging done as it should be until you had visited
+Thorpe's Camp One on the Ossawinamakee.
+
+Of these men Thorpe demanded one thing--success.  He tried never to
+ask of them anything he did not believe to be thoroughly possible;
+but he expected always that in some manner, by hook or crook, they
+would carry the affair through.  No matter how good the excuse, it
+was never accepted.  Accidents would happen, there as elsewhere; a
+way to arrive in spite of them always exists, if only a man is
+willing to use his wits, unflagging energy, and time.  Bad luck is
+a reality; but much of what is called bad luck is nothing but a want
+of careful foresight, and Thorpe could better afford to be harsh
+occasionally to the genuine for the sake of eliminating the false.
+If a man failed, he left Camp One.
+
+The procedure was very simple.  Thorpe never explained his reasons
+even to Shearer.
+
+"Ask Tom to step in a moment," he requested of the latter.
+
+"Tom," he said to that individual, "I think I can use you better
+at Four.  Report to Kerlie there."
+
+And strangely enough, few even of these proud and independent men
+ever asked for their time, or preferred to quit rather than to work
+up again to the glories of their prize camp.
+
+For while new recruits were never accepted at Camp One, neither was
+a man ever discharged there.  He was merely transferred to one of
+the other foremen.
+
+It is necessary to be thus minute in order that the reader may
+understand exactly the class of men Thorpe had about his immediate
+person.  Some of them had the reputation of being the hardest
+citizens in three States, others were mild as turtle doves.  They
+were all pioneers.  They had the independence, the unabashed eye,
+the insubordination even, of the man who has drawn his intellectual
+and moral nourishment at the breast of a wild nature.  They were
+afraid of nothing alive.  From no one, were he chore-boy or
+president, would they take a single word--with the exception always
+of Tim Shearer and Thorpe.
+
+The former they respected because in their picturesque guild he
+was a master craftsman.  The latter they adored and quoted and
+fought for in distant saloons, because he represented to them their
+own ideal, what they would be if freed from the heavy gyves of vice
+and executive incapacity that weighed them down.
+
+And they were loyal.  It was a point of honor with them to stay
+"until the last dog was hung."  He who deserted in the hour of
+need was not only a renegade, but a fool.  For he thus earned a
+magnificent licking if ever he ran up against a member of the
+"Fighting Forty."  A band of soldiers they were, ready to attempt
+anything their commander ordered, devoted, enthusiastically admiring.
+And, it must be confessed, they were also somewhat on the order of
+a band of pirates.  Marquette thought so each spring after the
+drive, when, hat-tilted, they surged swearing and shouting down
+to Denny Hogan's saloon.  Denny had to buy new fixtures when they
+went away; but it was worth it.
+
+Proud! it was no name for it.  Boast! the fame of Camp One spread
+abroad over the land, and was believed in to about twenty per cent
+of the anecdotes detailed of it--which was near enough the actual
+truth.  Anecdotes disbelieved, the class of men from it would have
+given it a reputation.  The latter was varied enough, in truth.
+Some people thought Camp One must be a sort of hell-hole of roaring,
+fighting devils.  Others sighed and made rapid calculations of the
+number of logs they could put in, if only they could get hold of
+help like that.
+
+Thorpe himself, of course, made his headquarters at Camp One.
+Thence he visited at least once a week all the other camps,
+inspecting the minutest details, not only of the work, but of
+the everyday life.  For this purpose he maintained a light box
+sleigh and pair of bays, though often, when the snow became deep,
+he was forced to snowshoes.
+
+During the five years he had never crossed the Straits of Mackinaw.
+The rupture with his sister had made repugnant to him all the
+southern country.  He preferred to remain in the woods.  All winter
+long he was more than busy at his logging.  Summers he spent at the
+mill.  Occasionally he visited Marquette, but always on business.
+He became used to seeing only the rough faces of men.  The vision of
+softer graces and beauties lost its distinctness before this strong,
+hardy northland, whose gentler moods were like velvet over iron, or
+like its own summer leaves veiling the eternal darkness of the pines.
+
+He was happy because he was too busy to be anything else.  The
+insistent need of success which he had created for himself, absorbed
+all other sentiments.  He demanded it of others rigorously.  He
+could do no less than demand it of himself.  It had practically
+become one of his tenets of belief.  The chief end of any man, as
+he saw it, was to do well and successfully what his life found ready.
+Anything to further this fore-ordained activity was good; anything
+else was bad.  These thoughts, aided by a disposition naturally
+fervent and single in purpose, hereditarily ascetic and conscientious
+--for his mother was of old New England stock--gave to him in the
+course of six years' striving a sort of daily and familiar religion
+to which he conformed his life.
+
+Success, success, success.  Nothing could be of more importance.
+Its attainment argued a man's efficiency in the Scheme of Things,
+his worthy fulfillment of the end for which a divine Providence had
+placed him on earth.  Anything that interfered with it--personal
+comfort, inclination, affection, desire, love of ease, individual
+liking,--was bad.
+
+Luckily for Thorpe's peace of mind, his habit of looking on men as
+things helped him keep to this attitude of mind.  His lumbermen were
+tools,--good, sharp, efficient tools, to be sure, but only because he
+had made them so.  Their loyalty aroused in his breast no pride nor
+gratitude.  He expected loyalty.  He would have discharged at once
+a man who did not show it.  The same with zeal, intelligence, effort
+--they were the things he took for granted.  As for the admiration
+and affection which the Fighting Forty displayed for him personally,
+he gave not a thought to it.  And the men knew it, and loved him the
+more from the fact.
+
+Thorpe cared for just three people, and none of them happened to
+clash with his machine.  They were Wallace Carpenter, little Phil,
+and Injin Charley.
+
+Wallace, for reasons already explained at length, was always
+personally agreeable to Thorpe.  Latterly, since the erection of
+the mill, he had developed unexpected acumen in the disposal of the
+season's cut to wholesale dealers in Chicago.  Nothing could have
+been better for the firm.  Thereafter he was often in the woods,
+both for pleasure and to get his partner's ideas on what the firm
+would have to offer.  The entire responsibility at the city end of
+the business was in his hands.
+
+Injin Charley continued to hunt and trap in the country round about.
+Between him and Thorpe had grown a friendship the more solid in that
+its increase had been mysteriously without outward cause.  Once or
+twice a month the lumberman would snowshoe down to the little cabin
+at the forks.  Entering, he would nod briefly and seat himself on a
+cracker-box.
+
+"How do, Charley," said he.
+
+"How do," replied Charley.
+
+They filled pipes and smoked.  At rare intervals one of them made a
+remark, tersely,
+
+"Catch um three beaver las' week," remarked Charley.
+
+"Good haul," commented Thorpe.
+
+Or:
+
+"I saw a mink track by the big boulder," offered Thorpe.
+
+"H'm!" responded Charley in a long-drawn falsetto whine.
+
+Yet somehow the men came to know each other better and better; and
+each felt that in an emergency he could depend on the other to the
+uttermost in spite of the difference in race.
+
+As for Phil, he was like some strange, shy animal, retaining all
+its wild instincts, but led by affection to become domestic.  He
+drew the water, cut the wood, none better.  In the evening he
+played atrociously his violin,--none worse--,bending his great white
+brow forward with the wolf-glare in his eyes, swaying his shoulders
+with a fierce delight in the subtle dissonances, the swaggering
+exactitude of time, the vulgar rendition of the horrible tunes he
+played.  And often he went into the forest and gazed wondering
+through his liquid poet's eyes at occult things.  Above all, he
+worshipped Thorpe.  And in turn the lumberman accorded him a
+good-natured affection.  He was as indispensable to Camp One as
+the beagles.
+
+And the beagles were most indispensable.  No one could have got
+along without them.  In the course of events and natural selection
+they had increased to eleven.  At night they slept in the men's camp
+underneath or very near the stove.  By daylight in the morning they
+were clamoring at the door.  Never had they caught a hare.  Never
+for a moment did their hopes sink.  The men used sometimes to amuse
+themselves by refusing the requested exit.  The little dogs agonized.
+They leaped and yelped, falling over each other like a tangle of
+angleworms.  Then finally, when the door at last flung wide, they
+precipitated themselves eagerly and silently through the opening.
+A few moments later a single yelp rose in the direction of the
+swamp; the band took up the cry.  From then until dark the glade
+was musical with baying.  At supper time they returned straggling,
+their expression pleased, six inches of red tongue hanging from the
+corners of their mouths, ravenously ready for supper.
+
+Strangely enough the big white hares never left the swamp.  Perhaps
+the same one was never chased two days in succession.  Or it is
+possible that the quarry enjoyed the harmless game as much as did
+the little dogs.
+
+Once only while the snow lasted was the hunt abandoned for a few
+days.  Wallace Carpenter announced his intention of joining forces
+with the diminutive hounds.
+
+"It's a shame, so it is, doggies!" he laughed at the tried pack.
+"We'll get one to-morrow."
+
+So he took his shotgun to the swamp, and after a half hour's wait,
+succeeded in killing the hare.  From that moment he was the hero of
+those ecstacized canines.  They tangled about him everywhere.  He
+hardly dared take a step for fear of crushing one of the open faces
+and expectant, pleading eyes looking up at him.  It grew to be
+a nuisance.  Wallace always claimed his trip was considerably
+shortened because he could not get away from his admirers.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVI
+
+
+Financially the Company was rated high, and yet was heavily in
+debt.  This condition of affairs by no means constitutes an anomaly
+in the lumbering business.
+
+The profits of the first five years had been immediately reinvested
+in the business.  Thorpe, with the foresight that had originally led
+him into this new country, saw farther than the instant's gain.  He
+intended to establish in a few years more a big plant which would
+be returning benefices in proportion not only to the capital
+originally invested, but also in ratio to the energy, time, and
+genius he had himself expended.  It was not the affair of a moment.
+It was not the affair of half-measures, of timidity.
+
+Thorpe knew that he could play safely, cutting a few millions a
+year, expanding cautiously.  By this method he would arrive, but
+only after a long period.
+
+Or he could do as many other firms have done; start on borrowed
+money.
+
+In the latter case he had only one thing to fear, and that was
+fire.  Every cent, and many times over, of his obligations would
+be represented in the state of raw material.  All he had to do
+was to cut it out by the very means which the yearly profits of
+his business would enable him to purchase.  For the moment, he
+owed a great deal; without the shadow of a doubt mere industry
+would clear his debt, and leave him with substantial acquisitions
+created, practically, from nothing but his own abilities.  The
+money obtained from his mortgages was a tool which he picked up
+an instant, used to fashion one of his own, and laid aside.
+
+Every autumn the Company found itself suddenly in easy circumstances.
+At any moment that Thorpe had chosen to be content with the progress
+made, he could have, so to speak, declared dividends with his partner.
+Instead of undertaking more improvements, for part of which he
+borrowed some money, he could have divided the profits of the
+season's cut.  But this he was not yet ready to do.
+
+He had established five more camps, he had acquired over a hundred
+and fifty million more of timber lying contiguous to his own, he
+had built and equipped a modern high-efficiency mill, he had
+constructed a harbor break-water and the necessary booms, he had
+bought a tug, built a boarding-house.  All this costs money.  He
+wished now to construct a logging railroad.  Then he promised
+himself and Wallace that they would be ready to commence paying
+operations.
+
+The logging railroad was just then beginning to gain recognition.
+A few miles of track, a locomotive, and a number of cars consisting
+uniquely of wheels and "bunks," or cross beams on which to chain
+the logs, and a fairly well-graded right-of-way comprised the
+outfit.  Its use obviated the necessity of driving the river--always
+an expensive operation.  Often, too, the decking at the skidways
+could be dispensed with; and the sleigh hauls, if not entirely
+superseded for the remote districts, were entirely so in the
+country for a half mile on either side of the track, and in any
+case were greatly shortened.  There obtained, too, the additional
+advantage of being able to cut summer and winter alike.  Thus, the
+plant once established, logging by railroad was not only easier but
+cheaper.  Of late years it has come into almost universal use in
+big jobs and wherever the nature of the country will permit.  The
+old-fashioned, picturesque ice-road sleigh-haul will last as long
+as north-woods lumbering,--even in the railroad districts,--but the
+locomotive now does the heavy work.
+
+With the capital to be obtained from the following winter's product,
+Thorpe hoped to be able to establish a branch which should run from
+a point some two miles behind Camp One, to a "dump" a short distance
+above the mill.  For this he had made all the estimates, and even the
+preliminary survey.  He was therefore the more grievously
+disappointed,
+when Wallace Carpenter made it impossible for him to do so.
+
+He was sitting in the mill-office one day about the middle of July.
+Herrick, the engineer, had just been in.  He could not keep the
+engine in order, although Thorpe knew that it could be done.
+
+"I've sot up nights with her," said Herrick, "and she's no go.  I
+think I can fix her when my head gets all right.  I got headachy
+lately.  And somehow that last lot of Babbit metal didn't seem to
+act just right."
+
+Thorpe looked out of the window, tapping his desk slowly with the
+end of a lead pencil.
+
+"Collins," said he to the bookkeeper, without raising his voice or
+altering his position, "make out Herrick's time."
+
+The man stood there astonished.
+
+"But I had hard luck, sir," he expostulated.  "She'll go all right
+now, I think."
+
+Thorpe turned and looked at him.
+
+"Herrick," he said, not unkindly, "this is the second time this
+summer the mill has had to close early on account of that engine.
+We have supplied you with everything you asked for.  If you can't
+do it, we shall have to get a man who can."
+
+"But I had---" began the man once more.
+
+"I ask every man to succeed in what I give him to do," interrupted
+Thorpe.  "If he has a headache, he must brace up or quit.  If his
+Babbit doesn't act just right he must doctor it up; or get some more,
+even if he has to steal it.  If he has hard luck, he must sit up
+nights to better it.  It's none of my concern how hard or how easy
+a time a man has in doing what I tell him to.  I EXPECT HIM TO DO IT.
+If I have to do all a man's thinking for him, I may as well hire
+Swedes and be done with it.  I have too many details to attend to
+already without bothering about excuses."
+
+The man stood puzzling over this logic.
+
+"I ain't got any other job," he ventured.
+
+"You can go to piling on the docks," replied Thorpe, "if you want to."
+
+Thorpe was thus explicit because he rather liked Herrick.  It was
+hard for him to discharge the man peremptorily, and he proved the
+need of justifying himself in his own eyes.
+
+Now he sat back idly in the clean painted little room with the big
+square desk and the three chairs.  Through the door he could see
+Collins, perched on a high stool before the shelf-like desk.  From
+the open window came the clear, musical note of the circular saw,
+the fresh aromatic smell of new lumber, the bracing air from
+Superior sparkling in the offing.  He felt tired.  In rare moments
+such as these, when the muscles of his striving relaxed, his mind
+turned to the past.  Old sorrows rose before him and looked at him
+with their sad eyes; the sorrows that had helped to make him what
+he was.  He wondered where his sister was.  She would be twenty-two
+years old now.  A tenderness, haunting, tearful, invaded his heart.
+He suffered.  At such moments the hard shell of his rough woods life
+seemed to rend apart.  He longed with a great longing for sympathy,
+for love, for the softer influences that cradle even warriors
+between the clangors of the battles.
+
+The outer door, beyond the cage behind which Collins and his shelf
+desk were placed, flew open.  Thorpe heard a brief greeting, and
+Wallace Carpenter stood before him.
+
+"Why, Wallace, I didn't know you were coming!" began Thorpe, and
+stopped.  The boy, usually so fresh and happily buoyant, looked ten
+years older.  Wrinkles had gathered between his eyes.  "Why, what's
+the matter?" cried Thorpe.
+
+He rose swiftly and shut the door into the outer office.  Wallace
+seated himself mechanically.
+
+"Everything! everything!" he said in despair.  "I've been a fool!
+I've been blind!"
+
+So bitter was his tone that Thorpe was startled.  The lumberman sat
+down on the other side of the desk.
+
+"That'll do, Wallace," he said sharply.  "Tell me briefly what is
+the matter."
+
+"I've been speculating!" burst out the boy.
+
+"Ah!" said his partner.
+
+"At first I bought only dividend-paying stocks outright.  Then I
+bought for a rise, but still outright.  Then I got in with a fellow
+who claimed to know all about it.  I bought on a margin.  There came
+a slump.  I met the margins because I am sure there will be a rally,
+but now all my fortune is in the thing.  I'm going to be penniless.
+I'll lose it all."
+
+"Ah!" said Thorpe.
+
+"And the name of Carpenter is so old-established, so honorable!"
+cried the unhappy boy, "and my sister!"
+
+"Easy!" warned Thorpe.  "Being penniless isn't the worst thing that
+can happen to a man."
+
+"No; but I am in debt," went on the boy more calmly.  "I have given
+notes.  When they come due, I'm a goner."
+
+"How much?" asked Thorpe laconically.
+
+"Thirty thousand dollars."
+
+"Well, you have that amount in this firm."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"If you want it, you can have it."
+
+Wallace considered a moment.
+
+"That would leave me without a cent," he replied.
+
+"But it would save your commercial honor."
+
+"Harry," cried Wallace suddenly, "couldn't this firm go on my note
+for thirty thousand more?  Its credit is good, and that amount
+would save my margins."
+
+"You are partner," replied Thorpe, "your signature is as good as
+mine in this firm."
+
+"But you know I wouldn't do it without your consent," replied
+Wallace reproachfully.  "Oh, Harry!" cried the boy, "when you
+needed the amount, I let you have it!"
+
+Thorpe smiled.
+
+"You know you can have it, if it's to be had, Wallace.  I wasn't
+hesitating on that account.  I was merely trying to figure out where
+we can raise such a sum as sixty thousand dollars.  We haven't got
+it."
+
+"But you'll never have to pay it," assured Wallace eagerly.  "If I
+can save my margins, I'll be all right."
+
+"A man has to figure on paying whatever he puts his signature to,"
+asserted Thorpe.  "I can give you our note payable at the end of a
+year.  Then I'll hustle in enough timber to make up the amount.  It
+means we don't get our railroad, that's all."
+
+"I knew you'd help me out.  Now it's all right," said Wallace, with
+a relieved air.
+
+Thorpe shook his head.  He was already trying to figure how to
+increase his cut to thirty million feet.
+
+"I'll do it," he muttered to himself, after Wallace had gone out
+to visit the mill.  "I've been demanding success of others for a
+good many years; now I'll demand it of myself."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+
+THORPE'S DREAM GIRL
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVII
+
+
+The moment had struck for the woman.  Thorpe did not know it, but
+it was true.  A solitary, brooding life in the midst of grand
+surroundings, an active, strenuous life among great responsibilities,
+a starved, hungry life of the affections whence even the sister had
+withdrawn her love,--all these had worked unobtrusively towards the
+formation of a single psychological condition.  Such a moment comes
+to every man.  In it he realizes the beauties, the powers, the
+vastnesses which unconsciously his being has absorbed.  They rise
+to the surface as a need, which, being satisfied, is projected into
+the visible world as an ideal to be worshipped.  Then is happiness
+and misery beside which the mere struggle to dominate men becomes
+trivial, the petty striving with the forces of nature seems a little
+thing.  And the woman he at that time meets takes on the qualities
+of the dream; she is more than woman, less than goddess; she is the
+best of that man made visible.
+
+Thorpe found himself for the first time filled with the spirit of
+restlessness.  His customary iron evenness of temper was gone, so
+that he wandered quickly from one detail of his work to another,
+without seeming to penetrate below the surface-need of any one
+task.  Out of the present his mind was always escaping to a mystic
+fourth dimension which he did not understand.  But a week before, he
+had felt himself absorbed in the component parts of his enterprise,
+the totality of which arched far over his head, shutting out the
+sky.  Now he was outside of it.  He had, without his volition,
+abandoned the creator's standpoint of the god at the heart of his
+work.  It seemed as important, as great to him, but somehow it had
+taken on a strange solidarity, as though he had left it a plastic
+beginning and returned to find it hardened into the shapes of
+finality.  He acknowledged it admirable,--and wondered how he had
+ever accomplished it!  He confessed that it should be finished as
+it had begun,--and could not discover in himself the Titan who had
+watched over its inception.
+
+Thorpe took this state of mind much to heart, and in combating it
+expended more energy than would have sufficed to accomplish the
+work.  Inexorably he held himself to the task.  He filled his mind
+full of lumbering.  The millions along the bank on section nine must
+be cut and travoyed directly to the rollways.  It was a shame that
+the necessity should arise.  From section nine Thorpe had hoped to
+lighten the expenses when finally he should begin operations on the
+distant and inaccessible headwaters of French Creek.  Now there was
+no help for it.  The instant necessity was to get thirty millions
+of pine logs down the river before Wallace Carpenter's notes came
+due.  Every other consideration had to yield before that.  Fifteen
+millions more could be cut on seventeen, nineteen, and eleven,--
+regions hitherto practically untouched,--by the men in the four
+camps inland.  Camp One and Camp Three could attend to section nine.
+
+These were details to which Thorpe applied his mind.  As he pushed
+through the sun-flecked forest, laying out his roads, placing his
+travoy trails, spying the difficulties that might supervene to mar
+the fair face of honest labor, he had always this thought before
+him,--that he must apply his mind.  By an effort, a tremendous
+effort, he succeeded in doing so.  The effort left him limp.  He
+found himself often standing, or moving gently, his eyes staring
+sightless, his mind cradled on vague misty clouds of absolute
+inaction, his will chained so softly and yet so firmly that he felt
+no strength and hardly the desire to break from the dream that lulled
+him.  Then he was conscious of the physical warmth of the sun, the
+faint sweet woods smells, the soothing caress of the breeze, the
+sleepy cicada-like note of the pine creeper.  Through his half-closed
+lashes the tangled sun-beams made soft-tinted rainbows.  He wanted
+nothing so much as to sit on the pine needles there in the golden
+flood of radiance, and dream--dream on--vaguely, comfortably,
+sweetly--dream of the summer---
+
+Thorpe, with a mighty and impatient effort, snapped the silken
+cords asunder.
+
+"Lord, Lord!" he cried impatiently.  "What's coming to me?  I must
+be a little off my feed!"
+
+And he hurried rapidly to his duties.  After an hour of the hardest
+concentration he had ever been required to bestow on a trivial
+subject, he again unconsciously sank by degrees into the old apathy.
+
+"Glad it isn't the busy season!" he commented to himself.  "Here, I
+must quit this!  Guess it's the warm weather.  I'll get down to the
+mill for a day or two."
+
+There he found himself incapable of even the most petty routine
+work.  He sat to his desk at eight o'clock and began the perusal
+of a sheaf of letters, comprising a certain correspondence, which
+Collins brought him.  The first three he read carefully; the
+following two rather hurriedly; of the next one he seized only the
+salient and essential points; the seventh and eighth he skimmed;
+the remainder of the bundle he thrust aside in uncontrollable
+impatience.  Next day he returned to the woods.
+
+The incident of the letters had aroused to the full his old fighting
+spirit, before which no mere instincts could stand.  He clamped the
+iron to his actions and forced them to the way appointed.  Once more
+his mental processes became clear and incisive, his commands direct
+and to the point.  To all outward appearance Thorpe was as before.
+
+He opened Camp One, and the Fighting Forty came back from distant
+drinking joints.  This was in early September, when the raspberries
+were entirely done and the blackberries fairly in the way of
+vanishing.  That able-bodied and devoted band of men was on hand
+when needed.  Shearer, in some subtle manner of his own, had let
+them feel that this year meant thirty million or "bust."  They
+tightened their leather belts and stood ready for commands.  Thorpe
+set them to work near the river, cutting roads along the lines he
+had blazed to the inland timber on seventeen and nineteen.  After
+much discussion with Shearer the young man decided to take out the
+logs from eleven by driving them down French Creek.
+
+To this end a gang was put to clearing the creekbed.  It was a
+tremendous job.  Centuries of forest life had choked the little
+stream nearly to the level of its banks.  Old snags and stumps lay
+imbedded in the ooze; decayed trunks, moss-grown, blocked the
+current; leaning tamaracks, fallen timber, tangled vines, dense
+thickets gave to its course more the appearance of a tropical
+jungle than of a north country brook-bed.  All these things had to
+be removed, one by one, and either piled to one side or burnt.  In
+the end, however, it would pay.  French Creek was not a large stream,
+but it could be driven during the time of the spring freshets.
+
+Each night the men returned in the beautiful dreamlike twilight to
+the camp.  There they sat, after eating, smoking their pipes in the
+open air.  Much of the time they sang, while Phil, crouching wolf-
+like over his violin, rasped out an accompaniment of dissonances.
+From a distance it softened and fitted pleasantly into the framework
+of the wilderness.  The men's voices lent themselves well to the
+weird minor strains of the chanteys.  These times--when the men sang,
+and the night-wind rose and died in the hemlock tops--were Thorpe's
+worst moments.  His soul, tired with the day's iron struggle, fell
+to brooding.  Strange thoughts came to him, strange visions.  He
+wanted something he knew not what; he longed, and thrilled, and
+aspired to a greater glory than that of brave deeds, a softer
+comfort than his old foster mother, the wilderness, could bestow.
+
+The men were singing in a mighty chorus, swaying their heads in
+unison, and bringing out with a roar the emphatic words of the
+crude ditties written by some genius from their own ranks.
+
+
+  "Come all ye sons of freedom throughout old Michigan,
+   Come all ye gallant lumbermen, list to a shanty man.
+   On the banks of the Muskegon, where the rapid waters flow,
+   OH!--we'll range the wild woods o'er while a-lumbering we go."
+
+
+Here was the bold unabashed front of the pioneer, here was absolute
+certainty in the superiority of his calling,--absolute scorn of all
+others.  Thorpe passed his hand across his brow.  The same spirit was
+once fully and freely his.
+
+
+  "The music of our burnished ax shall make the woods resound,
+   And many a lofty ancient pine will tumble to the ground.
+   At night around our shanty fire we'll sing while rude winds blow,
+   OH!--we'll range the wild woods o'er while a-lumbering we go!"
+
+
+That was what he was here for.  Things were going right.  It would
+be pitiful to fail merely on account of this idiotic lassitude, this
+unmanly weakness, this boyish impatience and desire for play.  He a
+woodsman! He a fellow with these big strong men!
+
+A single voice, clear and high, struck into a quick measure:
+
+
+  "I am a jolly shanty boy,
+     As you will soon discover;
+   To all the dodges I am fly,
+     A hustling pine-woods rover.
+   A peavey-hook it is my pride,
+     An ax I well can handle.
+   To fell a tree or punch a bull,
+     Get rattling Danny Randall."
+
+
+And then with a rattle and crash the whole Fighting Forty shrieked
+out the chorus:
+
+
+  "Bung yer eye! bung yer eye!"
+
+
+Active, alert, prepared for any emergency that might arise; hearty,
+ready for everything, from punching bulls to felling trees--that
+was something like!  Thorpe despised himself.  The song went on.
+
+
+  "I love a girl in Saginaw,
+     She lives with her mother.
+   I defy all Michigan
+     To find such another.
+   She's tall and slim, her hair is red,
+     Her face is plump and pretty.
+   She's my daisy Sunday best-day girl,
+     And her front name stands for Kitty."
+
+
+And again as before the Fighting Forty howled truculently:
+
+
+"Bung yer eye! bung yer eye!"
+
+
+The words were vulgar, the air a mere minor chant.  Yet Thorpe's
+mind was stilled.  His aroused subconsciousness had been engaged
+in reconstructing these men entire as their songs voiced rudely
+the inner characteristics of their beings.  Now his spirit halted,
+finger on lip.  Their bravery, pride of caste, resource, bravado,
+boastfulness,--all these he had checked off approvingly.  Here now
+was the idea of the Mate.  Somewhere for each of them was a "Kitty,"
+a "daisy Sunday best-day girl"; the eternal feminine; the softer
+side; the tenderness, beauty, glory of even so harsh a world as
+they were compelled to inhabit.  At the present or in the past these
+woods roisterers, this Fighting Forty, had known love.  Thorpe arose
+abruptly and turned at random into the forest.  The song pursued
+him as he went, but he heard only the clear sweet tones, not the
+words.  And yet even the words would have spelled to his awakened
+sensibilities another idea,--would have symbolized however rudely,
+companionship and the human delight of acting a part before a woman.
+
+
+  "I took her to a dance one night,
+     A mossback gave the bidding--
+   Silver Jack bossed the shebang,
+     and Big Dan played the fiddle.
+   We danced and drank the livelong night
+     With fights between the dancing,
+   Till Silver Jack cleaned out the ranch
+     And sent the mossbacks prancing."
+
+
+And with the increasing war and turmoil of the quick water the last
+shout of the Fighting Forty mingled faintly and was lost.
+
+
+  "Bung yer eye! bung yer eye!"
+
+
+Thorpe found himself at the edge of the woods facing a little glade
+into which streamed the radiance of a full moon.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVIII
+
+
+There he stood and looked silently, not understanding, not caring
+to inquire.  Across the way a white-throat was singing, clear,
+beautiful, like the shadow of a dream.  The girl stood listening.
+
+Her small fair head was inclined ever so little sideways and her
+finger was on her lips as though she wished to still the very hush
+of night, to which impression the inclination of her supple body
+lent its grace.  The moonlight shone full upon her countenance.
+A little white face it was, with wide clear eyes and a sensitive,
+proud mouth that now half parted like a child's.  Here eyebrows
+arched from her straight nose in the peculiarly graceful curve
+that falls just short of pride on the one side and of power on the
+other, to fill the eyes with a pathos of trust and innocence.  The
+man watching could catch the poise of her long white neck and the
+molten moon-fire from her tumbled hair,--the color of corn-silk,
+but finer.
+
+And yet these words meant nothing.  A painter might have caught
+her charm, but he must needs be a poet as well,--and a great poet,
+one capable of grandeurs and subtleties.
+
+To the young man standing there rapt in the spell of vague desire,
+of awakened vision, she seemed most like a flower or a mist.  He
+tried to find words to formulate her to himself, but did not succeed.
+Always it came back to the same idea--the flower and the mist.  Like
+the petals of a flower most delicate was her questioning, upturned
+face; like the bend of a flower most rare the stalk of her graceful
+throat; like the poise of a flower most dainty the attitude of her
+beautiful, perfect body sheathed in a garment that outlined each
+movement, for the instant in suspense.  Like a mist the glimmering
+of her skin, the shining of her hair, the elusive moonlike quality
+of her whole personality as she stood there in the ghost-like
+clearing listening, her fingers on her lips.
+
+Behind her lurked the low, even shadow of the forest where the moon
+was not, a band of velvet against which the girl and the light-
+touched twigs and bushes and grass blades were etched like frost
+against a black window pane.  There was something, too, of the
+frost-work's evanescent spiritual quality in the scene,--as though
+at any moment, with a puff of the balmy summer wind, the radiant
+glade, the hovering figure, the filagreed silver of the entire
+setting would melt into the accustomed stern and menacing forest
+of the northland, with its wolves, and its wild deer, and the voices
+of its sterner calling.
+
+Thorpe held his breath and waited.  Again the white-throat lifted
+his clear, spiritual note across the brightness, slow, trembling
+with.  The girl never moved.  She stood in the moonlight
+like a beautiful emblem of silence, half real, half fancy, part
+woman, wholly divine, listening to the little bird's message.
+
+For the third time the song shivered across the night, then Thorpe
+with a soft sob, dropped his face in his hands and looked no more.
+
+He did not feel the earth beneath his knees, nor the whip of the
+sumach across his face; he did not see the moon shadows creep
+slowly along the fallen birch; nor did he notice that the white-
+throat had hushed its song.  His inmost spirit was shaken.
+Something had entered his soul and filled it to the brim, so that
+he dared no longer stand in the face of radiance until he had
+accounted with himself.  Another drop would overflow the cup.
+
+Ah, sweet God, the beauty of it, the beauty of it!  That questing,
+childlike starry gaze, seeking so purely to the stars themselves!
+That flower face, those drooping, half parted lips!  That
+inexpressible, unseizable something they had meant!  Thorpe searched
+humbly--eagerly--then with agony through his troubled spirit, and in
+its furthermost depths saw the mystery as beautifully remote as ever.
+It approached and swept over him and left him gasping passion-racked.
+Ah, sweet God, the beauty of it! the beauty of it! the vision! the
+dream!
+
+He trembled and sobbed with his desire to seize it, with his
+impotence to express it, with his failure even to appreciate it
+as his heart told him it should be appreciated.
+
+He dared not look.  At length he turned and stumbled back through
+the moonlit forest crying on his old gods in vain.
+
+At the banks of the river he came to a halt.  There in the velvet
+pines the moonlight slept calmly, and the shadows rested quietly
+under the breezeless sky.  Near at hand the river shouted as ever
+its cry of joy over the vitality of life, like a spirited boy
+before the face of inscrutable nature.  All else was silence.  Then
+from the waste boomed a strange, hollow note, rising, dying, rising
+again, instinct with the spirit of the wilds.  It fell, and far away
+sounded a heavy but distant crash.  The cry lifted again.  It was the
+first bull moose calling across the wilderness to his mate.
+
+And then, faint but clear down the current of a chance breeze
+drifted the chorus of the Fighting Forty.
+
+
+  "The forests so brown at our stroke go down,
+     And cities spring up where they fell;
+   While logs well run and work well done
+     Is the story the shanty boys tell."
+
+
+Thorpe turned from the river with a thrust forward of his head.  He
+was not a religious man, and in his six years' woods experience had
+never been to church.  Now he looked up over the tops of the pines
+to where the Pleiades glittered faintly among the brighter stars.
+
+"Thanks, God," said he briefly.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIX
+
+
+For several days this impression satisfied him completely.  He
+discovered, strangely enough, that his restlessness had left him,
+that once more he was able to give to his work his former energy
+and interest.  It was as though some power had raised its finger
+and a storm had stilled, leaving calm, unruffled skies.
+
+He did not attempt to analyze this; he did not even make an effort
+to contemplate it.  His critical faculty was stricken dumb and it
+asked no questions of him.  At a touch his entire life had changed.
+Reality or vision, he had caught a glimpse of something so entirely
+different from anything his imagination or experience had ever
+suggested to him, that at first he could do no more than permit
+passively its influences to adjust themselves to his being.
+
+Curiosity, speculation, longing,--all the more active emotions
+remained in abeyance while outwardly, for three days, Harry Thorpe
+occupied himself only with the needs of the Fighting Forty at Camp
+One.
+
+In the early morning he went out with the gang.  While they chopped
+or heaved, he stood by serene.  Little questions of expediency he
+solved.  Dilemmas he discussed leisurely with Tim Shearer.
+Occasionally he lent a shoulder when the peaveys lacked of prying a
+stubborn log from its bed.  Not once did he glance at the nooning
+sun.  His patience was quiet and sure.  When evening came he smoked
+placidly outside the office, listening to the conversation and
+laughter of the men, caressing one of the beagles, while the rest
+slumbered about his feet, watching dreamily the night shadows and
+the bats.  At about nine o'clock he went to bed, and slept soundly.
+He was vaguely conscious of a great peace within him, a great
+stillness of the spirit, against which the metallic events of his
+craft clicked sharply in vivid relief.  It was the peace and
+stillness of a river before it leaps.
+
+Little by little the condition changed.  The man felt vague
+stirrings of curiosity.  He speculated aimlessly as to whether or
+not the glade, the moonlight, the girl, had been real or merely the
+figments of imagination.  Almost immediately the answer leaped at him
+from his heart.  Since she was so certainly flesh and blood, whence
+did she come? what was she doing there in the wilderness?  His mind
+pushed the query aside as unimportant, rushing eagerly to the
+essential point: When could he see her again?  How find for the
+second time the vision before which his heart felt the instant need
+of prostrating itself.  His placidity had gone.  That morning he made
+some vague excuse to Shearer and set out blindly down the river.
+
+He did not know where he was going, any more than did the bull moose
+plunging through the trackless wilderness to his mate.  Instinct, the
+instinct of all wild natural creatures, led him.  And so, without
+thought, without clear intention even,--most would say by accident,--
+he saw her again.  It was near the "pole trail"; which was less like
+a trail than a rail-fence.
+
+For when the snows are deep and snowshoes not the property of every
+man who cares to journey, the old-fashioned "pole trail" comes into
+use.  It is merely a series of horses built of timber across which
+thick Norway logs are laid, about four feet from the ground, to
+form a continuous pathway.  A man must be a tight-rope walker to
+stick to the pole trail when ice and snow have sheathed its logs.
+If he makes a misstep, he is precipitated ludicrously into feathery
+depths through which he must flounder to the nearest timber horse
+before he can remount.  In summer, as has been said, it resembles
+nothing so much as a thick one-rail fence of considerable height,
+around which a fringe of light brush has grown.
+
+Thorpe reached the fringe of bushes, and was about to dodge under
+the fence, when he saw her.  So he stopped short, concealed by the
+leaves and the timber horse.
+
+She stood on a knoll in the middle of a grove of monster pines.
+There was something of the cathedral in the spot.  A hush dwelt in
+the dusk, the long columns lifted grandly to the Roman arches of
+the frond, faint murmurings stole here and there like whispering
+acolytes.  The girl stood tall and straight among the tall, straight
+pines like a figure on an ancient tapestry.  She was doing nothing--
+just standing there--but the awe of the forest was in her wide,
+clear eyes.
+
+The great sweet feeling clutched the young man's throat again.  But
+while the other,--the vision of the frost-work glade and the spirit-
+like figure of silence,--had been unreal and phantasmagoric, this was
+of the earth.  He looked, and looked, and looked again.  He saw the
+full pure curve of her cheek's contour, neither oval nor round, but
+like the outline of a certain kind of plum.  He appreciated the half-
+pathetic downward droop of the corners of her mouth,--her red mouth
+in dazzling, bewitching contrast to the milk-whiteness of her skin.
+He caught the fineness of her nose, straight as a Grecian's, but
+with some faint suggestion about the nostrils that hinted at piquance.
+And the waving corn silk of her altogether charming and unruly hair,
+the superb column of her long neck on which her little head poised
+proudly like a flower, her supple body, whose curves had the long
+undulating grace of the current in a swift river, her slender white
+hand with the pointed fingers--all these he saw one after the other,
+and his soul shouted within him at the sight.  He wrestled with the
+emotions that choked him.  "Ah, God! Ah, God!" he cried softly to
+himself like one in pain.  He, the man of iron frame, of iron nerve,
+hardened by a hundred emergencies, trembled in every muscle before
+a straight, slender girl, clad all in brown, standing alone in the
+middle of the ancient forest.
+
+In a moment she stirred slightly, and turned.  Drawing herself to
+her full height, she extended her hands over her head palm outward,
+and, with an indescribably graceful gesture, half mockingly bowed a
+ceremonious adieu to the solemn trees.  Then with a little laugh she
+moved away in the direction of the river.
+
+At once Thorpe proved a great need of seeing her again.  In his
+present mood there was nothing of the awe-stricken peace he had
+experienced after the moonlight adventure.  He wanted the sight of
+her as he had never wanted anything before.  He must have it, and he
+looked about him fiercely as though to challenge any force in Heaven
+or Hell that would deprive him of it.  His eyes desired to follow
+the soft white curve of her cheek, to dance with the light of her
+corn-silk hair, to delight in the poetic movements of her tall,
+slim body, to trace the full outline of her chin, to wonder at
+the carmine of her lips, red as a blood-spot on the snow.  These
+things must be at once.  The strong man desired it.  And finding it
+impossible, he raged inwardly and tore the tranquillities of his
+heart, as on the shores of the distant Lake of Stars, the bull-
+moose trampled down the bushes in his passion.
+
+So it happened that he ate hardly at all that day, and slept ill,
+and discovered the greatest difficulty in preserving the outward
+semblance of ease which the presence of Tim Shearer and the
+Fighting Forty demanded.
+
+And next day he saw her again, and the next, because the need of
+his heart demanded it, and because, simply enough, she came every
+afternoon to the clump of pines by the old pole trail.
+
+Now had Thorpe taken the trouble to inquire, he could have learned
+easily enough all there was to be known of the affair.  But he did
+not take the trouble.  His consciousness was receiving too many new
+impressions, so that in a manner it became bewildered.  At first,
+as has been seen, the mere effect of the vision was enough; then
+the sight of the girl sufficed him.  But now curiosity awoke and
+a desire for something more.  He must speak to her, touch her hand,
+look into her eyes.  He resolved to approach her, and the mere
+thought choked him and sent him weak.
+
+When he saw her again from the shelter of the pole trail, he dared
+not, and so stood there prey to a novel sensation,--that of being
+baffled in an intention.  It awoke within him a vast passion
+compounded part of rage at himself, part of longing for that which
+he could not take, but most of love for the girl.  As he hesitated
+in one mind but in two decisions, he saw that she was walking
+slowly in his direction.
+
+Perhaps a hundred paces separated the two.  She took them
+deliberately,
+pausing now and again to listen, to pluck a leaf, to smell the
+fragrant balsam and fir tops as she passed them.  Her progression
+was a series of poses, the one of which melted imperceptibly into
+the other without appreciable pause of transition.  So subtly did
+her grace appeal to the sense of sight, that out of mere sympathy
+the other senses responded with fictions of their own.  Almost could
+the young man behind the trail savor a faint fragrance, a faint music
+that surrounded and preceded her like the shadows of phantoms.  He
+knew it as an illusion, born of his desire, and yet it was a noble
+illusion, for it had its origin in her.
+
+In a moment she had reached the fringe of brush about the pole trail.
+They stood face to face.
+
+She gave a little start of surprise, and her hand leaped to her
+breast, where it caught and stayed.  Her childlike down-drooping
+mouth parted a little more, and the breath quickened through it.
+But her eyes, her wide, trusting, innocent eyes, sought his and
+rested.
+
+He did not move.  The eagerness, the desire, the long years of
+ceaseless struggle, the thirst for affection, the sob of awe at the
+moonlit glade, the love,--all these flamed in his eyes and fixed his
+gaze in an unconscious ardor that had nothing to do with convention
+or timidity.  One on either side of the spike-marked old Norway log
+of the trail they stood, and for an appreciable interval the duel
+of their glances lasted,--he masterful, passionate, exigent; she
+proud, cool, defensive in the aloofness of her beauty.  Then at
+last his prevailed.  A faint color rose from her neck, deepened,
+and spread over her face and forehead.  In a moment she dropped
+her eyes.
+
+"Don't you think you stare a little rudely--Mr. Thorpe?" she asked.
+
+
+
+Chapter XL
+
+
+The vision was over, but the beauty remained.  The spoken words of
+protest made her a woman.  Never again would she, nor any other
+creature of the earth, appear to Thorpe as she had in the silver
+glade or the cloistered pines.  He had had his moment of insight.
+The deeps had twice opened to permit him to look within.  Now they
+had closed again.  But out of them had fluttered a great love and the
+priestess of it.  Always, so long as life should be with him, Thorpe
+was destined to see in this tall graceful girl with the red lips
+and the white skin and the corn-silk hair, more beauty, more of the
+great mysterious spiritual beauty which is eternal, than her father
+or her mother or her dearest and best.  For to them the vision had
+not been vouchsafed, while he had seen her as the highest symbol of
+God's splendor.
+
+Now she stood before him, her head turned half away, a faint flush
+still tingeing the chalk-white of her skin, watching him with a dim,
+half-pleading smile in expectation of his reply.
+
+"Ah, moon of my soul! light of my life!" he cried, but he cried
+it within him, though it almost escaped his vigilance to his lips.
+What he really said sounded almost harsh in consequence.
+
+"How did you know my name?" he asked.
+
+She planted both elbows on the Norway and framed her little face
+deliciously with her long pointed hands.
+
+"If Mr. Harry Thorpe can ask that question," she replied, "he is
+not quite so impolite as I had thought him."
+
+"If you don't stop pouting your lips, I shall kiss them!" cried
+Harry--to himself.
+
+"How is that?" he inquired breathlessly.
+
+"Don't you know who I am?" she asked in return.
+
+"A goddess, a beautiful woman!" he answered ridiculously enough.
+
+She looked straight at him.  This time his gaze dropped.
+
+"I am a friend of Elizabeth Carpenter, who is Wallace Carpenter's
+sister, who I believe is Mr. Harry Thorpe's partner."
+
+She paused as though for comment.  The young man opposite was
+occupied in many other more important directions.  Some moments
+later the words trickled into his brain, and some moments after
+that he realized their meaning.
+
+"We wrote Mr. Harry Thorpe that we were about to descend on his
+district with wagons and tents and Indians and things, and asked
+him to come and see us."
+
+"Ah, heart o' mine, what clear, pure eyes she has!  How they look
+at a man to drown his soul!"
+
+Which, even had it been spoken, was hardly the comment one would
+have expected.
+
+The girl looked at him for a moment steadily, then smiled.  The
+change of countenance brought Thorpe to himself, and at the same
+moment the words she had spoken reached his comprehension.
+
+"But I never received the letter.  I'm so sorry," said he.  "It
+must be at the mill.  You see, I've been up in the woods for nearly
+a month."
+
+"Then we'll have to forgive you."
+
+"But I should think they would have done something for you at the
+mill---"
+
+"Oh, we didn't come by way of your mill.  We drove from Marquette."
+
+"I see," cried Thorpe, enlightened.  "But I'm sorry I didn't know.
+I'm sorry you didn't let me know.  I suppose you thought I was still
+at the mill.  How did you get along?  Is Wallace with you?"
+
+"No," she replied, dropping her hands and straightening her erect
+figure.  "It's horrid.  He was coming, and then some business came
+up and he couldn't get away.  We are having the loveliest time
+though.  I do adore the woods.  Come," she cried impatiently,
+sweeping aside to leave a way clear, "you shall meet my friends."
+
+Thorpe imagined she referred to the rest of the tenting party.  He
+hesitated.
+
+"I am hardly in fit condition," he objected.
+
+She laughed, parting her red lips.  "You are extremely picturesque
+just as you are," she said with rather embarrassing directness.  "I
+wouldn't have you any different for the world.  But my friends don't
+mind.  They are used to it."  She laughed again.
+
+Thorpe crossed the pole trail, and for the first time found himself
+by her side.  The warm summer odors were in the air, a dozen lively
+little birds sang in the brush along the rail, the sunlight danced
+and flickered through the openings.
+
+Then suddenly they were among the pines, and the air was cool, the
+vista dim, and the bird songs inconceivably far away.
+
+The girl walked directly to the foot of a pine three feet through,
+and soaring up an inconceivable distance through the still twilight.
+
+"This is Jimmy," said she gravely.  "He is a dear good old rough
+bear when you don't know him, but he likes me.  If you put your ear
+close against him," she confided, suiting the action to the word,
+"you can hear him talking to himself.  This little fellow is Tommy.
+I don't care so much for Tommy because he's sticky.  Still, I like
+him pretty well, and here's Dick, and that's Bob, and the one just
+beyond is Jack."
+
+"Where is Harry?" asked Thorpe.
+
+"I thought one in a woods was quite sufficient," she replied with
+the least little air of impertinence.
+
+"Why do you name them such common, everyday names?" he inquired.
+
+"I'll tell you.  It's because they are so big and grand themselves,
+that it did not seem to me they needed high-sounding names.  What
+do you think?" she begged with an appearance of the utmost anxiety.
+
+Thorpe expressed himself as in agreement.  As the half-quizzical
+conversation progressed, he found their relations adjusting
+themselves with increasing rapidity.  He had been successively
+the mystic devotee before his vision, the worshipper before his
+goddess; now he was unconsciously assuming the attitude of the
+lover before his mistress.  It needs always this humanizing touch
+to render the greatest of all passions livable.
+
+And as the human element developed, he proved at the same time
+greater and greater difficulty in repressing himself and greater
+and greater fear of the results in case he should not do so.  He
+trembled with the desire to touch her long slender hand, and as
+soon as his imagination had permitted him that much he had already
+crushed her to him and had kissed passionately her starry face.
+Words hovered on his lips longing for flight.  He withheld them
+by an effort that left him almost incoherent, for he feared with
+a deadly fear lest he lose forever what the vision had seemed to
+offer to his hand.
+
+So he said little, and that lamely, for he dreaded to say too much.
+To her playful sallies he had no riposte.  And in consequence he
+fell more silent with another boding--that he was losing his cause
+outright for lack of a ready word.
+
+He need not have been alarmed.  A woman in such a case hits as
+surely as a man misses.  Her very daintiness and preciosity of
+speech indicated it.  For where a man becomes stupid and silent,
+a woman covers her emotions with words and a clever speech.  Not
+in vain is a proud-spirited girl stared down in such a contest
+of looks; brave deeds simply told by a friend are potent to win
+interest in advance; a straight, muscular figure, a brown skin, a
+clear, direct eye, a carriage of power and acknowledged authority,
+strike hard at a young imagination; a mighty passion sweeps aside
+the barriers of the heart.  Such a victory, such a friend, such a
+passion had Thorpe.
+
+And so the last spoken exchange between them meant nothing; but if
+each could have read the unsaid words that quivered on the other's
+heart, Thorpe would have returned to the Fighting Forty more
+tranquilly, while she would probably not have returned to the
+camping party at all for a number of hours.
+
+"I do not think you had better come with me," she said.  "Make
+your call and be forgiven on your own account.  I don't want to
+drag you in at my chariot wheels."
+
+"All right.  I'll come this afternoon," Thorpe had replied.
+
+"I love her, I must have her.  I must go--at once," his soul had
+cried, "quick--now--before I kiss her!"
+
+"How strong he is," she said to herself, "how brave-looking; how
+honest!  He is different from the other men.  He is magnificent."
+
+
+
+Chapter XLI
+
+
+That afternoon Thorpe met the other members of the party, offered
+his apologies and explanations, and was graciously forgiven.  He
+found the personnel to consist of, first of all, Mrs. Cary, the
+chaperone, a very young married woman of twenty-two or thereabouts;
+her husband, a youth of three years older, clean-shaven, light-haired,
+quiet-mannered; Miss Elizabeth Carpenter, who resembled her brother
+in the characteristics of good-looks, vivacious disposition and curly
+hair; an attendant satellite of the masculine persuasion called
+Morton; and last of all the girl whom Thorpe had already so variously
+encountered and whom he now met as Miss Hilda Farrand.  Besides these
+were Ginger, a squab negro built to fit the galley of a yacht; and
+hree Indian guides.  They inhabited tents, which made quite a little
+encampment.
+
+Thorpe was received with enthusiasm.  Wallace Carpenter's stories of
+his woods partner, while never doing more than justice to the truth,
+had been of a warm color tone.  One and all owned a lively curiosity
+to see what a real woodsman might be like.  When he proved to be
+handsome and well mannered, as well as picturesque, his reception
+was no longer in doubt.
+
+Nothing could exceed his solicitude as to their comfort and amusement.
+He inspected personally the arrangement of the tents, and suggested
+one or two changes conducive to the littler comforts.  This was not
+much like ordinary woods-camping.  The largest wall-tent contained
+three folding cots for the women, over which, in the daytime, were
+flung bright-colored Navajo blankets.  Another was spread on the
+ground.  Thorpe later, however, sent over two bear skins, which were
+acknowledgedly an improvement.  To the tent pole a mirror of size was
+nailed, and below it stood a portable washstand.  The second tent,
+devoted to the two men, was not quite so luxurious; but still boasted
+of little conveniences the true woodsman would never consider worth
+the bother of transporting.  The third, equally large, was the dining
+tent.  The other three, smaller, and on the A tent order, served
+respectively as sleeping rooms for Ginger and the Indians, and as a
+general store-house for provisions and impedimenta.
+
+Thorpe sent an Indian to Camp One for the bearskins, put the rest
+to digging a trench around the sleeping tents in order that a rain
+storm might not cause a flood, and ordered Ginger to excavate a
+square hole some feet deep which he intended to utilize as a larder.
+
+Then he gave Morton and Cary hints as to the deer they wished to
+capture, pointed out the best trout pools, and issued advice as
+to the compassing of certain blackberries, not far distant.
+
+Simple things enough they were to do--it was as though a city man
+were to direct a newcomer to Central Park, or impart to him a test
+for the destinations of trolley lines--yet Thorpe's new friends were
+profoundly impressed with his knowledge of occult things.  The forest
+was to them, as to most, more or less of a mystery, unfathomable
+except to the favored of genius.  A man who could interpret it,
+even a little, into the speech of everyday comfort and expediency
+possessed a strong claim to their imaginations.  When he had finished
+these practical affairs, they wanted him to sit down and tell them
+more things,to dine with them, to smoke about their camp fire in
+the evening.  But here they encountered a decided check.  Thorpe
+became silent, almost morose.  He talked in monosyllables, and soon
+went away.  They did not know what to make of him, and so were, of
+course, the more profoundly interested.  The truth was, his habitual
+reticence would not have permitted a great degree of expansion in
+any case, but now the presence of Hilda made any but an attitude of
+hushed waiting for her words utterly impossible to him.  He wished
+well to them all.  If there was anything he could do for them, he
+would gladly undertake it.  But he would not act the lion nor tell
+of his, to them, interesting adventures.
+
+However, when he discovered that Hilda had ceased visiting the
+clump of pines near the pole trail, his desire forced him back
+among these people.  He used to walk in swiftly at almost any
+time of day, casting quick glances here and there in search of
+his divinity.
+
+"How do, Mrs. Cary," he would say.  "Nice weather.  Enjoying
+yourself?"
+
+On receiving the reply he would answer heartily,  "That's good!"
+and lapse into silence.  When Hilda was about he followed every
+movement of hers with his eyes, so that his strange conduct lacked
+no explanation nor interpretation, in the minds of the women at
+least.  Thrice he redeemed his reputation for being an interesting
+character by conducting the party on little expeditions here and
+there about the country.  Then his woodcraft and resourcefulness
+spoke for him.  They asked him about the lumbering operations, but
+he seemed indifferent.
+
+"Nothing to interest you," he affirmed.  "We're just cutting roads
+now.  You ought to be here for the drive."
+
+To him there was really nothing interesting in the cutting of roads
+nor the clearing of streams.  It was all in a day's work.
+
+Once he took them over to see Camp One.  They were immensely pleased,
+and were correspondingly loud in exclamations.  Thorpe's comments
+were brief and dry.  After the noon dinner he had the unfortunate
+idea of commending the singing of one of the men.
+
+"Oh, I'd like to hear him," cried Elizabeth Carpenter.  "Can't you
+get him to sing for us, Mr. Thorpe?"
+
+Thorpe went to the men's camp, where he singled out the unfortunate
+lumber-jack in question.
+
+"Come on, Archie," he said.  "The ladies want to hear you sing."
+
+The man objected, refused, pleaded, and finally obeyed what
+amounted to a command.  Thorpe reentered the office with triumph,
+his victim in tow.
+
+"This is Archie Harris," he announced heartily.  "He's our best
+singer just now.  Take a chair, Archie."
+
+The man perched on the edge of the chair and looked straight out
+before him.
+
+"Do sing for us, won't you, Mr. Harris?" requested Mrs. Cary in
+her sweetest tones.
+
+The man said nothing, nor moved a muscle, but turned a brick-red.
+An embarrassed silence of expectation ensued.
+
+"Hit her up, Archie," encouraged Thorpe.
+
+"I ain't much in practice no how," objected the man in a little
+voice, without moving.
+
+"I'm sure you'll find us very appreciative," said Elizabeth
+Carpenter.
+
+"Give us a song, Archie, let her go," urged Thorpe impatiently.
+
+"All right," replied the man very meekly.
+
+Another silence fell.  It got to be a little awful.  The poor
+woodsman, pilloried before the regards of this polite circle, out
+of his element, suffering cruelly, nevertheless made no sign nor
+movement one way or the other.  At last when the situation had
+almost reached the breaking point of hysteria, he began.
+
+His voice ordinarily was rather a good tenor.  Now he pitched it
+too high; and went on straining at the high notes to the very end.
+Instead of offering one of the typical woods chanteys, he conceived
+that before so grand an audience he should give something fancy.  He
+therefore struck into a sentimental song of the cheap music-hall type.
+There were nine verses, and he drawled through them all, hanging
+whiningly on the nasal notes in the fashion of the untrained singer.
+Instead of being a performance typical of the strange woods genius, it
+was merely an atrocious bit of cheap sentimentalism, badly rendered.
+
+The audience listened politely.  When the song was finished it
+murmured faint thanks.
+
+"Oh, give us 'Jack Haggerty,' Archie," urged Thorpe.
+
+But the woodsman rose, nodded his head awkwardly, and made his
+escape.  He entered the men's camp, swearing, and for the remainder
+of the day made none but blasphemous remarks.
+
+The beagles, however, were a complete success.  They tumbled about,
+and lolled their tongues, and laughed up out of a tangle of
+themselves in a fascinating manner.  Altogether the visit to Camp
+One was a success, the more so in that on the way back, for the
+first time, Thorpe found that chance--and Mrs. Cary--had allotted
+Hilda to his care.
+
+A hundred yards down the trail they encountered Phil.  The dwarf
+stopped short, looked attentively at the girl, and then softly
+approached.  When quite near to her he again stopped, gazing at
+her with his soul in his liquid eyes.
+
+"You are more beautiful than the sea at night," he said directly.
+
+The others laughed.  "There's sincerity for you, Miss Hilda," said
+young Mr. Morton.
+
+"Who is he?" asked the girl after they had moved
+
+"Our chore-boy," answered Thorpe with great brevity, for he was
+thinking of something much more important.
+
+After the rest of the party had gone ahead, leaving them sauntering
+more slowly down the trail, he gave it voice.
+
+"Why don't you come to the pine grove any more?" he asked bluntly.
+
+"Why?" countered Hilda in the manner of women.
+
+"I want to see you there.  I want to talk with you.  I can't talk
+with all that crowd around."
+
+"I'll come to-morrow," she said--then with a little mischievous
+laugh, "if that'll make you talk."
+
+"You must think I'm awfully stupid," agreed Thorpe bitterly.
+
+"Ah, no! Ah, no!" she protested softly.  "You must not say that."
+
+She was looking at him very tenderly, if he had only known it, but
+he did not, for his face was set in discontented lines straight
+before him.
+
+"It is true," he replied.
+
+They walked on in silence, while gradually the dangerous fascination
+of the woods crept down on them.  Just before sunset a hush falls
+on nature.  The wind has died, the birds have not yet begun their
+evening songs, the light itself seems to have left off sparkling and
+to lie still across the landscape.  Such a hush now lay on their
+spirits.  Over the way a creeper was droning sleepily a little chant,
+--the only voice in the wilderness.  In the heart of the man, too,
+a little voice raised itself alone.
+
+"Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart!" it breathed over and over
+again.  After a while he said it gently in a half voice.
+
+"No, no, hush!" said the girl, and she laid the soft, warm fingers
+of one hand across his lips, and looked at him from a height of
+superior soft-eyed tenderness as a woman might look at a child.
+"You must not.  It is not right."
+
+Then he kissed the fingers very gently before they were withdrawn,
+and she said nothing at all in rebuke, but looked straight before
+her with troubled eyes.
+
+The voices of evening began to raise their jubilant notes.  From
+a tree nearby the olive thrush sang like clockwork; over beyond
+carolled eagerly a black-throat, a myrtle warbler, a dozen song
+sparrows, and a hundred vireos and creepers.  Down deep in the
+blackness of the ancient woods a hermit thrush uttered his solemn
+bell note, like the tolling of the spirit of peace.  And in Thorpe's
+heart a thousand tumultuous voices that had suddenly roused to
+clamor, died into nothingness at the music of her softly protesting
+voice.
+
+
+
+Chapter XLII
+
+
+Thorpe returned to Camp One shortly after dark.  He found there
+Scotty Parsons, who had come up to take charge of the crew engaged
+in clearing French Creek.  The man brought him a number of letters
+sent on by Collins, among which was one from Wallace Carpenter.
+
+After commending the camping party to his companion's care, and
+giving minute directions as to how and where to meet it, the young
+fellow went on to say that affairs were going badly on the Board.
+
+"Some interest that I haven't been able to make out yet has been
+hammering our stocks down day after day," he wrote.  "I don't
+understand it, for the stocks are good--they rest on a solid
+foundation of value and intrinsically are worth more than is bid
+for them right now.  Some powerful concern is beating them down for
+a purpose of its own.  Sooner or later they will let up, and then
+we'll get things back in good shape.  I am amply protected now,
+thanks to you, and am not at all afraid of losing my holdings.
+The only difficulty is that I am unable to predict exactly when
+the other fellows will decide that they have accomplished whatever
+they are about, and let up.  It may not be before next year.  In
+that case I couldn't help you out on those notes when they come due.
+So put in your best licks, old man.  You may have to pony up for a
+little while, though of course sooner or later I can put it all back.
+Then, you bet your life, I keep out of it.  Lumbering's good enough
+for yours truly.
+
+"By the way, you might shine up to Hilda Farrand and join the rest
+of the fortune-hunters.  She's got it to throw to the birds, and in
+her own right.  Seriously, old fellow, don't put yourself into a
+false position through ignorance.  Not that there is any danger to
+a hardened old woodsman like you."
+
+Thorpe went to the group of pines by the pole trail the following
+afternoon because he had said he would, but with a new attitude of
+mind.  He had come into contact with the artificiality of
+conventional relations, and it stiffened him.  No wonder she had
+made him keep silence the afternoon before!  She had done it gently
+and nicely, to be sure, but that was part of her good-breeding.
+Hilda found him formal, reserved, polite; and marvelled at it.  In
+her was no coquetry.  She was as straightforward and sincere as the
+look of her eyes.
+
+They sat down on a log.  Hilda turned to him with her graceful air
+of confidence.
+
+"Now talk to me," said she.
+
+"Certainly," replied Thorpe in a practical tone of voice, "what
+do you want me to talk about?"
+
+She shot a swift, troubled glance at him, concluded herself
+mistaken, and said:
+
+"Tell me about what you do up here--your life--all about it."
+
+"Well--" replied Thorpe formally, "we haven't much to interest a
+girl like you.  It is a question of saw logs with us"--and he went
+on in his dryest, most technical manner to detail the process of
+manufacture.  It might as well have been bricks.
+
+The girl did not understand.  She was hurt.  As surely as the sun
+tangled in the distant pine frond, she had seen in his eyes a great
+passion.  Now it was coldly withdrawn.
+
+"What has happened to you?" she asked finally out of her great
+sincerity.
+
+"Me?  Nothing," replied Thorpe.
+
+A forced silence fell upon him.  Hilda seemed gradually to lose
+herself in reverie.  After a time she said softly.
+
+"Don't you love this woods?"
+
+"It's an excellent bunch of pine," replied Thorpe bluntly.  "It'll
+cut three million at least."
+
+"Oh!" she cried drawing back, her hands pressed against the log
+either side of her, her eyes wide.
+
+After a moment she caught her breath convulsively, and Thorpe
+became conscious that she was studying him furtively with a
+quickening doubt.
+
+After that, by the mercy of God, there was no more talk between
+them.  She was too hurt and shocked and disillusioned to make the
+necessary effort to go away.  He was too proud to put an end to the
+position.  They sat there apparently absorbed in thought, while all
+about them the accustomed life of the woods drew nearer and nearer
+to them, as the splash of their entrance into it died away.
+
+A red squirrel poised thirty feet above them, leaped, and clung
+swaying to a sapling-top a dozen yards from the tree he had
+quitted.  Two chickadees upside down uttering liquid undertones,
+searched busily for insects next their heads.  Wilson's warblers,
+pine creepers, black-throats, myrtle and magnolia warblers, oven
+birds, peewits, blue jays, purple finches, passed silently or
+noisily, each according to his kind.  Once a lone spruce hen dusted
+herself in a stray patch of sunlight until it shimmered on a tree
+trunk, raised upward, and disappeared, to give place to long level
+dusty shafts that shot here and there through the pines laying the
+spell of sunset on the noisy woods brawlers.
+
+Unconsciously the first strain of opposition and of hurt surprise
+had relaxed.  Each thought vaguely his thoughts.  Then in the depths
+of the forest, perhaps near at hand, perhaps far away, a single
+hermit thrush began to sing.  His song was of three solemn deep
+liquid notes; followed by a slight rhetorical pause as of
+contemplation; and then, deliberately, three notes more on a
+different key--and so on without haste and without pause.  It is
+the most dignified, the most spiritual, the holiest of woods
+utterances.  Combined with the evening shadows and the warm soft
+air, it offered to the heart an almost irresistible appeal.  The
+man's artificial antagonism modified; the woman's disenchantment
+began to seem unreal.
+
+Then subtly over and through the bird-song another sound became
+audible.  At first it merely repeated the three notes faintly, like
+an echo, but with a rich, sad undertone that brought tears.  Then,
+timidly and still softly, it elaborated the theme, weaving in and
+out through the original three the glitter and shimmer of a
+splendid web of sound, spreading before the awakened imagination
+a broad river of woods-imagery that reflected on its surface all
+the subtler moods of the forest.  The pine shadows, the calls of
+the wild creatures, the flow of the brook, the splashes of sunlight
+through the trees, the sigh of the wind, the shout of the rapid,--
+all these were there, distinctly to be felt in their most ethereal
+and beautiful forms.  And yet it was all slight and tenuous as
+though the crack of a twig would break it through--so that over
+it continually like a grand full organ-tone repeated the notes of
+the bird itself.
+
+With the first sigh of the wonder-music the girl had started and
+caught her breath in the exquisite pleasure of it.  As it went on
+they both forgot everything but the harmony and each other.
+
+"Ah, beautiful!" she murmured.
+
+"What is it?" he whispered marvelling.
+
+"A violin,--played by a master."
+
+The bird suddenly hushed, and at once the strain abandoned the
+woods-note and took another motif.  At first it played softly
+in the higher notes, a tinkling, lightsome little melody that
+stirred a kindly surface-smile over a full heart.  Then suddenly,
+without transition, it dropped to the lower register, and began
+to sob and wail in the full vibrating power of a great passion.
+
+And the theme it treated was love.  It spoke solemnly, fearfully of
+the greatness of it, the glory.  These as abstractions it amplified
+in fine full-breathed chords that swept the spirit up and up as on
+the waves of a mighty organ.  Then one by one the voices of other
+things were heard,--the tinkling of laughter, the roar of a city,
+the sob of a grief, a cry of pain suddenly shooting across the
+sound, the clank of a machine, the tumult of a river, the puff of a
+steamboat, the murmuring of a vast crowd,--and one by one, without
+seeming in the least to change their character, they merged
+imperceptibly into, and were part of the grand-breathed chords,
+so that at last all the fames and ambitions and passions of the
+world came, in their apotheosis, to be only parts of the master-
+passion of them all.
+
+And while the echoes of the greater glory still swept beneath their
+uplifted souls like ebbing waves, so that they still sat rigid and
+staring with the majesty of it, the violin softly began to whisper.
+Beautiful it was as a spirit, beautiful beyond words, beautiful
+beyond thought.  Its beauty struck sharp at the heart.  And they two
+sat there hand in hand dreaming--dreaming--dreaming---
+
+At last the poignant ecstacy seemed slowly, slowly to die.  Fainter
+and fainter ebbed the music.  Through it as through a mist the
+solemn aloof forest began to show to the consciousness of the two.
+They sought each other's eyes gently smiling.  The music was very
+soft and dim and sad.  They leaned to each other with a sob.  Their
+lips met.  The music ceased.
+
+Alone in the forest side by side they looked out together for a
+moment into that eternal vision which lovers only are permitted to
+see.  The shadows fell.  About them brooded the inscrutable pines
+stretching a canopy over them enthroned.  A single last shaft of
+the sun struck full upon them, a single light-spot in the gathering
+gloom.  They were beautiful.
+
+And over behind the trees, out of the light and the love and the
+beauty, little Phil huddled, his great shaggy head bowed in his
+arms.  Beside him lay his violin, and beside that his bow, broken.
+He had snapped it across his knee.  That day he had heard at last
+the Heart Song of the Violin, and uttering it, had bestowed love.
+But in accordance with his prophecy he had that day lost what he
+cared for most in all the world, his friend.
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIII
+
+
+That was the moon of delight.  The days passed through the hazy
+forest like stately figures from an old masque.  In the pine grove
+on the knoll the man and the woman had erected a temple to love,
+and love showed them one to the other.
+
+In Hilda Farrand was no guile, no coquetry, no deceit.  So perfect
+was her naturalism that often by those who knew her least she was
+considered affected.  Her trust in whomever she found herself with
+attained so directly its reward; her unconsciousness of pose was so
+rhythmically graceful; her ignorance and innocence so triumphantly
+effective, that the mind with difficulty rid itself of the belief
+that it was all carefully studied.  This was not true.  She honestly
+did not know that she was beautiful; was unaware of her grace; did
+not realize the potency of her wealth.
+
+This absolute lack of self-consciousness was most potent in overcoming
+Thorpe's natural reticence.  He expanded to her.  She came to idolize
+him in a manner at once inspiring and touching in so beautiful a
+creature.  In him she saw reflected all the lofty attractions of
+character which she herself possessed, but of which she was entirely
+unaware.  Through his words she saw to an ideal.  His most trivial
+actions were ascribed to motives of a dignity which would have been
+ridiculous, if it had not been a little pathetic.  The woods-life,
+the striving of the pioneer kindled her imagination.  She seized upon
+the great facts of them and fitted those facts with reasons of her
+own.  Her insight perceived the adventurous spirit, the battle-
+courage, the indomitable steadfastness which always in reality lie
+back of these men of the frontier to urge them into the life; and
+of them constructed conscious motives of conduct.  To her fancy the
+lumbermen, of whom Thorpe was one, were self-conscious agents of
+advance.  They chose hardship, loneliness, the strenuous life
+because they wished to clear the way for a higher civilization.  To
+her it seemed a great and noble sacrifice.  She did not perceive
+that while all this is true, it is under the surface, the real spur
+is a desire to get on, and a hope of making money.  For, strangely
+enough, she differentiated sharply the life and the reasons for it.
+An existence in subduing the forest was to her ideal; the making of
+a fortune through a lumbering firm she did not consider in the
+least important.  That this distinction was most potent, the sequel
+will show.
+
+In all of it she was absolutely sincere, and not at all stupid.  She
+had always had all she could spend, without question.  Money meant
+nothing to her, one way or the other.  If need was, she might have
+experienced some difficulty in learning how to economize, but none
+at all in adjusting herself to the necessity of it.  The material
+had become, in all sincerity, a basis for the spiritual.  She
+recognized but two sorts of motives; of which the ideal, comprising
+the poetic, the daring, the beautiful, were good; and the material,
+meaning the sordid and selfish, were bad.  With her the mere money-
+getting would have to be allied with some great and poetic excuse.
+
+That is the only sort of aristocracy, in the popular sense of the
+word, which is real; the only scorn of money which can be respected.
+
+There are some faces which symbolize to the beholder many subtleties
+of soul-beauty which by no other method could gain expression.  Those
+subtleties may not, probably do not, exist in the possessor of the
+face.  The power of such a countenance lies not so much in what it
+actually represents, as in the suggestion it holds out to another.
+So often it is with a beautiful character.  Analyze it carefully,
+and you will reduce it generally to absolute simplicity and absolute
+purity--two elements common enough in adulteration; but place it
+face to face with a more complex personality, and mirror-like it
+will take on a hundred delicate shades of ethical beauty, while at
+the same time preserving its own lofty spirituality.
+
+Thus Hilda Farrand reflected Thorpe.  In the clear mirror of her
+heart his image rested transfigured.  It was as though the glass
+were magic, so that the gross and material was absorbed and lost,
+while the more spiritual qualities reflected back.  So the image was
+retained in its entirety, but etherealized, refined.  It is necessary
+to attempt, even thus faintly and inadequately, a sketch of Hilda's
+love, for a partial understanding of it is necessary to the
+comprehension of what followed the moon of delight.
+
+That moon saw a variety of changes.
+
+The bed of French Creek was cleared.  Three of the roads were
+finished, and the last begun.  So much for the work of it.
+
+Morton and Cary shot four deer between them, which was unpardonably
+against the law, caught fish in plenty, smoked two and a half pounds
+of tobacco, and read half of one novel.  Mrs. Cary and Miss Carpenter
+walked a total of over a hundred miles, bought twelve pounds of
+Indian work of all sorts, embroidered the circle of two embroidery
+frames, learned to paddle a birch-bark canoe, picked fifteen quarts
+of berries, and gained six pounds in weight.  All the party together
+accomplished five picnics, four explorations, and thirty excellent
+campfires in the evening.  So much for the fun of it.
+
+Little Phil disappeared utterly, taking with him his violin, but
+leaving his broken bow.  Thorpe has it even to this day.  The
+lumberman caused search and inquiry on all sides.  The cripple was
+never heard of again.  He had lived his brief hour, taken his subtle
+artist's vengeance of misplayed notes on the crude appreciation of
+men too coarse-fibered to recognize it, brought together by the
+might of sacrifice and consummate genius two hearts on the brink
+of misunderstanding;--now there was no further need for him, he had
+gone.  So much for the tragedy of it.
+
+"I saw you long ago," said Hilda to Thorpe.  "Long, long ago, when
+I was quite a young girl.  I had been visiting in Detroit, and was
+on my way all alone to catch an early train.  You stood on the corner
+thinking, tall and straight and brown, with a weather-beaten old hat
+and a weather-beaten old coat and weather-beaten old moccasins, and
+such a proud, clear, undaunted look on your face.  I have remembered
+you ever since."
+
+And then he told her of the race to the Land Office, while her eyes
+grew brighter and brighter with the epic splendor of the story.  She
+told him that she had loved him from that moment--and believed her
+telling; while he, the unsentimental leader of men, persuaded himself
+and her that he had always in some mysterious manner carried her image
+prophetically in his heart.  So much for the love of it.
+
+In the last days of the month of delight Thorpe received a second
+letter from his partner, which to some extent awakened him to the
+realities.
+
+"My dear Harry," it ran.  "I have made a startling discovery.
+The other fellow is Morrison.  I have been a blind, stupid dolt,
+and am caught nicely.  You can't call me any more names than I
+have already called myself.  Morrison has been in it from the start.
+By an accident I learned he was behind the fellow who induced me
+to invest, and it is he who has been hammering the stock down ever
+since.  They couldn't lick you at your game, so they tackled me
+at mine.  I'm not the man you are, Harry, and I've made a mess of
+it.  Of course their scheme is plain enough on the face of it.
+They're going to involve me so deeply that I will drag the firm
+down with me.
+
+"If you can fix it to meet those notes, they can't do it.  I have
+ample margin to cover any more declines they may be able to bring
+about.  Don't fret about that.  Just as sure as you can pay that
+sixty thousand, just so sure we'll be ahead of the game at this
+time next year.  For God's sake get a move on you, old man.  If you
+don't--good Lord!  The firm'll bust because she can't pay; I'll bust
+because I'll have to let my stock go on margins--it'll be an awful
+smash.  But you'll get there, so we needn't worry.  I've been an
+awful fool, and I've no right to do the getting into trouble and
+leave you to the hard work of getting out again.  But as partner
+I'm going to insist on your having a salary--etc."
+
+The news aroused all Thorpe's martial spirit.  Now at last the
+mystery surrounding Morrison & Daly's unnatural complaisance was
+riven.  It had come to grapples again.  He was glad of it.  Meet
+those notes?  Well I guess so!  He'd show them what sort of a
+proposition they had tackled.  Sneaking, underhanded scoundrels!
+taking advantage of a mere boy.  Meet those notes?  You bet he
+would; and then he'd go down there and boost those stocks until M.
+& D. looked like a last year's bird's nest.  He thrust the letter
+in his pocket and walked buoyantly to the pines.
+
+The two lovers sat there all the afternoon drinking in half sadly
+the joy of the forest and of being near each other, for the moon
+of delight was almost done.  In a week the camping party would be
+breaking up, and Hilda must return to the city.  It was uncertain
+when they would be able to see each other again, though there was
+talk of getting up a winter party to visit Camp One in January.
+The affair would be unique.
+
+Suddenly the girl broke off and put her fingers to her lips.  For
+some time, dimly, an intermittent and faint sound had been felt,
+rather than actually heard, like the irregular muffled beating of
+a heart.  Gradually it had insisted on the attention.  Now at last
+it broke through the film of consciousness.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+Thorpe listened.  Then his face lit mightily with the joy of battle.
+
+"My axmen," he cried.  "They are cutting the road."
+
+A faint call echoed.  Then without warning, nearer at hand the sharp
+ring of an ax sounded through the forest.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+
+THE FOLLOWING OF THE TRAIL
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIV
+
+
+For a moment they sat listening to the clear staccato knocking of
+the distant blows, and the more forceful thuds of the man nearer at
+hand.  A bird or so darted from the direction of the sound and shot
+silently into the thicket behind them.
+
+"What are they doing?  Are they cutting lumber?" asked Hilda.
+
+"No," answered Thorpe, "we do not cut saw logs at this time of year.
+They are clearing out a road."
+
+"Where does it go to?"
+
+"Well, nowhere in particular.  That is, it is a logging road that
+starts at the river and wanders up through the woods where the pine
+is."
+
+"How clear the axes sound.  Can't we go down and watch them a little
+while?"
+
+"The main gang is a long distance away; sound carries very clearly
+in this still air.  As for that fellow you hear so plainly, he is
+only clearing out small stuff to get ready for the others.  You
+wouldn't see anything different from your Indian chopping the
+cordwood for your camp fire.  He won't chop out any big trees."
+
+"Let's not go, then," said Hilda submissively.
+
+"When you come up in the winter," he pursued, "you will see any
+amount of big timber felled."
+
+"I would like to know more about it," she sighed, a quaint little
+air of childish petulance graving two lines between her eyebrows.
+"Do you know, Harry, you are a singularly uncommunicative sort of
+being.  I have to guess that your life is interesting and picturesque,
+--that is," she amended, "I should have to do so if Wallace Carpenter
+had not told me a little something about it.  Sometimes I think you
+are not nearly poet enough for the life you are living.  Why, you are
+wonderful, you men of the north, and you let us ordinary mortals who
+have not the gift of divination imagine you entirely occupied with
+how many pounds of iron chain you are going to need during the
+winter."  She said these things lightly as one who speaks things
+not for serious belief.
+
+"It is something that way," he agreed with a laugh.
+
+"Do you know, sir," she persisted, "that I really don't know
+anything at all about the life you lead here?  From what I have
+seen, you might be perpetually occupied in eating things in a log
+cabin, and in disappearing to perform some mysterious rites in the
+forest."  She looked at him with a smiling mouth but tender eyes,
+her head tilted back slightly.
+
+"It's a good deal that way, too," he agreed again.  "We use a
+barrel of flour in Camp One every two and a half days!"
+
+She shook her head in a faint negation that only half understood
+what he was saying, her whole heart in her tender gaze.
+
+"Sit there," she breathed very softly, pointing to the dried needles
+on which her feet rested, but without altering the position of her
+head or the steadfastness of her look.
+
+He obeyed.
+
+"Now tell me," she breathed, still in the fascinated monotone.
+
+"What?" he inquired.
+
+"Your life; what you do; all about it.  You must tell me a story."
+
+Thorpe settled himself more lazily, and laughed with quiet enjoyment.
+Never had he felt the expansion of a similar mood.  The barrier
+between himself and self-expression had faded, leaving not the
+smallest debris of the old stubborn feeling.
+
+"The story of the woods," he began, "the story of the saw log.  It
+would take a bigger man than I to tell it.  I doubt if any one man
+ever would be big enough.  It is a drama, a struggle, a battle.
+Those men you hear there are only the skirmishers extending the
+firing line.  We are fighting always with Time.  I'll have to hurry
+now to get those roads done and a certain creek cleared before the
+snow.  Then we'll have to keep on the keen move to finish our
+cutting before the deep snow; to haul our logs before the spring
+thaws; to float them down the river while the freshet water lasts.
+When we gain a day we have scored a victory; when the wilderness
+puts us back an hour, we have suffered a defeat.  Our ammunition
+is Time; our small shot the minutes, our heavy ordnance the hours!"
+
+The girl placed her hand on his shoulder.  He covered it with his
+own.
+
+"But we win!" he cried.  "We win!"
+
+"That is what I like," she said softly, "the strong spirit that
+wins!"  She hesitated, then went on gently, "But the battlefields,
+Harry; to me they are dreadful.  I went walking yesterday morning,
+before you came over, and after a while I found myself in the most
+awful place.  The stumps of trees, the dead branches, the trunks
+lying all about, and the glaring hot sun over everything!  Harry,
+there was not a single bird in all that waste, a single green thing.
+You don't know how it affected me so early in the morning.  I saw
+just one lonesome pine tree that had been left for some reason or
+another, standing there like a sentinel.  I could shut my eyes and
+see all the others standing, and almost hear the birds singing and
+the wind in the branches, just as it is here."  She seized his
+fingers in her other hand.  "Harry," she said earnestly, "I don't
+believe I can ever forget that experience, any more than I could
+have forgotten a battlefield, were I to see one.  I can shut my eyes
+now, and can see this place our dear little wooded knoll wasted and
+blackened as that was."
+
+The man twisted his shoulder uneasily and withdrew his hand.
+
+"Harry," she said again, after a pause, "you must promise to leave
+this woods until the very last.  I suppose it must all be cut down
+some day, but I do not want to be here to see after it is all over."
+
+Thorpe remained silent.
+
+"Men do not care much for keepsakes, do they, Harry?--they don't
+save letters and flowers as we girls do--but even a man can feel the
+value of a great beautiful keepsake such as this, can't he, dear?
+Our meeting-place--do you remember how I found you down there by the
+old pole trail, staring as though you had seen a ghost?--and that
+beautiful, beautiful music!  It must always be our most sacred
+memory.  Promise me you will save it until the very, very last."
+
+Thorpe said nothing because he could not rally his faculties.  The
+sentimental association connected with the grove had actually never
+occurred to him.  His keepsakes were impressions which he carefully
+guarded in his memory.  To the natural masculine indifference toward
+material bits of sentiment he had added the instinct of the strictly
+portable early developed in the rover.  He had never even possessed a
+photograph of his sister.  Now this sudden discovery that such things
+might be part of the woof of another person's spiritual garment came
+to him ready-grown to the proportions of a problem.
+
+In selecting the districts for the season's cut, he had included in
+his estimates this very grove.  Since then he had seen no reason for
+changing his decision.  The operations would not commence until
+winter.  By that time the lovers would no longer care to use it as
+at present.  Now rapidly he passed in review a dozen expedients by
+which his plan might be modified to permit of the grove's exclusion.
+His practical mind discovered flaws in every one.  Other bodies of
+timber promising a return of ten thousand dollars were not to be
+found near the river, and time now lacked for the cutting of roads
+to more distant forties.
+
+"Hilda," he broke in abruptly at last, "the men you hear are clearing
+a road to this very timber."
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked.
+
+"This timber is marked for cutting this very winter."
+
+She had not a suspicion of the true state of affairs.  "Isn't it
+lucky I spoke of it!" she exclaimed.  "How could you have forgotten
+to countermand the order!  You must see to it to-day; now!"
+
+She sprang up impulsively and stood waiting for him.  He arose more
+slowly.  Even before he spoke her eyes dilated with the shock from
+her quick intuitions.
+
+"Hilda, I cannot," he said.
+
+She stood very still for some seconds.
+
+"Why not?" she asked quietly.
+
+"Because I have not time to cut a road through to another bunch of
+pine.  It is this or nothing."
+
+"Why not nothing, then?"
+
+"I want the money this will bring."
+
+His choice of a verb was unfortunate.  The employment of that one
+little word opened the girl's mind to a flood of old suspicions
+which the frank charm of the northland had thrust outside.  Hilda
+Farrand was an heiress and a beautiful girl.  She had been constantly
+reminded of the one fact by the attempts of men to use flattery of
+the other as a key to her heart and her fortune.  From early girlhood
+she had been sought by the brilliant impecunious of two continents.
+The continued experience had varnished her self-esteem with a glaze
+of cynicism sufficiently consistent to protect it against any but
+the strongest attack.  She believed in no man's protestations.  She
+distrusted every man's motives as far as herself was concerned.  This
+attitude of mind was not unbecoming in her for the simple reason that
+it destroyed none of her graciousness as regards other human relations
+besides that of love.  That men should seek her in matrimony from a
+selfish motive was as much to be expected as that flies should seek
+the sugar bowl.  She accepted the fact as one of nature's laws,
+annoying enough but inevitable; a thing to guard against, but not
+one of sufficient moment to grieve over.
+
+With Thorpe, however, her suspicions had been lulled.  There is
+something virile and genuine about the woods and the men who
+inhabit them that strongly predisposes the mind to accept as proved
+in their entirety all the other virtues.  Hilda had fallen into this
+state of mind.  She endowed each of the men whom she encountered
+with all the robust qualities she had no difficulty in recognizing
+as part of nature's charm in the wilderness.  Now at a word her eyes
+were opened to what she had done.  She saw that she had assumed
+unquestioningly that her lover possessed the qualities of his
+environment.
+
+Not for a moment did she doubt the reality of her love.  She had
+conceived one of those deep, uplifting passions possible only to a
+young girl.  But her cynical experience warned her that the reality
+of that passion's object was not proven by any test besides the
+fallible one of her own poetizing imagination.  The reality of the
+ideal she had constructed might be a vanishable quantity even though
+the love of it was not.  So to the interview that ensued she brought,
+not the partiality of a loving heart, nor even the impartiality of
+one sitting in judgment, but rather the perverted prejudice of one
+who actually fears the truth.
+
+"Will you tell me for what you want the money?" she asked.
+
+The young man caught the note of distrust.  At once, instinctively,
+his own confidence vanished.  He drew within himself, again beyond
+the power of justifying himself with the needed word.
+
+"The firm needs it in the business," said he.
+
+Her next question countered instantaneously.
+
+"Does the firm need the money more than you do me?"
+
+They stared at each other in the silence of the situation that had
+so suddenly developed.  It had come into being without their volition,
+as a dust cloud springs up on a plain.
+
+"You do not mean that, Hilda," said Thorpe quietly.  "It hardly
+comes to that."
+
+"Indeed it does," she replied, every nerve of her fine organization
+strung to excitement.  "I should be more to you than any firm."
+
+"Sometimes it is necessary to look after the bread and butter,"
+Thorpe reminded her gently, although he knew that was not the real
+reason at all.
+
+"If your firm can't supply it, I can," she answered.  "It seems
+strange that you won't grant my first request of you, merely
+because of a little money."
+
+"It isn't a little money," he objected, catching manlike at the
+practical question.  "You don't realize what an amount a clump of
+pine like this stands for.  Just in saw logs, before it is made into
+lumber, it will be worth about thirty thousand dollars,--of course
+there's the expense of logging to pay out of that," he added, out
+of his accurate business conservatism, "but there's ten thousand
+dollars' profit in it."
+
+The girl, exasperated by cold details at such a time, blazed out.
+"I never heard anything so ridiculous in my life!" she cried.
+"Either you are not at all the man I thought you, or you have some
+better reason than you have given.  Tell me, Harry; tell me at once.
+You don't know what you are doing."
+
+"The firm needs it, Hilda," said Thorpe, "in order to succeed.  If
+we do not cut this pine, we may fail."
+
+In that he stated his religion.  The duty of success was to him one
+of the loftiest of abstractions, for it measured the degree of a
+man's efficiency in the station to which God had called him.  The
+money, as such, was nothing to him.
+
+Unfortunately the girl had learned a different language.  She knew
+nothing of the hardships, the struggles, the delight of winning for
+the sake of victory rather than the sake of spoils.  To her, success
+meant getting a lot of money.  The name by which Thorpe labelled his
+most sacred principle, to her represented something base and sordid.
+She had more money herself than she knew.  It hurt her to the soul
+that the condition of a small money-making machine, as she considered
+the lumber firm, should be weighed even for an instant against her
+love.  It was a great deal Thorpe's fault that she so saw the firm.
+He might easily have shown her the great forces and principles for
+which it stood.
+
+"If I were a man," she said, and her voice was tense, "if I were
+a man and loved a woman, I would be ready to give up everything for
+her.  My riches, my pride, my life, my honor, my soul even,--they
+would be as nothing, as less than nothing to me,--if I loved.  Harry,
+don't let me think I am mistaken.  Let this miserable firm of yours
+fail, if fail it must for lack of my poor little temple of dreams,"
+she held out her hands with a tender gesture of appeal.  The affair
+had gone beyond the preservation of a few trees.  It had become the
+question of an ideal.  Gradually, in spite of herself, the conviction
+was forcing itself upon her that the man she had loved was no
+different from the rest; that the greed of the dollar had corrupted
+him too.  By the mere yielding to her wishes, she wanted to prove the
+suspicion wrong.
+
+Now the strange part of the whole situation was, that in two words
+Thorpe could have cleared it.  If he had explained that he needed
+the ten thousand dollars to help pay a note given to save from ruin
+a foolish friend, he would have supplied to the affair just the
+higher motive the girl's clear spirituality demanded.  Then she
+would have shared enthusiastically in the sacrifice, and been the
+more loving and repentant from her momentary doubt.  All she needed
+was that the man should prove himself actuated by a noble, instead
+of a sordid, motive.  The young man did not say the two words,
+because in all honesty he thought them unimportant.  It seemed to
+him quite natural that he should go on Wallace Carpenter's note.
+That fact altered not a bit the main necessity of success.  It was
+a man's duty to make the best of himself,--it was Thorpe's duty to
+prove himself supremely efficient in his chosen calling; the mere
+coincidence that his partner's troubles worked along the same lines
+meant nothing to the logic of the situation.  In stating baldly that
+he needed the money to assure the firm's existence, he imagined he
+had adduced the strongest possible reason for his attitude.  If the
+girl was not influenced by that, the case was hopeless.
+
+It was the difference of training rather than the difference of
+ideas.  Both clung to unselfishness as the highest reason for human
+action; but each expressed the thought in a manner incomprehensible
+to the other.
+
+"I cannot, Hilda," he answered steadily.
+
+"You sell me for ten thousand dollars!  I cannot believe it!  Harry!
+Harry!  Must I put it to you as a choice?  Don't you love me enough
+to spare me that?"
+
+He did not reply.  As long as it remained a dilemma, he would not
+reply.  He was in the right.
+
+"Do you need the money more than you do me? more than you do love?"
+she begged, her soul in her eyes; for she was begging also for
+herself.  "Think, Harry; it is the last chance!"
+
+Once more he was face to face with a vital decision.  To his
+surprise he discovered in his mind no doubt as to what the answer
+should be.  He experienced no conflict of mind; no hesitation;
+for the moment, no regret.  During all his woods life he had been
+following diligently the trail he had blazed for his conduct.  Now
+his feet carried him unconsciously to the same end.  There was no
+other way out.  In the winter of his trouble the clipped trees alone
+guided him, and at the end of them he found his decision.  It is
+in crises of this sort, when a little reflection or consideration
+would do wonders to prevent a catastrophe, that all the forgotten
+deeds, decisions, principles, and thoughts of a man's past life
+combine solidly into the walls of fatality, so that in spite of
+himself he finds he must act in accordance with them.  In answer
+to Hilda's question he merely inclined his head.
+
+"I have seen a vision," said she simply, and lowered her head to
+conceal her eyes.  Then she looked at him again.  "There can be
+nothing better than love," she said.
+
+"Yes, one thing," said Thorpe, "the duty of success."
+
+The man had stated his creed; the woman hers.  The one is born
+perfect enough for love; the other must work, must attain the
+completeness of a fulfilled function, must succeed, to deserve it.
+
+She left him then, and did not see him again.  Four days later the
+camping party left.  Thorpe sent Tim Shearer over, as his most
+efficient man, to see that they got off without difficulty, but
+himself retired on some excuse to Camp Four.  Three weeks gone in
+October he received a marked newspaper announcing the engagement
+of Miss Hilda Farrand to Mr. Hildreth Morton of Chicago.
+
+He had burned his ships, and stood now on an unfriendly shore.  The
+first sacrifice to his jealous god had been consummated, and now,
+live or die, he stood pledged to win his fight.
+
+
+
+Chapter XLV
+
+
+Winter set in early and continued late; which in the end was
+a good thing for the year's cut.  The season was capricious,
+hanging for days at a time at the brink of a thaw, only to stiffen
+again into severe weather.  This was trying on the nerves.  For at
+each of these false alarms the six camps fell into a feverish haste
+to get the job finished before the break-up.  It was really quite
+extraordinary how much was accomplished under the nagging spur of
+weather conditions and the cruel rowelling of Thorpe.
+
+The latter had now no thought beyond his work, and that was the
+thought of a madman.  He had been stern and unyielding enough
+before, goodness knows, but now he was terrible.  His restless
+energy permeated every molecule in the economic structure over
+which he presided, roused it to intense vibration.  Not for an
+instant was there a resting spell.  The veriest chore-boy talked,
+thought, dreamed of nothing but saw logs.  Men whispered vaguely
+of a record cut.  Teamsters looked upon their success or failure
+to keep near the top on the day's haul as a signal victory or a
+disgraceful defeat.  The difficulties of snow, accident, topography
+which an ever-watchful nature threw down before the rolling car of
+this industry, were swept aside like straws.  Little time was wasted
+and no opportunities.  It did not matter how smoothly affairs
+happened to be running for the moment, every advantage, even the
+smallest, was eagerly seized to advance the work.  A drop of five
+degrees during the frequent warm spells brought out the sprinklers,
+even in dead of night; an accident was white-hot in the forge
+almost before the crack of the iron had ceased to echo.  At night
+the men fell into their bunks like sandbags, and their last conscious
+thought, if indeed they had any at all, was of eagerness for the
+morrow in order that they might push the grand total up another
+notch.  It was madness; but it was the madness these men loved.
+
+For now to his old religion Thorpe had added a fanaticism, and over
+the fanaticism was gradually creeping a film of doubt.  To the
+conscientious energy which a sense of duty supplied, was added the
+tremendous kinetic force of a love turned into other channels.  And
+in the wild nights while the other men slept, Thorpe's half-crazed
+brain was revolving over and over again the words of the sentence
+he had heard from Hilda's lips: "There can be nothing better than
+love."
+
+His actions, his mind, his very soul vehemently denied the
+proposition.
+He clung as ever to his high Puritanic idea of man's purpose.  But
+down deep in a very tiny, sacred corner of his heart a very small
+voice sometimes made itself heard when other, more militant voices
+were still: "It may be; it may be!"
+
+The influence of this voice was practically nothing.  It made
+itself heard occasionally.  Perhaps even, for the time being, its
+weight counted on the other side of the scale; for Thorpe took
+pains to deny it fiercely, both directly and indirectly by increased
+exertions.  But it persisted; and once in a moon or so, when the
+conditions were quite favorable, it attained for an instant a shred
+of belief.
+
+Probably never since the Puritan days of New England has a community
+lived as sternly as did that winter of 1888 the six camps under
+Thorpe's management.  There was something a little inspiring about
+it.  The men fronted their daily work with the same grim-faced,
+clear-eyed steadiness of veterans going into battle;--with the
+same confidence, the same sure patience that disposes effectively
+of one thing before going on to the next.  There was little merely
+excitable bustle; there was no rest.  Nothing could stand against
+such a spirit.  Nothing did.  The skirmishers which the wilderness
+threw out, were brushed away.  Even the inevitable delays seemed
+not so much stoppages as the instant's pause of a heavy vehicle in
+a snow drift, succeeded by the momentary acceleration as the plunge
+carried it through.  In the main, and by large, the machine moved
+steadily and inexorably.
+
+And yet one possessed of the finer spiritual intuitions could not
+have shaken off the belief in an impending struggle.  The feel of it
+was in the air.  Nature's forces were too mighty to be so slightly
+overcome; the splendid energy developed in these camps too vast to
+be wasted on facile success.  Over against each other were two great
+powers, alike in their calm confidence, animated with the loftiest
+and most dignified spirit of enmity.  Slowly they were moving toward
+each other.  The air was surcharged with the electricity of their
+opposition.  Just how the struggle would begin was uncertain; but its
+inevitability was as assured as its magnitude.  Thorpe knew it, and
+shut his teeth, looking keenly about him.  The Fighting Forty knew
+it, and longed for the grapple to come.  The other camps knew it,
+and followed their leader with perfect trust.  The affair was an
+epitome of the historic combats begun with David and Goliath.  It
+was an affair of Titans.  The little courageous men watched their
+enemy with cat's eyes.
+
+The last month of hauling was also one of snow.  In this condition
+were few severe storms, but each day a little fell.  By and by the
+accumulation amounted to much.  In the woods where the wind could
+not get at it, it lay deep and soft above the tops of bushes.  The
+grouse ate browse from the slender hardwood tips like a lot of
+goldfinches, or precipitated themselves headlong down through five
+feet of snow to reach the ground.  Often Thorpe would come across
+the irregular holes of their entrance.  Then if he took the trouble
+to stamp about a little in the vicinity with his snowshoes, the
+bird would spring unexpectedly from the clear snow, scattering a
+cloud with its strong wings.  The deer, herded together, tramped
+"yards" where the feed was good.  Between the yards ran narrow
+trails.  When the animals went from one yard to another in these
+trails, their ears and antlers alone were visible.  On either side
+of the logging roads the snow piled so high as to form a kind of
+rampart.  When all this water in suspense should begin to flow,
+and to seek its level in the water-courses of the district, the
+logs would have plenty to float them, at least.
+
+So late did the cold weather last that, even with the added plowing
+to do, the six camps beat all records.  On the banks at Camp One
+were nine million feet; the totals of all five amounted to thirty-
+three million.  About ten million of this was on French Creek; the
+remainder on the main banks of the Ossawinamakee.  Besides this the
+firm up-river, Sadler & Smith, had put up some twelve million more.
+The drive promised to be quite an affair.
+
+About the fifteenth of April attention became strained.  Every day
+the mounting sun made heavy attacks on the snow: every night the
+temperature dropped below the freezing point.  The river began to
+show more air holes, occasional open places.  About the center the
+ice looked worn and soggy.  Someone saw a flock of geese high in
+the air.  Then came rain.
+
+One morning early, Long Pine Jim came into the men's camp bearing a
+huge chunk of tallow.  This he held against the hot stove until its
+surface had softened, when he began to swab liberal quantities of
+grease on his spiked river shoes, which he fished out from under
+his bunk.
+
+"She's comin', boys," said he.
+
+He donned a pair of woolen trousers that had been chopped off at
+the knee, thick woolen stockings, and the river shoes.  Then he
+tightened his broad leather belt about his heavy shirt, cocked his
+little hat over his ear, and walked over in the corner to select a
+peavey from the lot the blacksmith had just put in shape.  A peavey
+is like a cant-hook except that it is pointed at the end.  Thus it
+can be used either as a hook or a pike.  At the same moment Shearer,
+similarly attired and equipped, appeared in the doorway.  The opening
+of the portal admitted a roar of sound.  The river was rising.
+
+"Come on, boys, she's on!" said he sharply.
+
+Outside, the cook and cookee were stowing articles in the already
+loaded wanigan.  The scow contained tents, blankets, provisions, and
+a portable stove.  It followed the drive, and made a camp wherever
+expediency demanded.
+
+"Lively, boys, lively!" shouted Thorpe.  "She'll be down on us
+before we know it!"
+
+Above the soft creaking of dead branches in the wind sounded a
+steady roar, like the bellowing of a wild beast lashing itself to
+fury.  The freshet was abroad, forceful with the strength of a
+whole winter's accumulated energy.
+
+The men heard it and their eyes brightened with the lust of battle.
+They cheered.
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVI
+
+
+At the banks of the river, Thorpe rapidly issued his directions.
+The affair had been all prearranged.  During the week previous he
+and his foremen had reviewed the situation, examining the state of
+the ice, the heads of water in the three dams.  Immediately above
+the first rollways was Dam Three with its two wide sluices through
+which a veritable flood could be loosened at will; then four miles
+farther lay the rollways of Sadler & Smith, the up-river firm; and
+above them tumbled over a forty-five foot ledge the beautiful Siscoe
+Falls; these first rollways of Thorpe's--spread in the broad marsh
+flat below the dam--contained about eight millions; the rest of
+the season's cut was scattered for thirty miles along the bed of
+the river.
+
+Already the ice cementing the logs together had begun to weaken.
+The ice had wrenched and tugged savagely at the locked timbers
+until they had, with a mighty effort, snapped asunder the bonds of
+their hibernation.  Now a narrow lane of black rushing water pierced
+the rollways, to boil and eddy in the consequent jam three miles
+below.
+
+To the foremen Thorpe assigned their tasks, calling them to him one
+by one, as a general calls his aids.
+
+"Moloney," said he to the big Irishman, "take your crew and break
+that jam.  Then scatter your men down to within a mile of the pond
+at Dam Two, and see that the river runs clear.  You can tent for a
+day or so at West Bend or some other point about half way down; and
+after that you had better camp at the dam.  Just as soon as you get
+logs enough in the pond, start to sluicing them through the dam.
+You won't need more than four men there, if you keep a good head.
+You can keep your gates open five or six hours.  And Moloney."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I want you to be careful not to sluice too long.  There is a bar
+just below the dam, and if you try to sluice with the water too
+low, you'll center and jam there, as sure as shooting."
+
+Bryan Moloney turned on his heel and began to pick his way down
+stream over the solidly banked logs.  Without waiting the command,
+a dozen men followed him.  The little group bobbed away irregularly
+into the distance, springing lightly from one timber to the other,
+holding their quaintly-fashioned peaveys in the manner of a rope
+dancer's balancing pole.  At the lowermost limit of the rollways,
+each man pried a log into the water, and, standing gracefully erect
+on this unstable craft, floated out down the current to the scene
+of his dangerous labor.
+
+"Kerlie," went on Thorpe, "your crew can break rollways with the
+rest until we get the river fairly filled, and then you can move
+on down stream as fast as you are needed.  Scotty, you will have
+the rear.  Tim and I will boss the river."
+
+At once the signal was given to Ellis, the dam watcher.  Ellis and
+his assistants thereupon began to pry with long iron bars at the
+ratchets of the heavy gates.  The chore-boy bent attentively over
+the ratchet-pin, lifting it delicately to permit another inch of
+raise, dropping it accurately to enable the men at the bars to
+seize a fresh purchase.  The river's roar deepened.  Through the
+wide sluice-ways a torrent foamed and tumbled.  Immediately it spread
+through the brush on either side to the limits of the freshet banks,
+and then gathered for its leap against the uneasy rollways.  Along
+the edge of the dark channel the face of the logs seemed to crumble
+away.  Farther in towards the banks where the weight of timber still
+outbalanced the weight of the flood, the tiers grumbled and stirred,
+restless with the stream's calling.  Far down the river, where Bryan
+Moloney and his crew were picking at the jam, the water in eager
+streamlets sought the interstices between the logs, gurgling
+excitedly like a mountain brook.
+
+The jam creaked and groaned in response to the pressure.  From its
+face a hundred jets of water spurted into the lower stream.  Logs
+up-ended here and there, rising from the bristling surface slowly,
+like so many arms from lower depths.  Above, the water eddied back
+foaming; logs shot down from the rollways, paused at the slackwater,
+and finally hit with a hollow and resounding BOOM! against the tail
+of the jam.  A moment later they too up-ended, so becoming an integral
+part of the "chevaux de frise."
+
+The crew were working desperately.  Down in the heap somewhere, two
+logs were crossed in such a manner as to lock the whole.  They
+sought those logs.
+
+Thirty feet above the bed of the river six men clamped their peaveys
+into the soft pine; jerking, pulling, lifting, sliding the great logs
+from their places.  Thirty feet below, under the threatening face, six
+other men coolly picked out and set adrift, one by one, the timbers
+not inextricably imbedded.  From time to time the mass creaked,
+settled, perhaps even moved a foot or two; but always the practiced
+rivermen, after a glance, bent more eagerly to their work.
+
+Outlined against the sky, big Bryan Moloney stood directing the
+work.  He had gone at the job on the bias of indirection, picking
+out a passage at either side that the center might the more easily
+"pull."  He knew by the tenseness of the log he stood on that,
+behind the jam, power had gathered sufficient to push the whole
+tangle down-stream.  Now he was offering it the chance.
+
+Suddenly the six men below the jam scattered.  Four of them, holding
+their peaveys across their bodies, jumped lightly from one floating
+log to another in the zigzag to shore.  When they stepped on a small
+log they re-leaped immediately, leaving a swirl of foam where the
+little timber had sunk under them; when they encountered one larger,
+they hesitated for a barely perceptible instant.  Thus their
+progression was of fascinating and graceful irregularity.  The other
+two ran the length of their footing, and, overleaping an open of
+water, landed heavily and firmly on the very ends of two small
+floating logs.  In this manner the force of the jump rushed the
+little timbers end-on through the water.  The two men, maintaining
+marvellously their balance, were thus ferried to within leaping
+distance of the other shore.
+
+In the meantime a barely perceptible motion was communicating
+itself from one particle to another through the center of the jam.
+A cool and observant spectator might have imagined that the broad
+timber carpet was changing a little its pattern, just as the earth
+near the windows of an arrested railroad train seems for a moment
+to retrogress.  The crew redoubled its exertions, clamping its
+peaveys here and there, apparently at random, but in reality with
+the most definite of purposes.  A sharp crack exploded immediately
+underneath.  There could no longer exist any doubt as to the motion,
+although it was as yet sluggish, glacial.  Then in silence a log
+shifted--in silence and slowly--but with irresistible force.  Jimmy
+Powers quietly stepped over it, just as it menaced his leg.  Other
+logs in all directions up-ended.  The jam crew were forced continually
+to alter their positions, riding the changing timbers bent-kneed, as
+a circus rider treads his four galloping horses.
+
+Then all at once down by the face something crashed.  The entire
+stream became alive.  It hissed and roared, it shrieked, groaned and
+grumbled.  At first slowly, then more rapidly, the very forefront of
+the center melted inward and forward and downward until it caught
+the fierce rush of the freshet and shot out from under the jam.
+Far up-stream, bristling and formidable, the tons of logs, grinding
+savagely together, swept forward.
+
+The six men and Bryan Moloney--who, it will be remembered, were
+on top--worked until the last moment.  When the logs began to cave
+under them so rapidly that even the expert rivermen found difficulty
+in "staying on top," the foreman set the example of hunting safety.
+
+"She 'pulls,' boys," he yelled.
+
+Then in a manner wonderful to behold, through the smother of foam
+and spray, through the crash and yell of timbers protesting the
+flood's hurrying, through the leap of destruction, the drivers
+zigzagged calmly and surely to the shore.
+
+All but Jimmy Powers.  He poised tense and eager on the crumbling
+face of the jam.  Almost immediately he saw what he wanted, and
+without pause sprang boldly and confidently ten feet straight
+downward, to alight with accuracy on a single log floating free
+in the current.  And then in the very glory and chaos of the jam
+itself he was swept down-stream.
+
+After a moment the constant acceleration in speed checked, then
+commenced perceptibly to slacken.  At once the rest of the crew
+began to ride down-stream.  Each struck the caulks of his river
+boots strongly into a log, and on such unstable vehicles floated
+miles with the current.  From time to time, as Bryan Moloney
+indicated, one of them went ashore.  There, usually at a bend of
+the stream where the likelihood of jamming was great, they took
+their stands.  When necessary, they ran out over the face of the
+river to separate a congestion likely to cause trouble.  The rest
+of the time they smoked their pipes.
+
+At noon they ate from little canvas bags which had been filled
+that morning by the cookee.  At sunset they rode other logs down
+the river to where their camp had been made for them.  There they
+ate hugely, hung their ice-wet garments over a tall framework
+constructed around a monster fire, and turned in on hemlock
+branches.
+
+All night long the logs slipped down the moonlit current, silently,
+swiftly, yet without haste.  The porcupines invaded the sleeping
+camp.  From the whole length of the river rang the hollow BOOM,
+BOOM, BOOM, of timbers striking one against the other.
+
+The drive was on.
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVII
+
+
+In the meantime the main body of the crew under Thorpe and his
+foremen were briskly tumbling the logs into the current.  Sometimes
+under the urging of the peaveys, but a single stick would slide
+down; or again a double tier would cascade with the roar of a
+little Niagara.  The men had continually to keep on the tension of
+an alert, for at any moment they were called upon to exercise their
+best judgment and quickness to keep from being carried downward with
+the rush of the logs.  Not infrequently a frowning sheer wall of
+forty feet would hesitate on the brink of plunge.  Then Shearer
+himself proved his right to the title of riverman.
+
+Shearer wore caulks nearly an inch in length.  He had been known
+to ride ten miles, without shifting his feet, on a log so small
+that he could carry it without difficulty.  For cool nerve he was
+unexcelled.
+
+"I don't need you boys here any longer," he said quietly.
+
+When the men had all withdrawn, he walked confidently under the front
+of the rollway, glancing with practiced eye at the perpendicular wall
+of logs over him.  Then, as a man pries jack-straws, he clamped his
+peavey and tugged sharply.  At once the rollway flattened and toppled.
+A mighty splash, a hurl of flying foam and crushing timbers, and the
+spot on which the riverman had stood was buried beneath twenty feet
+of solid green wood.  To Thorpe it seemed that Shearer must have been
+overwhelmed, but the riverman always mysteriously appeared at one
+side or the other, nonchalant, urging the men to work before the
+logs should have ceased to move.  Tradition claimed that only once
+in a long woods life had Shearer been forced to "take water" before
+a breaking rollway: and then he saved his peavey.  History stated
+that he had never lost a man on the river, simply and solely because
+he invariably took the dangerous tasks upon himself.
+
+As soon as the logs had caught the current, a dozen men urged them
+on.  With their short peaveys, the drivers were enabled to prevent
+the timbers from swirling in the eddies--one of the first causes of
+a jam. At last, near the foot of the flats, they abandoned them to
+the stream, confident that Moloney and his crew would see to their
+passage down the river.
+
+In three days the rollways were broken.  Now it became necessary to
+start the rear.
+
+For this purpose Billy Camp, the cook, had loaded his cook-stove, a
+quantity of provisions, and a supply of bedding, aboard a scow.  The
+scow was built of tremendous hewn timbers, four or five inches thick,
+to withstand the shock of the logs.  At either end were long sweeps
+to direct its course.  The craft was perhaps forty feet long, but
+rather narrow, in order that it might pass easily through the chute
+of a dam.  It was called the "wanigan."
+
+Billy Camp, his cookee, and his crew of two were now doomed to
+tribulation.  The huge, unwieldy craft from that moment was to
+become possessed of the devil.  Down the white water of rapids it
+would bump, smashing obstinately against boulders, impervious to
+the frantic urging of the long sweeps; against the roots and
+branches of the streamside it would scrape with the perverseness
+of a vicious horse; in the broad reaches it would sulk, refusing
+to proceed; and when expediency demanded its pause, it would drag
+Billy Camp and his entire crew at the rope's end, while they tried
+vainly to snub it against successively uprooted trees and stumps.
+When at last the wanigan was moored fast for the night,--usually
+a mile or so below the spot planned,--Billy Camp pushed back his
+battered old brown derby hat, the badge of his office, with a sigh
+of relief.  To be sure he and his men had still to cut wood,
+construct cooking and camp fires, pitch tents, snip browse, and
+prepare supper for seventy men; but the hard work of the day was
+over.  Billy Camp did not mind rain or cold--he would cheerfully
+cook away with the water dripping from his battered derby to his
+chubby and cold-purpled nose--but he did mind the wanigan.  And the
+worst of it was, he got no sympathy nor aid from the crew.  From
+either bank he and his anxious struggling assistants were greeted
+with ironic cheers and facetious remarks.  The tribulations of the
+wanigan were as the salt of life to the spectators.
+
+Billy Camp tried to keep back of the rear in clear water, but when
+the wanigan so disposed, he found himself jammed close in the logs.
+There he had a chance in his turn to become spectator, and so to
+repay in kind some of the irony and facetiousness.
+
+Along either bank, among the bushes, on sandbars, and in trees,
+hundreds and hundreds of logs had been stranded when the main
+drive passed.  These logs the rear crew were engaged in restoring
+to the current.
+
+And as a man had to be able to ride any kind of a log in any water;
+to propel that log by jumping on it, by rolling it squirrel fashion
+with the feet, by punting it as one would a canoe; to be skillful
+in pushing, prying, and poling other logs from the quarter deck of
+the same cranky craft; as he must be prepared at any and all times
+to jump waist deep into the river, to work in ice-water hours at a
+stretch; as he was called upon to break the most dangerous jams on
+the river, representing, as they did, the accumulation which the jam
+crew had left behind them, it was naturally considered the height
+of glory to belong to the rear crew.  Here were the best of the
+Fighting Forty,--men with a reputation as "white-water birlers"--
+men afraid of nothing.
+
+Every morning the crews were divided into two sections under Kerlie
+and Jack Hyland.  Each crew had charge of one side of the river, with
+the task of cleaning it thoroughly of all stranded and entangled
+logs.  Scotty Parsons exercised a general supervisory eye over both
+crews.  Shearer and Thorpe traveled back and forth the length of the
+drive, riding the logs down stream, but taking to a partly submerged
+pole trail when ascending the current.  On the surface of the river
+in the clear water floated two long graceful boats called bateaux.
+These were in charge of expert boatmen,--men able to propel their
+craft swiftly forwards, backwards and sideways, through all kinds
+of water.  They carried in racks a great supply of pike-poles,
+peaveys, axes, rope and dynamite, for use in various emergencies.
+Intense rivalry existed as to which crew "sacked" the farthest down
+stream in the course of the day.  There was no need to urge the
+men.  Some stood upon the logs, pushing mightily with the long
+pike-poles.  Others, waist deep in the water, clamped the jaws of
+their peaveys into the stubborn timbers, and, shoulder bent, slid
+them slowly but surely into the swifter waters.  Still others,
+lining up on either side of one of the great brown tree trunks,
+carried it bodily to its appointed place.  From one end of the
+rear to the other, shouts, calls, warnings, and jokes flew back
+and forth.  Once or twice a vast roar of Homeric laughter went up
+as some unfortunate slipped and soused into the water.  When the
+current slacked, and the logs hesitated in their run, the entire
+crew hastened, bobbing from log to log, down river to see about
+it.  Then they broke the jam, standing surely on the edge of the
+great darkness, while the ice water sucked in and out of their shoes.
+
+Behind the rear Big Junko poled his bateau backwards and forwards
+exploding dynamite.  Many of the bottom tiers of logs in the
+rollways had been frozen down, and Big Junko had to loosen them
+from the bed of the stream.  He was a big man, this, as his nickname
+indicated, built of many awkwardnesses.  His cheekbones were high,
+his nose flat, his lips thick and slobbery.  He sported a wide,
+ferocious straggling mustache and long eye-brows, under which
+gleamed little fierce eyes.  His forehead sloped back like a
+beast's, but was always hidden by a disreputable felt hat.  Big
+Junko did not know much, and had the passions of a wild animal,
+but he was a reckless riverman and devoted to Thorpe.  Just now
+he exploded dynamite.
+
+The sticks of powder were piled amidships.  Big Junko crouched over
+them, inserting the fuses and caps, closing the openings with soap,
+finally lighting them, and dropping them into the water alongside,
+where they immediately sank.  Then a few strokes of a short paddle
+took him barely out of danger.  He huddled down in his craft,
+waiting.  One, two, three seconds passed.  Then a hollow boom shook
+the stream.  A cloud of water sprang up, strangely beautiful.  After
+a moment the great brown logs rose suddenly to the surface from below,
+one after the other, like leviathans of the deep.  And Junko watched,
+dimly fascinated, in his rudimentary animal's brain, by the sight of
+the power he had evoked to his aid.
+
+When night came the men rode down stream to where the wanigan had
+made camp.  There they slept, often in blankets wetted by the
+wanigan's eccentricities, to leap to their feet at the first cry
+in early morning.  Some days it rained, in which case they were
+wet all the time.  Almost invariably there was a jam to break,
+though strangely enough almost every one of the old-timers believed
+implicitly that "in the full of the moon logs will run free at night."
+
+Thorpe and Tim Shearer nearly always slept in a dog tent at the
+rear; though occasionally they passed the night at Dam Two, where
+Bryan Moloney and his crew were already engaged in sluicing the
+logs through the chute.
+
+The affair was simple enough.  Long booms arranged in the form of an
+open V guided the drive to the sluice gate, through which a smooth
+apron of water rushed to turmoil in an eddying pool below.  Two men
+tramped steadily backwards and forwards on the booms, urging the
+logs forward by means of long pike poles to where the suction could
+seize them.  Below the dam, the push of the sluice water forced them
+several miles down stream, where the rest of Bryan Moloney's crew
+took them in charge.
+
+Thus through the wide gate nearly three-quarters of a million feet
+an hour could be run--a quantity more than sufficient to keep pace
+with the exertions of the rear.  The matter was, of course, more or
+less delayed by the necessity of breaking out such rollways as they
+encountered from time to time on the banks.  At length, however, the
+last of the logs drifted into the wide dam pool.  The rear had
+arrived at Dam Two, and Thorpe congratulated himself that one stage
+of his journey had been completed.  Billy Camp began to worry about
+shooting the wanigan through the sluice-way.
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVIII
+
+
+The rear had been tenting at the dam for two days, and was about
+ready to break camp, when Jimmy Powers swung across the trail to
+tell them of the big jam.
+
+Ten miles along the river bed, the stream dropped over a little
+half-falls into a narrow, rocky gorge.  It was always an anxious
+spot for the river drivers.  In fact, the plunging of the logs
+head-on over the fall had so gouged out the soft rock below, that
+an eddy of great power had formed in the basin.  Shearer and Thorpe
+had often discussed the advisability of constructing an artificial
+apron of logs to receive the impact.  Here, in spite of all efforts,
+the jam had formed, first a little center of a few logs in the
+middle of the stream, dividing the current, and shunting the logs
+to right and left; then "wings" growing out from either bank, built
+up from logs shunted too violently; finally a complete stoppage of
+the channel, and the consequent rapid piling up as the pressure of
+the drive increased.  Now the bed was completely filled, far above
+the level of the falls, by a tangle that defied the jam crew's
+best efforts.
+
+The rear at once took the trail down the river.  Thorpe and Shearer
+and Scotty Parsons looked over the ground.
+
+"She may 'pull,' if she gets a good start," decided Tim.
+
+Without delay the entire crew was set to work.  Nearly a hundred
+men can pick a great many logs in the course of a day.  Several
+times the jam started, but always "plugged" before the motion
+had become irresistible.  This was mainly because the rocky walls
+narrowed at a slight bend to the west, so that the drive was
+throttled, as it were.  It was hoped that perhaps the middle of
+the jam might burst through here, leaving the wings stranded.  The
+hope was groundless.
+
+"We'll have to shoot," Shearer reluctantly decided.
+
+The men were withdrawn.  Scotty Parsons cut a sapling twelve feet
+long, and trimmed it.  Big Junko thawed his dynamite at a little
+fire, opening the ends of the packages in order that the steam
+generated might escape.  Otherwise the pressure inside the oiled
+paper of the package was capable of exploding the whole affair.
+When the powder was warm, Scotty bound twenty of the cartridges
+around the end of the sapling, adjusted a fuse in one of them, and
+soaped the opening to exclude water.  Then Big Junko thrust the long
+javelin down into the depths of the jam, leaving a thin stream of
+smoke behind him as he turned away.  With sinister, evil eye he
+watched the smoke for an instant, then zigzagged awkwardly over the
+jam, the long, ridiculous tails of his brown cutaway coat flopping
+behind him as he leaped.  A scant moment later the hoarse dynamite
+shouted.
+
+Great chunks of timber shot to an inconceivable height; entire logs
+lifted bodily into the air with the motion of a fish jumping; a
+fountain of water gleamed against the sun and showered down in fine
+rain.  The jam shrugged and settled.  That was all; the "shot" had
+failed.
+
+The men ran forward, examining curiously the great hole in the log
+formation.
+
+"We'll have to flood her," said Thorpe.
+
+So all the gates of the dam were raised, and the torrent tried
+its hand.  It had no effect.  Evidently the affair was not one
+of violence, but of patience.  The crew went doggedly to work.
+
+Day after day the CLANK, CLANK, CLINK of the peaveys sounded with
+the regularity of machinery.  The only practicable method was to
+pick away the flank logs, leaving a long tongue pointing down-
+stream from the center to start when it would.  This happened time
+and again, but always failed to take with it the main jam.  It was
+cruel hard work; a man who has lifted his utmost strength into a
+peavey knows that.  Any but the Fighting Forty would have grumbled.
+
+Collins, the bookkeeper, came up to view the tangle.  Later a
+photographer from Marquette took some views, which, being
+exhibited, attracted a great deal of attention, so that by the end
+of the week a number of curiosity seekers were driving over every
+day to see the Big Jam.  A certain Chicago journalist in search of
+balsam health of lungs even sent to his paper a little item.  This,
+unexpectedly, brought Wallace Carpenter to the spot.  Although
+reassured as to the gravity of the situation, he remained to see.
+
+The place was an amphitheater for such as chose to be spectators.
+They could stand or sit on the summit of the gorge cliffs,
+overlooking the river, the fall, and the jam.  As the cliff was
+barely sixty feet high, the view lacked nothing in clearness.
+
+At last Shearer became angry.
+
+"We've been monkeying long enough," said he.  "Next time we'll
+leave a center that WILL go out.  We'll shut the dams down tight
+and dry-pick out two wings that'll start her."
+
+The dams were first run at full speed, and then shut down.  Hardly
+a drop of water flowed in the bed of the stream.  The crews set
+laboriously to work to pull and roll the logs out in such flat
+fashion that a head of water should send them out.
+
+This was even harder work than the other, for they had not the
+floating power of water to help them in the lifting.  As usual,
+part of the men worked below, part above.
+
+Jimmy Powers, curly-haired, laughing-faced, was irrepressible.  He
+badgered the others until they threw bark at him and menaced him
+with their peaveys.  Always he had at his tongue's end the proper
+quip for the occasion, so that in the long run the work was
+lightened by him.  When the men stopped to think at all, they
+thought of Jimmy Powers with very kindly hearts, for it was known
+that he had had more trouble than most, and that the coin was not
+made too small for him to divide with a needy comrade.  To those who
+had seen his mask of whole-souled good-nature fade into serious
+sympathy, Jimmy Powers's poor little jokes were very funny indeed.
+
+"Did 'je see th' Swede at the circus las' summer?" he would howl
+to Red Jacket on the top tier.
+
+"No," Red Jacket would answer, "was he there?"
+
+"Yes," Jimmy Powers would reply; then, after a pause--"in a cage!"
+
+It was a poor enough jest, yet if you had been there, you would
+have found that somehow the log had in the meantime leaped of its
+own accord from that difficult position.
+
+Thorpe approved thoroughly of Jimmy Powers; he thought him a good
+influence.  He told Wallace so, standing among the spectators on
+the cliff-top.
+
+"He is all right," said Thorpe.  "I wish I had more like him.  The
+others are good boys, too."
+
+Five men were at the moment tugging futilely at a reluctant timber.
+They were attempting to roll one end of it over the side of another
+projecting log, but were continually foiled, because the other end
+was jammed fast.  Each bent his knees, inserting his shoulder under
+the projecting peavey stock, to straighten in a mighty effort.
+
+"Hire a boy!"  "Get some powder of Junko!"  "Have Jimmy talk it out!"
+"Try that little one over by the corner," called the men on top of
+the jam.
+
+Everybody laughed, of course.  It was a fine spring day, clear-eyed
+and crisp, with a hint of new foliage in the thick buds of the trees.
+The air was so pellucid that one distinguished without difficulty
+the straight entrance to the gorge a mile away, and even the West
+Bend, fully five miles distant.
+
+Jimmy Powers took off his cap and wiped his forehead.
+
+"You boys," he remarked politely, "think you are boring with a
+mighty big auger."
+
+"My God!" screamed one of the spectators on top of the cliff.
+
+At the same instant Wallace Carpenter seized his friend's arm and
+pointed.
+
+Down the bed of the stream from the upper bend rushed a solid wall
+of water several feet high.  It flung itself forward with the
+headlong impetus of a cascade.  Even in the short interval between
+the visitor's exclamation and Carpenter's rapid gesture, it had
+loomed into sight, twisted a dozen trees from the river bank, and
+foamed into the entrance of the gorge.  An instant later it collided
+with the tail of the jam.
+
+Even in the railroad rush of those few moments several things
+happened.  Thorpe leaped for a rope.  The crew working on top
+of the jam ducked instinctively to right and left and began to
+scramble towards safety.  The men below, at first bewildered and
+not comprehending, finally understood, and ran towards the face
+of the jam with the intention of clambering up it.  There could
+be no escape in the narrow canyon below, the walls of which rose
+sheer.
+
+Then the flood hit square.  It was the impact of resistible power.
+A great sheet of water rose like surf from the tail of the jam;
+a mighty cataract poured down over its surface, lifting the free
+logs; from either wing timbers crunched, split, rose suddenly into
+wracked prominence, twisted beyond the semblance of themselves.
+Here and there single logs were even projected bodily upwards, as
+an apple seed is shot from between the thumb and forefinger.  Then
+the jam moved.
+
+Scotty Parsons, Jack Hyland, Red Jacket, and the forty or fifty top
+men had reached the shore.  By the wriggling activity which is a
+riverman's alone, they succeeded in pulling themselves beyond the
+snap of death's jaws.  It was a narrow thing for most of them, and
+a miracle for some.
+
+Jimmy Powers, Archie Harris, Long Pine Jim, Big Nolan, and Mike
+Moloney, the brother of Bryan, were in worse case.  They were,
+as has been said, engaged in "flattening" part of the jam about
+eight or ten rods below the face of it.  When they finally
+understood that the affair was one of escape, they ran towards
+the jam, hoping to climb out.  Then the crash came.  They heard
+the roar of the waters, the wrecking of the timbers, they saw the
+logs bulge outwards in anticipation of the break.  Immediately
+they turned and fled, they knew not where.
+
+All but Jimmy Powers.  He stopped short in his tracks, and threw
+his battered old felt hat defiantly full into the face of the
+destruction hanging over him.  Then, his bright hair blowing in
+the wind of death, he turned to the spectators standing helpless
+and paralyzed, forty feet above him.
+
+It was an instant's impression,--the arrested motion seen in the
+flash of lightning--and yet to the onlookers it had somehow the
+quality of time.  For perceptible duration it seemed to them they
+stared at the contrast between the raging hell above and the yet
+peaceable river bed below.  They were destined to remember that
+picture the rest of their natural lives, in such detail that each
+one of them could almost have reproduced it photographically by
+simply closing his eyes.  Yet afterwards, when they attempted to
+recall definitely the impression, they knew it could have lasted
+but a fraction of a second, for the reason that, clear and distinct
+in each man's mind, the images of the fleeing men retained definite
+attitudes.  It was the instantaneous photography of events.
+
+"So long, boys," they heard Jimmy Powers's voice.  Then the rope
+Thorpe had thrown fell across a caldron of tortured waters and of
+tossing logs.
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX
+
+
+During perhaps ten seconds the survivors watched the end of Thorpe's
+rope trailing in the flood.  Then the young man with a deep sigh
+began to pull it towards him.
+
+At once a hundred surmises, questions, ejaculations broke out.
+
+"What happened?" cried Wallace Carpenter.
+
+"What was that man's name?" asked the Chicago journalist with the
+eager instinct of his profession.
+
+"This is terrible, terrible, terrible!" a white-haired physician
+from Marquette kept repeating over and over.
+
+A half dozen ran towards the point of the cliff to peer down stream,
+as though they could hope to distinguish anything in that waste of
+flood water.
+
+"The dam's gone out," replied Thorpe.  "I don't understand it.
+Everything was in good shape, as far as I could see.  It didn't
+act like an ordinary break.  The water came too fast.  Why, it was
+as dry as a bone until just as that wave came along.  An ordinary
+break would have eaten through little by little before it burst,
+and Davis should have been able to stop it.  This came all at once,
+as if the dam had disappeared.  I don't see."
+
+His mind of the professional had already began to query causes.
+
+"How about the men?" asked Wallace.  "Isn't there something I can
+do?"
+
+"You can head a hunt down the river," answered Thorpe.  "I think
+it is useless until the water goes down.  Poor Jimmy.  He was one
+of the best men I had.  I wouldn't have had this happen---"
+
+The horror of the scene was at last beginning to filter through
+numbness into Wallace Carpenter's impressionable imagination.
+
+"No, no!" he cried vehemently.  "There is something criminal about
+it to me!  I'd rather lose every log in the river!"
+
+Thorpe looked at him curiously.  "It is one of the chances of war,"
+said he, unable to refrain from the utterance of his creed.  "We all
+know it."
+
+"I'd better divide the crew and take in both banks of the river,"
+suggested Wallace in his constitutional necessity of doing something.
+
+"See if you can't get volunteers from this crowd," suggested Thorpe.
+"I can let you have two men to show you trails.  If you can make it
+that way, it will help me out.  I need as many of the crew as
+possible to use this flood water."
+
+"Oh, Harry," cried Carpenter, shocked.  "You can't be going to work
+again to-day after that horrible sight, before we have made the
+slightest effort to recover the bodies!"
+
+"If the bodies can be recovered, they shall be," replied Thorpe
+quietly.  "But the drive will not wait.  We have no dams to depend
+on now, you must remember, and we shall have to get out on freshet
+water."
+
+"Your men won't work.  I'd refuse just as they will!" cried
+Carpenter, his sensibilities still suffering.
+
+Thorpe smiled proudly.  "You do not know them.  They are mine.  I
+hold them in the hollow of my hand!"
+
+"By Jove!" cried the journalist in sudden enthusiasm.  "By Jove!
+that is magnificent!"
+
+The men of the river crew had crouched on their narrow footholds
+while the jam went out.  Each had clung to his peavey, as is the
+habit of rivermen.  Down the current past their feet swept the
+debris of flood.  Soon logs began to swirl by,--at first few, then
+many from the remaining rollways which the river had automatically
+broken.  In a little time the eddy caught up some of these logs, and
+immediately the inception of another jam threatened.  The rivermen,
+without hesitation, as calmly as though catastrophe had not thrown
+the weight of its moral terror against their stoicism, sprang,
+peavey in hand, to the insistent work.
+
+"By Jove!" said the journalist again.  "That is magnificent!  They
+are working over the spot where their comrades died!"
+
+Thorpe's face lit with gratification.  He turned to the young man.
+
+"You see," he said in proud simplicity.
+
+With the added danger of freshet water, the work went on.
+
+At this moment Tim Shearer approached from inland, his clothes
+dripping wet, but his face retaining its habitual expression of
+iron calmness.  "Anybody caught?" was his first question as he
+drew near.
+
+"Five men under the face," replied Thorpe briefly.
+
+Shearer cast a glance at the river.  He needed to be told no more.
+
+"I was afraid of it," said he.  "The rollways must be all broken
+out.  It's saved us that much, but the freshet water won't last
+long.  It's going to be a close squeak to get 'em out now.  Don't
+exactly figure on what struck the dam.  Thought first I'd go right
+up that way, but then I came down to see about the boys."
+
+Carpenter could not understand this apparent callousness on the
+part of men in whom he had always thought to recognize a fund of
+rough but genuine feeling.  To him the sacredness of death was
+incompatible with the insistence of work.  To these others the
+two, grim necessity, went hand in hand.
+
+"Where were you?" asked Thorpe of Shearer.
+
+"On the pole trail.  I got in a little, as you see."
+
+In reality the foreman had had a close call for his life.  A
+toughly-rooted basswood alone had saved him.
+
+"We'd better go up and take a look," he suggested.  "Th' boys has
+things going here all right."
+
+The two men turned towards the brush.
+
+"Hi, Tim," called a voice behind them.
+
+Red Jacket appeared clambering up the cliff.
+
+"Jack told me to give this to you," he panted, holding out a chunk
+of strangely twisted wood.
+
+"Where'd he get this?" inquired Thorpe, quickly.  "It's a piece
+of the dam," he explained to Wallace, who had drawn near.
+
+"Picked it out of the current," replied the man.
+
+The foreman and his boss bent eagerly over the morsel.  Then they
+stared with solemnity into each other's eyes.
+
+"Dynamite, by God!" exclaimed Shearer.
+
+
+
+Chapter L
+
+
+For a moment the three men stared at each other without speaking.
+
+"What does it mean?" almost whispered Carpenter.
+
+"Mean?  Foul play!" snarled Thorpe.  "Come on, Tim."
+
+The two struck into the brush, threading the paths with the ease
+of woodsmen.  It was necessary to keep to the high inland ridges for
+the simple reason that the pole trail had by now become impassable.
+Wallace Carpenter, attempting to follow them, ran, stumbled, and
+fell through brush that continually whipped his face and garments,
+continually tripped his feet.  All he could obtain was a vanishing
+glimpse of his companions' backs.  Thorpe and his foreman talked
+briefly.
+
+"It's Morrison and Daly," surmised Shearer.  "I left them 'count
+of a trick like that.  They wanted me to take charge of Perkinson's
+drive and hang her a purpose.  I been suspecting something--they've
+been layin' too low."
+
+Thorpe answered nothing.  Through the site of the old dam they
+found a torrent pouring from the narrowed pond, at the end of which
+the dilapidated wings flapping in the current attested the former
+structure.  Davis stood staring at the current.
+
+Thorpe strode forward and shook him violently by the shoulder.
+
+"How did this happen?" he demanded hoarsely.  "Speak!"
+
+The man turned to him in a daze.  "I don't know," he answered.
+
+"You ought to know.  How was that 'shot' exploded?  How did they
+get in here without you seeing them?  Answer me!"
+
+"I don't know," repeated the man.  "I jest went over in th' bresh
+to kill a few pa'tridges, and when I come back I found her this
+way.  I wasn't goin' to close down for three hours yet, and I
+thought they was no use a hangin' around here."
+
+"Were you hired to watch this dam, or weren't you?" demanded the
+tense voice of Thorpe.  "Answer me, you fool."
+
+"Yes, I was," returned the man, a shade of aggression creeping
+into his voice.
+
+"Well, you've done it well.  You've cost me my dam, and you've
+killed five men.  If the crew finds out about you, you'll go over
+the falls, sure.  You get out of here!  Pike!  Don't you ever let
+me see your face again!"
+
+The man blanched as he thus learned of his comrades' deaths.  Thorpe
+thrust his face at him, lashed by circumstances beyond his habitual
+self-control.
+
+"It's men like you who make the trouble," he stormed.  "Damn fools
+who say they didn't mean to.  It isn't enough not to mean to.  They
+should MEAN NOT TO!  I don't ask you to think.  I just want you to
+do what I tell you, and you can't even do that."
+
+He threw his shoulder into a heavy blow that reached the dam watcher's
+face, and followed it immediately by another.  Then Shearer caught his
+arm, motioning the dazed and bloody victim of the attack to get out of
+sight.  Thorpe shook his foreman off with one impatient motion, and
+strode away up the river, his head erect, his eyes flashing, his
+nostrils distended.
+
+"I reckon you'd better mosey," Shearer dryly advised the dam watcher;
+and followed.
+
+Late in the afternoon the two men reached Dam Three, or rather the
+spot on which Dam Three had stood.  The same spectacle repeated
+itself here, except that Ellis, the dam watcher, was nowhere to
+be seen.
+
+"The dirty whelps," cried Thorpe, "they did a good job!"
+
+He thrashed about here and there, and so came across Ellis
+blindfolded and tied.  When released, the dam watcher was
+unable to give any account of his assailants.
+
+"They came up behind me while I was cooking," he said.  "One of
+'em grabbed me and the other one kivered my eyes.  Then I hears
+the 'shot' and knows there's trouble."
+
+Thorpe listened in silence.  Shearer asked a few questions.  After
+the low-voiced conversation Thorpe arose abruptly.
+
+"Where you going?" asked Shearer.
+
+But the young man did not reply.  He swung, with the same long,
+nervous stride, into the down-river trail.
+
+Until late that night the three men--for Ellis insisted on
+accompanying them--hurried through the forest.  Thorpe walked
+tirelessly, upheld by his violent but repressed excitement.  When
+his hat fell from his head, he either did not notice the fact, or
+did not care to trouble himself for its recovery, so he glanced
+through the trees bare-headed, his broad white brow gleaming in
+the moonlight.  Shearer noted the fire in his eyes, and from the
+coolness of his greater age, counselled moderation.
+
+"I wouldn't stir the boys up," he panted, for the pace was very
+swift.  "They'll kill some one over there, it'll be murder on
+both sides."
+
+He received no answer.  About midnight they came to the camp.
+
+Two great fires leaped among the trees, and the men, past the idea
+of sleep, grouped between them, talking.  The lesson of twisted
+timbers was not lost to their experience, and the evening had
+brought its accumulation of slow anger against the perpetrators of
+the outrage.  These men were not given to oratorical mouthings, but
+their low-voiced exchanges between the puffings of a pipe led to a
+steadier purpose than that of hysteria.  Even as the woodsmen joined
+their group, they had reached the intensity of execution.  Across
+their purpose Thorpe threw violently his personality.
+
+"You must not go," he commanded.
+
+Through their anger they looked at him askance.
+
+"I forbid it," Thorpe cried.
+
+They shrugged their indifference and arose.  This was an affair of
+caste brotherhood; and the blood of their mates cried out to them.
+
+"The work," Thorpe shouted hoarsely.  "The work!  We must get those
+logs out!  We haven't time!"
+
+But the Fighting Forty had not Thorpe's ideal.  Success meant a
+day's work well done; while vengeance stood for a righting of the
+realities which had been unrighteously overturned.  Thorpe's dry-
+eyed, burning, almost mad insistence on the importance of the
+day's task had not its ordinary force.  They looked upon him from
+a standpoint apart, calmly, dispassionately, as one looks on a
+petulant child.  The grim call of tragedy had lifted them above
+little mundane things.
+
+Then swiftly between the white, strained face of the madman trying
+to convince his heart that his mind had been right, and the
+fanatically exalted rivermen, interposed the sanity of Radway.
+The old jobber faced the men calmly, almost humorously, and somehow
+the very bigness of the man commanded attention.  When he spoke,
+his coarse, good-natured, everyday voice fell through the tense
+situation, clarifying it, restoring it to the normal.
+
+"You fellows make me sick," said he.  "You haven't got the sense
+God gave a rooster.  Don't you see you're playing right in those
+fellows' hands?  What do you suppose they dynamited them dams for?
+To kill our boys?  Don't you believe it for a minute.  They never
+dreamed we was dry pickin' that jam.  They sent some low-lived whelp
+down there to hang our drive, and by smoke it looks like they was
+going to succeed, thanks to you mutton-heads.
+
+"'Spose you go over and take 'em apart; what then?  You have a
+scrap; probably you lick 'em."  The men growled ominously, but did
+not stir.  "You whale daylights out of a lot of men who probably
+don't know any more about this here shooting of our dams than a hog
+does about a ruffled shirt.  Meanwhile your drive hangs.  Well?
+Well?  Do you suppose the men who were back of that shooting, do
+you suppose Morrison and Daly give a tinker's dam how many men of
+theirs you lick?  What they want is to hang our drive.  If they
+hang our drive, it's cheap at the price of a few black eyes."
+
+The speaker paused and grinned good-humoredly at the men's attentive
+faces.  Then suddenly his own became grave, and he swung into his
+argument all the impressiveness of his great bulk,
+
+"Do you want to know how to get even?" he asked, shading each word.
+"Do you want to know how to make those fellows sing so small you
+can't hear them?  Well, I'll tell you.  TAKE OUT THIS DRIVE!  Do
+it in spite of them!  Show them they're no good when they buck up
+against Thorpe's One!  Our boys died doing their duty--the way a
+riverman ought to.  NOW HUMP YOURSELVES!  Don't let 'em die in vain!"
+
+The crew stirred uneasily, looking at each other for approval of the
+conversion each had experienced.  Radway, seizing the psychological
+moment, turned easily toward the blaze.
+
+"Better turn in, boys, and get some sleep," he said.  "We've got a
+hard day to-morrow."  He stooped to light his pipe at the fire.  When
+he had again straightened his back after rather a prolonged interval,
+the group had already disintegrated.  A few minutes later the cookee
+scattered the brands of the fire from before a sleeping camp.
+
+Thorpe had listened non-committally to the colloquy.  He had
+maintained the suspended attitude of a man who is willing to allow
+the trial of other methods, but who does not therefore relinquish
+his own.  At the favorable termination of the discussion he turned
+away without comment.  He expected to gain this result.  Had he
+been in a more judicial state of mind he might have perceived at
+last the reason, in the complicated scheme of Providence, for his
+long connection with John Radway.
+
+
+
+Chapter LI
+
+
+Before daylight Injin Charley drifted into the camp to find Thorpe
+already out.  With a curt nod the Indian seated himself by the fire,
+and, producing a square plug of tobacco and a knife, began leisurely
+to fill his pipe.  Thorpe watched him in silence.  Finally Injin
+Charley spoke in the red man's clear-cut, imitative English, a
+pause between each sentence.
+
+"I find trail three men," said he.  "Both dam, three men.  One man
+go down river.  Those men have cork-boot.  One man no have cork-boot.
+He boss."  The Indian suddenly threw his chin out, his head back,
+half closed his eyes in a cynical squint.  As by a flash Dyer, the
+scaler, leered insolently from behind the Indian's stolid mask.
+
+"How do you know?" said Thorpe.
+
+For answer the Indian threw his shoulders forward in Dyer's nervous
+fashion.
+
+"He make trail big by the toe, light by the heel.  He make trail
+big on inside."
+
+Charley arose and walked, after Dyer's springy fashion, illustrating
+his point in the soft wood ashes of the immediate fireside.
+
+Thorpe looked doubtful.  "I believe you are right, Charley," said
+he.  "But it is mighty little to go on.  You can't be sure."
+
+"I sure," replied Charley.
+
+He puffed strongly at the heel of his smoke, then arose, and without
+farewell disappeared in the forest.
+
+Thorpe ranged the camp impatiently, glancing often at the sky.  At
+length he laid fresh logs on the fire and aroused the cook.  It was
+bitter cold in the early morning.  After a time the men turned out
+of their own accord, at first yawning with insufficient rest, and
+then becoming grimly tense as their returned wits reminded them of
+the situation.
+
+From that moment began the wonderful struggle against circumstances
+which has become a by-word among rivermen everywhere.  A forty-day
+drive had to go out in ten.  A freshet had to float out thirty
+million feet of logs.  It was tremendous; as even the men most
+deeply buried in the heavy hours of that time dimly realized.
+It was epic; as the journalist, by now thoroughly aroused, soon
+succeeded in convincing his editors and his public.  Fourteen,
+sixteen, sometimes eighteen hours a day, the men of the driving
+crew worked like demons.  Jams had no chance to form.  The phenomenal
+activity of the rear crew reduced by half the inevitable sacking.
+Of course, under the pressure, the lower dam had gone out.  Nothing
+was to be depended on but sheer dogged grit.  Far up-river Sadler &
+Smith had hung their drive for the season.  They had stretched heavy
+booms across the current, and so had resigned themselves to a
+definite but not extraordinary loss.  Thorpe had at least a clear
+river.
+
+Wallace Carpenter could not understand how human flesh and blood
+endured.  The men themselves had long since reached the point of
+practical exhaustion, but were carried through by the fire of their
+leader.  Work was dogged until he stormed into sight; then it became
+frenzied.  He seemed to impart to those about him a nervous force
+and excitability as real as that induced by brandy.  When he looked
+at a man from his cavernous, burning eyes, that man jumped.
+
+It was all willing enough work.  Several definite causes, each
+adequate alone to something extraordinary, focussed to the necessity.
+His men worshipped Thorpe; the idea of thwarting the purposes of
+their comrade's murderers retained its strength; the innate pride
+of caste and craft--the sturdiest virtue of the riverman--was in
+these picked men increased to the dignity of a passion.  The great
+psychological forces of a successful career gathered and made head
+against the circumstances which such careers always arouse in
+polarity.
+
+Impossibilities were puffed aside like thistles.  The men went at
+them headlong.  They gave way before the rush.  Thorpe always led.
+Not for a single instant of the day nor for many at night was he
+at rest.  He was like a man who has taken a deep breath to reach
+a definite goal, and who cannot exhale until the burst of speed be
+over.  Instinctively he seemed to realize that a let-down would
+mean collapse.
+
+After the camp had fallen asleep, he would often lie awake half of
+the few hours of their night, every muscle tense, staring at the
+sky.  His mind saw definitely every detail of the situation as he
+had last viewed it.  In advance his imagination stooped and sweated
+to the work which his body was to accomplish the next morning.
+Thus he did everything twice.  Then at last the tension would relax.
+He would fall into uneasy sleep.  But twice that did not follow.
+Through the dissolving iron mist of his striving, a sharp thought
+cleaved like an arrow.  It was that after all he did not care.  The
+religion of Success no longer held him as its devoutest worshiper.
+He was throwing the fibers of his life into the engine of toil, not
+because of moral duty, but because of moral pride.  He meant to
+succeed in order to prove to himself that he had not been wrong.
+
+The pain of the arrow-wound always aroused him from his doze with a
+start.  He grimly laughed the thought out of court.  To his waking
+moments his religion was sincere, was real.  But deep down in his
+sub-consciousness, below his recognition, the other influence was
+growing like a weed.  Perhaps the vision, not the waking, had been
+right.  Perhaps that far-off beautiful dream of a girl which Thorpe's
+idealism had constructed from; the reactionary necessities of
+Thorpe's harsh life had been more real than his forest temples
+of his ruthless god!  Perhaps there were greater things than to
+succeed, greater things than success.  Perhaps, after all, the
+Power that put us here demands more that we cleave one to the other
+in loving-kindness than that we learn to blow the penny whistles it
+has tossed us.  And then the keen, poignant memory of the dream girl
+stole into the young man's mind, and in agony was immediately thrust
+forth.  He would not think of her.  He had given her up.  He had
+cast the die.  For success he had bartered her, in the noblest, the
+loftiest spirit of devotion.  He refused to believe that devotion
+fanatical; he refused to believe that he had been wrong.  In the
+still darkness of the night he would rise and steal to the edge of
+the dully roaring stream.  There, his eyes blinded and his throat
+choked with a longing more manly than tears, he would reach out
+and smooth the round rough coats of the great logs.
+
+"We'll do it!" he whispered to them--and to himself.  "We'll do it!
+We can't be wrong.  God would not have let us!"
+
+
+
+Chapter LII
+
+
+Wallace Carpenter's search expedition had proved a failure, as
+Thorpe had foreseen, but at the end of the week, when the water
+began to recede, the little beagles ran upon a mass of flesh
+and bones.  The man was unrecognizable, either as an individual or
+as a human being.  The remains were wrapped in canvas and sent for
+interment in the cemetery at Marquette.  Three of the others were
+never found.  The last did not come to light until after the drive
+had quite finished.
+
+Down at the booms the jam crew received the drive as fast as it
+came down.  From one crib to another across the broad extent of the
+river's mouth, heavy booms were chained end to end effectually to
+close the exit to Lake Superior.  Against these the logs caromed
+softly in the slackened current, and stopped.  The cribs were very
+heavy with slanting, instead of square, tops, in order that the
+pressure might be downwards instead of sidewise.  This guaranteed
+their permanency.  In a short time the surface of the lagoon was
+covered by a brown carpet of logs running in strange patterns like
+windrows of fallen grain.  Finally, across the straight middle
+distance of the river, appeared little agitated specks leaping
+back and forth.  Thus the rear came in sight and the drive was
+all but over.
+
+Up till now the weather had been clear but oppressively hot for
+this time of year.  The heat had come suddenly and maintained itself
+well.  It had searched out with fierce directness all the patches of
+snow lying under the thick firs and balsams of the swamp edge, it
+had shaken loose the anchor ice of the marsh bottoms, and so had
+materially aided the success of the drive by increase of water.
+The men had worked for the most part in undershirts.  They were as
+much in the water as out of it, for the icy bath had become almost
+grateful.  Hamilton, the journalist, who had attached himself
+definitely to the drive, distributed bunches of papers, in which
+the men read that the unseasonable condition prevailed all over
+the country.
+
+At length, however, it gave signs of breaking.  The sky, which
+had been of a steel blue, harbored great piled thunder-heads.
+Occasionally athwart the heat shot a streak of cold air.  Towards
+evening the thunder-heads shifted and finally dissipated, to be
+sure, but the portent was there.
+
+Hamilton's papers began to tell of disturbances in the South and
+West.  A washout in Arkansas derailed a train; a cloud-burst in
+Texas wiped out a camp; the cities along the Ohio River were
+enjoying their annual flood with the usual concomitants of floating
+houses and boats in the streets.  The men wished they had some of
+that water here.
+
+So finally the drive approached its end and all concerned began in
+anticipation to taste the weariness that awaited them.  They had
+hurried their powers.  The few remaining tasks still confronting
+them, all at once seemed more formidable than what they had
+accomplished.  They could not contemplate further exertion.  The
+work for the first time became dogged, distasteful.  Even Thorpe
+was infected.  He, too, wanted more than anything else to drop on
+the bed in Mrs. Hathaway's boarding house, there to sponge from his
+mind all colors but the dead gray of rest.  There remained but a few
+things to do.  A mile of sacking would carry the drive beyond the
+influence of freshet water.  After that there would be no hurry.
+
+He looked around at the hard, fatigue-worn faces of the men about
+him, and in the obsession of his wearied mood he suddenly felt a
+great rush of affection for these comrades who had so unreservedly
+spent themselves for his affair.  Their features showed exhaustion,
+it is true, but their eyes gleamed still with the steady half-
+humorous purpose of the pioneer.  When they caught his glance they
+grinned good-humoredly.
+
+All at once Thorpe turned and started for the bank.
+
+"That'll do, boys," he said quietly to the nearest group.  "She's
+down!"
+
+It was noon.  The sackers looked up in surprise.  Behind them, to
+their very feet, rushed the soft smooth slope of Hemlock Rapids.
+Below them flowed a broad, peaceful river.  The drive had passed
+its last obstruction.  To all intents and purposes it was over.
+
+Calmly, with matter-of-fact directness, as though they had not
+achieved the impossible; as though they, a handful, had not cheated
+nature and powerful enemies, they shouldered their peaveys and
+struck into the broad wagon road.  In the middle distance loomed the
+tall stacks of the mill with the little board town about it.  Across
+the eye spun the thread of the railroad.  Far away gleamed the broad
+expanses of Lake Superior.
+
+The cook had, early that morning, moored the wanigan to the bank.
+One of the teamsters from town had loaded the men's "turkeys" on
+his heavy wagon.  The wanigan's crew had thereupon trudged into
+town.
+
+The men paired off naturally and fell into a dragging, dogged walk.
+Thorpe found himself unexpectedly with Big Junko.  For a time they
+plodded on without conversation.  Then the big man ventured a remark.
+
+"I'm glad she's over," said he.  "I got a good stake comin'."
+
+"Yes," replied Thorpe indifferently.
+
+"I got most six hundred dollars comin'," persisted Junko.
+
+"Might as well be six hundred cents," commented Thorpe, "it'd
+make you just as drunk."
+
+Big Junko laughed self-consciously but without the slightest
+resentment.
+
+"That's all right," said he, "but you betcher life I don't blow
+this stake."
+
+"I've heard that talk before," shrugged Thorpe.
+
+"Yes, but this is different.  I'm goin' to git married on this.
+How's THAT?"
+
+Thorpe, his attention struck at last, stared at his companion.  He
+noted the man's little twinkling animal eyes, his high cheek bones,
+his flat nose, his thick and slobbery lips, his straggling, fierce
+mustache and eyebrows, his grotesque long-tailed cutaway coat.  So
+to him, too, this primitive man reaching dully from primordial chaos,
+the great moment had yielded its vision.
+
+"Who is she?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"She used to wash at Camp Four."
+
+Thorpe dimly remembered the woman now--an overweighted creature
+with a certain attraction of elfishly blowing hair, with a certain
+pleasing full-cheeked, full-bosomed health.
+
+The two walked on in re-established silence.  Finally the giant,
+unable to contain himself longer, broke out again.
+
+"I do like that woman," said he with a quaintly deliberate
+seriousness.
+"That's the finest woman in this district."
+
+Thorpe felt the quick moisture rush to his eyes.  There was something
+inexpressibly touching in those simple words as Big Junko uttered
+them.
+
+"And when you are married," he asked, "what are you going to do?  Are
+you going to stay on the river?"
+
+"No, I'm goin' to clear a farm.  The woman she says that's the thing
+to do.  I like the river, too.  But you bet when Carrie says a thing,
+that's plenty good enough for Big Junko."
+
+"Suppose," suggested Thorpe, irresistibly impelled towards the
+attempt, "suppose I should offer you two hundred dollars a month
+to stay on the river.  Would you stay?"
+
+"Carrie don't like it," replied Junko.
+
+"Two hundred dollars is big wages," persisted Thorpe.  "It's twice
+what I give Radway."
+
+"I'd like to ask Carrie."
+
+"No, take it or leave it now."
+
+"Well, Carrie says she don't like it," answered the riverman with
+a sigh.
+
+Thorpe looked at his companion fixedly.  Somehow the bestial
+countenance had taken on an attraction of its own.  He remembered
+Big Junko as a wild beast when his passions were aroused, as a man
+whose honesty had been doubted.
+
+"You've changed, Junko," said he.
+
+"I know," said the big man.  "I been a scalawag all right.  I quit
+it.  I don't know much, but Carrie she's smart, and I'm goin' to do
+what she says.  When you get stuck on a good woman like Carrie, Mr.
+Thorpe, you don't give much of a damn for anything else.  Sure!
+That's right!  It's the biggest thing top o' earth!"
+
+Here it was again, the opposing creed.  And from such a source.
+Thorpe's iron will contracted again.
+
+"A woman is no excuse for a man's neglecting his work," he snapped.
+
+"Shorely not," agreed Junko serenely.  "I aim to finish out my time
+all right, Mr. Thorpe.  Don't you worry none about that.  I done my
+best for you.  And," went on the riverman in the expansion of this
+unwonted confidence with his employer, "I'd like to rise to remark
+that you're the best boss I ever had, and we boys wants to stay with
+her till there's skating in hell!"
+
+"All right," murmured Thorpe indifferently.
+
+His momentary interest had left him.  Again the reactionary weariness
+dragged at his feet.  Suddenly the remaining half mile to town seemed
+very long indeed.
+
+
+
+Chapter LIII
+
+
+Wallace Carpenter and Hamilton, the journalist, seated against
+the sun-warmed bench of Mrs. Hathaway's boarding-house, commented
+on the band as it stumbled in to the wash-room.
+
+"Those men don't know how big they are," remarked the journalist.
+That's the way with most big men.  And that man Thorpe belongs to
+another age.  I'd like to get him to telling his experiences; he'd
+be a gold mine to me."
+
+"And would require about as much trouble to 'work,'" laughed
+Wallace.  "He won't talk."
+
+"That's generally the trouble, confound 'em," sighed Hamilton.
+"The fellows who CAN talk haven't anything to say; and those who
+have something to tell are dumb as oysters.  I've got him in though."
+He spread one of a roll of papers on his knees.  "I got a set of
+duplicates for you.  Thought you might like to keep them.  The
+office tells me," he concluded modestly, "that they are attracting
+lots of attention, but are looked upon as being a rather clever
+sort of fiction."
+
+Wallace picked up the sheet.  His eye was at once met by the heading,
+"'So long, boys,'" in letters a half inch in height, and immediately
+underneath in smaller type, "said Jimmy Powers, and threw his hat in
+the face of death."
+
+"It's all there," explained the journalist, "--the jam and the break,
+and all this magnificent struggle afterwards.  It makes a great yarn.
+I feel tempted sometimes to help it out a little--artistically, you
+know--but of course that wouldn't do.  She'd make a ripping yarn,
+though, if I could get up some motive outside mere trade rivalry
+for the blowing up of those dams.  That would just round it off."
+
+Wallace Carpenter was about to reply that such a motive actually
+existed, when the conversation was interrupted by the approach of
+Thorpe and Big Junko.  The former looked twenty years older after
+his winter.  His eye was dull, his shoulders drooped, his gait was
+inelastic.  The whole bearing of the man was that of one weary to
+the bone.
+
+"I've got something here to show you, Harry," cried Wallace Carpenter,
+waving one of the papers.  "It was a great drive and here's something
+to remember it by."
+
+"All right, Wallace, by and by," replied Thorpe dully.  "I'm dead.
+I'm going to turn in for a while.  I need sleep more than anything
+else.  I can't think now."
+
+He passed through the little passage into the "parlor bed-room,"
+which Mrs. Hathaway always kept in readiness for members of the
+firm.  There he fell heavily asleep almost before his body had
+met the bed.
+
+In the long dining room the rivermen consumed a belated dinner.
+They had no comments to make.  It was over.
+
+The two on the veranda smoked.  To the right, at the end of the
+sawdust street, the mill sang its varying and lulling keys.  The
+odor of fresh-sawed pine perfumed the air.  Not a hundred yards away
+the river slipped silently to the distant blue Superior, escaping
+between the slanting stone-filled cribs which held back the logs.
+Down the south and west the huge thunderheads gathered and flashed
+and grumbled, as they had done every afternoon for days previous.
+
+"Queer thing," commented Hamilton finally, "these cold streaks in
+the air.  They are just as distinct as though they had partitions
+around them."
+
+"Queer climate anyway," agreed Carpenter.
+
+Excepting always for the mill, the little settlement appeared asleep.
+The main booms were quite deserted.  Not a single figure, armed with
+its picturesque pike-pole, loomed athwart the distance.  After awhile
+Hamilton noticed something.
+
+"Look here, Carpenter," said he, "what's happening out there?  Have
+some of your confounded logs SUNK, or what?  There don't seem to be
+near so many of them somehow."
+
+"No, it isn't that," proffered Carpenter after a moment's scrutiny,
+"there are just as many logs, but they are getting separated a
+little so you can see the open water between them."
+
+"Guess you're right.  Say, look here, I believe that the river is
+rising!"
+
+"Nonsense, we haven't had any rain."
+
+"She's rising just the same.  I'll tell you how I know; you see
+that spile over there near the left-hand crib?  Well, I sat on the
+boom this morning watching the crew, and I whittled the spile with
+my knife--you can see the marks from here.  I cut the thing about
+two feet above the water.  Look at it now."
+
+"She's pretty near the water line, that's right," admitted
+Carpenter.
+
+"I should think that might make the boys hot," commented Hamilton.
+"If they'd known this was coming, they needn't have hustled so to
+get the drive down.
+
+"That's so," Wallace agreed.
+
+About an hour later the younger man in his turn made a discovery.
+
+"She's been rising right along," he submitted.  "Your marks are
+nearer the water, and, do you know, I believe the logs are beginning
+to feel it.  See, they've closed up the little openings between them,
+and they are beginning to crowd down to the lower end of the pond."
+
+"I don't know anything about this business," hazarded the journalist,
+"but by the mere look of the thing I should think there was a good
+deal of pressure on that same lower end.  By Jove, look there!  See
+those logs up-end?  I believe you're going to have a jam right here
+in your own booms!"
+
+"I don't know," hesitated Wallace,  "I never heard of its happening."
+
+"You'd better let someone know."
+
+"I hate to bother Harry or any of the rivermen.  I'll just step down
+to the mill.  Mason--he's our mill foreman--he'll know."
+
+Mason came to the edge of the high trestle and took one look.
+
+"Jumping fish-hooks!" he cried.  "Why, the river's up six inches
+and still a comin'!  Here you, Tom!" he called to one of the yard
+hands, "you tell Solly to get steam on that tug double quick, and
+have Dave hustle together his driver crew."
+
+"What you going to do?" asked Wallace.
+
+"I got to strengthen the booms," explained the mill foreman.  "We'll
+drive some piles across between the cribs."
+
+"Is there any danger?"
+
+"Oh, no, the river would have to rise a good deal higher than she
+is now to make current enough to hurt.  They've had a hard rain up
+above.  This will go down in a few hours."
+
+After a time the tug puffed up to the booms, escorting the pile
+driver.  The latter towed a little raft of long sharpened piles,
+which it at once began to drive in such positions as would most
+effectually strengthen the booms.  In the meantime the thunder-
+heads had slyly climbed the heavens, so that a sudden deluge of
+rain surprised the workmen.  For an hour it poured down in torrents;
+then settled to a steady gray beat.  Immediately the aspect had
+changed.  The distant rise of land was veiled; the brown expanse
+of logs became slippery and glistening; the river below the booms
+was picked into staccato points by the drops; distant Superior
+turned lead color and seemed to tumble strangely athwart the horizon.
+
+Solly, the tug captain, looked at his mooring hawsers and then at
+the nearest crib.
+
+"She's riz two inches in th' las' two hours," he announced, "and
+she's runnin' like a mill race."  Solly was a typical north-country
+tug captain, short and broad, with a brown, clear face, and the
+steadiest and calmest of steel-blue eyes.  "When she begins to feel
+th' pressure behind," he went on, "there's goin' to be trouble."
+
+Towards dusk she began to feel that pressure.  Through the rainy
+twilight the logs could be seen raising their ghostly arms of
+protest.  Slowly, without tumult, the jam formed.  In the van the
+logs crossed silently; in the rear they pressed in, were sucked
+under in the swift water, and came to rest at the bottom of the
+river.  The current of the river began to protest, pressing its
+hydraulics through the narrowing crevices.  The situation demanded
+attention.
+
+A breeze began to pull off shore in the body of rain.  Little by
+little it increased, sending the water by in gusts, ruffling the
+already hurrying river into greater haste, raising far from the
+shore dimly perceived white-caps.  Between the roaring of the wind,
+the dash of rain, and the rush of the stream, men had to shout to
+make themselves heard.
+
+"Guess you'd better rout out the boss," screamed Solly to Wallace
+Carpenter; "this damn water's comin' up an inch an hour right
+along.  When she backs up once, she'll push this jam out sure."
+
+Wallace ran to the boarding house and roused his partner from a
+heavy sleep.  The latter understood the situation at a word.  While
+dressing, he explained to the younger man wherein lay the danger.
+
+"If the jam breaks once," said he, "nothing top of earth can prevent
+it from going out into the Lake, and there it'll scatter, Heaven
+knows where.  Once scattered, it is practically a total loss.  The
+salvage wouldn't pay the price of the lumber."
+
+They felt blindly through the rain in the direction of the lights
+on the tug and pile-driver.  Shearer, the water dripping from his
+flaxen mustache, joined them like a shadow.
+
+"I heard you come in," he explained to Carpenter.  At the river he
+announced his opinion.  "We can hold her all right," he assured
+them.  "It'll take a few more piles, but by morning the storm'll
+be over, and she'll begin to go down again."
+
+The three picked their way over the creaking, swaying timber.  But
+when they reached the pile-driver, they found trouble afoot.  The
+crew had mutinied, and refused longer to drive piles under the face
+of the jam.
+
+"If she breaks loose, she's going to bury us," said they.
+
+"She won't break," snapped Shearer, "get to work."
+
+"It's dangerous," they objected sullenly.
+
+"By God, you get off this driver," shouted Solly.  "Go over and lie
+down in a ten-acre lot, and see if you feel safe there!"
+
+He drove them ashore with a storm of profanity and a multitude of
+kicks, his steel-blue eyes blazing.
+
+"There's nothing for it but to get the boys out again," said Tim;
+"I kinder hate to do it."
+
+But when the Fighting Forty, half asleep but dauntless, took charge
+of the driver, a catastrophe made itself known.  One of the ejected
+men had tripped the lifting chain of the hammer after another had
+knocked away the heavy preventing block, and so the hammer had fallen
+into the river and was lost.  None other was to be had.  The pile
+driver was useless.
+
+A dozen men were at once despatched for cables, chains, and wire
+ropes from the supply at the warehouse.
+
+"I'd like to have those whelps here," cried Shearer,  "I'd throw
+them under the jam."
+
+"It's part of the same trick," said Thorpe grimly; "those fellows
+have their men everywhere among us.  I don't know whom to trust."
+
+"You think it's Morrison & Daly?" queried Carpenter astonished.
+
+"Think?  I know it.  They know as well as you or I that if we save
+these logs, we'll win out in the stock exchange; and they're not
+such fools as to let us save them if it can be helped.  I have a
+score to settle with those fellows; and when I get through with
+this thing I'll settle it all right."
+
+"What are you going to do now?"
+
+"The only thing there is to be done.  We'll string heavy booms,
+chained together, between the cribs, and then trust to heaven
+they'll hold.  I think we can hold the jam.  The water will begin
+to flow over the bank before long, so there won't be much increase
+of pressure over what we have now; and as there won't be any shock
+to withstand, I think our heavy booms will do the business."
+
+He turned to direct the boring of some long boom logs in preparation
+for the chains.  Suddenly he whirled again to Wallace with so strange
+an expression in his face that the young man almost cried out.  The
+uncertain light of the lanterns showed dimly the streaks of rain
+across his countenance, and, his eye flared with a look almost of
+panic.
+
+"I never thought of it!" he said in a low voice.  "Fool that I
+am!  I don't see how I missed it.  Wallace, don't you see what those
+devils will do next?"
+
+"No, what do you mean?" gasped the younger man.
+
+"There are twelve million feet of logs up river in Sadler & Smith's
+drive.  Don't you see what they'll do?"
+
+"No, I don't believe---"
+
+"Just as soon as they find out that the river is booming, and that
+we are going to have a hard time to hold our jam, they'll let loose
+those twelve million on us.  They'll break the jam, or dynamite it,
+or something.  And let me tell you, that a very few logs hitting the
+tail of our jam will start the whole shooting match so that no power
+on earth can stop it."
+
+"I don't imagine they'd think of doing that---" began Wallace by way
+of assurance.
+
+"Think of it!  You don't know them.  They've thought of everything.
+You don't know that man Daly.  Ask Tim, he'll tell you."
+
+"Well, the---"
+
+"I've got to send a man up there right away.  Perhaps we can get
+there in time to head them off.  They have to send their man over--
+By the way," he queried, struck with a new idea, "how long have you
+been driving piles?"
+
+"Since about three o'clock."
+
+"Six hours," computed Thorpe.  "I wish you'd come for me sooner."
+
+He cast his eye rapidly over the men.
+
+"I don't know just who to send.  There isn't a good enough woodsman
+in the lot to make Siscoe Falls through the woods a night like this.
+The river trail is too long; and a cut through the woods is blind.
+Andrews is the only man I know of who could do it, but I think Billy
+Mason said Andrews had gone up on the Gunther track to run lines.
+Come on; we'll see."
+
+With infinite difficulty and caution, they reached the shore.
+Across the gleaming logs shone dimly the lanterns at the scene
+of work, ghostly through the rain.  Beyond, on either side, lay
+impenetrable drenched darkness, racked by the wind.
+
+"I wouldn't want to tackle it," panted Thorpe.  "If it wasn't for
+that cursed tote road between Sadler's and Daly's, I wouldn't
+worry.  It's just too EASY for them."
+
+Behind them the jam cracked and shrieked and groaned.  Occasionally
+was heard, beneath the sharper noises, a dull BOOM, as one of the
+heavy timbers forced by the pressure from its resting place, shot
+into the air, and fell back on the bristling surface.
+
+Andrews had left that morning.
+
+"Tim Shearer might do it," suggested Thorpe, "but I hate to spare
+him."
+
+He picked his rifle from its rack and thrust the magazine full of
+cartridges.
+
+"Come on, Wallace," said he, "we'll hunt him up."
+
+They stepped again into the shriek and roar of the storm, bending
+their heads to its power, but indifferent in the already drenched
+condition of their clothing, to the rain.  The saw-dust street was
+saturated like a sponge.  They could feel the quick water rise about
+the pressure at their feet.  From the invisible houses they heard
+a steady monotone of flowing from the roofs.  Far ahead, dim in the
+mist, sprayed the light of lanterns.
+
+Suddenly Thorpe felt a touch on his arm.  Faintly he perceived at
+his elbow the high lights of a face from which the water streamed.
+
+"Injin Charley!" he cried, "the very man!"
+
+
+
+Chapter LIV
+
+
+Rapidly Thorpe explained what was to be done, and thrust his rifle
+into the Indian's hands.  The latter listened in silence and
+stolidity, then turned, and without a word departed swiftly in the
+darkness.  The two white men stood a minute attentive.  Nothing was
+to be heard but the steady beat of rain and the roaring of the wind.
+
+Near the bank of the river they encountered a man, visible only as
+an uncertain black outline against the glow of the lanterns beyond.
+Thorpe, stopping him, found Big Junko.
+
+"This is no time to quit," said Thorpe, sharply.
+
+"I ain't quittin'," replied Big Junko.
+
+"Where are you going, then?"
+
+Junko was partially and stammeringly unresponsive.
+
+"Looks bad," commented Thorpe.  "You'd better get back to your
+job."
+
+"Yes," agreed Junko helplessly.  In the momentary slack tide of
+work, the giant had conceived the idea of searching out the driver
+crew for purposes of pugilistic vengeance.  Thorpe's suspicions
+stung him, but his simple mind could see no direct way to
+explanation.
+
+All night long in the chill of a spring rain and windstorm the
+Fighting Forty and certain of the mill crew gave themselves to the
+labor of connecting the slanting stone cribs so strongly, by means
+of heavy timbers chained end to end, that the pressure of a break
+in the jam might not sweep aside the defenses.  Wallace Carpenter,
+Shorty, the chore-boy, and Anderson, the barn-boss, picked a
+dangerous passage back and forth carrying pails of red-hot coffee
+which Mrs. Hathaway constantly prepared.  The cold water numbed
+the men's hands.  With difficulty could they manipulate the heavy
+chains through the auger holes; with pain they twisted knots, bored
+holes.  They did not complain.  Behind them the jam quivered,
+perilously near the bursting point.  From it shrieked aloud the
+demons of pressure.  Steadily the river rose, an inch an hour.
+The key might snap at any given moment,they could not tell,--and
+with the rush they knew very well that themselves, the tug, and the
+disabled piledriver would be swept from existence.  The worst of it
+was that the blackness shrouded their experience into uselessness;
+they were utterly unable to tell by the ordinary visual symptoms
+how near the jam might be to collapse.
+
+However, they persisted, as the old-time riverman always does, so
+that when dawn appeared the barrier was continuous and assured.
+Although the pressure of the river had already forced the logs
+against the defenses, the latter held the strain well.
+
+The storm had settled into its gait.  Overhead the sky was filled
+with gray, beneath which darker scuds flew across the zenith before
+a howling southwest wind.  Out in the clear river one could hardly
+stand upright against the gusts.  In the fan of many directions
+furious squalls swept over the open water below the booms, and an
+eager boiling current rushed to the lake.
+
+Thorpe now gave orders that the tug and driver should take shelter.
+A few moments later he expressed himself as satisfied.  The dripping
+crew, their harsh faces gray in the half-light, picked their way to
+the shore.
+
+In the darkness of that long night's work no man knew his neighbor.
+Men from the river, men from the mill, men from the yard all worked
+side by side.  Thus no one noticed especially a tall, slender, but
+well-knit individual dressed in a faded mackinaw and a limp slouch
+hat which he wore pulled over his eyes.  This young fellow occupied
+himself with the chains.  Against the racing current the crew held
+the ends of the heavy booms, while he fastened them together.  He
+worked well, but seemed slow.  Three times Shearer hustled him on
+after the others had finished, examining closely the work that had
+been done.  On the third occasion he shrugged his shoulder somewhat
+impatiently.
+
+The men straggled to shore, the young fellow just described
+bringing up the rear.  He walked as though tired out, hanging his
+head and dragging his feet.  When, however, the boarding-house door
+had closed on the last of those who preceded him, and the town lay
+deserted in the dawn, he suddenly became transformed.  Casting a
+keen glance right and left to be sure of his opportunity, he turned
+and hurried recklessly back over the logs to the center booms.
+There he knelt and busied himself with the chains.
+
+In his zigzag progression over the jam he so blended with the
+morning shadows as to seem one of them, and he would have escaped
+quite unnoticed had not a sudden shifting of the logs under his
+feet compelled him to rise for a moment to his full height.  So
+Wallace Carpenter, passing from his bedroom, along the porch, to
+the dining room, became aware of the man on the logs.
+
+His first thought was that something demanding instant attention
+had happened to the boom.  He therefore ran at once to the man's
+assistance, ready to help him personally or to call other aid as
+the exigency demanded.  Owing to the precarious nature of the
+passage, he could not see beyond his feet until very close to the
+workman.  Then he looked up to find the man, squatted on the boom,
+contemplating him sardonically.
+
+"Dyer!" he exclaimed
+
+"Right, my son," said the other coolly.
+
+"What are you doing?"
+
+"If you want to know, I am filing this chain."
+
+Wallace made one step forward and so became aware that at last
+firearms were taking a part in this desperate game.
+
+"You stand still," commanded Dyer from behind the revolver.  "It's
+unfortunate for you that you happened along, because now you'll have
+to come with me till this little row is over.  You won't have to stay
+long; your logs'll go out in an hour.  I'll just trouble you to go
+into the brush with me for a while."
+
+The scaler picked his file from beside the weakened link.
+
+"What have you against us, anyway, Dyer?" asked Wallace.  His quick
+mind had conceived a plan.  At the moment, he was standing near the
+outermost edge of the jam, but now as he spoke he stepped quietly to
+the boom log.
+
+Dyer's black eyes gleamed at him suspiciously, but the movement
+appeared wholly natural in view of the return to shore.
+
+"Nothing," he replied.  "I didn't like your gang particularly, but
+that's nothing."
+
+"Why do you take such nervy chances to injure us?" queried Carpenter.
+
+"Because there's something in it," snapped the scaler.  "Now about
+face; mosey!"
+
+Like a flash Wallace wheeled and dropped into the river, swimming
+as fast as possible below water before his breath should give out.
+The swift current hurried him away.  When at last he rose for air,
+the spit of Dyer's pistol caused him no uneasiness.  A moment later
+he struck out boldly for shore.
+
+What Dyer's ultimate plan might be, he could not guess.  He had
+stated confidently that the jam would break "in an hour."  He might
+intend to start it with dynamite.  Wallace dragged himself from the
+water and commenced breathlessly to run toward the boarding-house.
+
+Dyer had already reached the shore.  Wallace raised what was left
+of his voice in a despairing shout.  The scaler mockingly waved
+his hat, then turned and ran swiftly and easily toward the shelter
+of the woods.  At their border he paused again to bow in derision.
+Carpenter's cry brought men to the boarding-house door.  From the
+shadows of the forest two vivid flashes cut the dusk.  Dyer
+staggered, turned completely about, seemed partially to recover,
+and disappeared.  An instant later, across the open space where the
+scaler had stood, with rifle a-trail, the Indian leaped in pursuit.
+
+
+
+Chapter LV
+
+
+"What is it?"  "What's the matter?"  "What's happened?" burst on
+Wallace in a volley.
+
+"It's Dyer," gasped the young man.  "I found him on the boom!  He
+held me up with a gun while he filed the boom chains between the
+center piers.  They're just ready to go.  I got away by diving.
+Hurry and put in a new chain; you haven't much time!"
+
+"He's a gone-er now," interjected Solly grimly.--"Charley is on his
+trail--and he is hit."
+
+Thorpe's intelligence leaped promptly to the practical question.
+
+"Injin Charley, where'd he come from?  I sent him up Sadler &
+Smith's.  It's twenty miles, even through the woods."
+
+As though by way of colossal answer the whole surface of the jam
+moved inward and upward, thrusting the logs bristling against the
+horizon.
+
+"She's going to break!" shouted Thorpe, starting on a run towards
+the river.  "A chain, quick!"
+
+The men followed, strung high with excitement.  Hamilton, the
+journalist, paused long enough to glance up-stream.  Then he, too,
+ran after them, screaming that the river above was full of logs.  By
+that they all knew that Injin Charley's mission had failed, and that
+something under ten million feet of logs were racing down the river
+like so many battering rams.
+
+At the boom the great jam was already a-tremble with eagerness to
+spring.  Indeed a miracle alone seemed to hold the timbers in their
+place.
+
+"It's death, certain death, to go out on that boom," muttered
+Billy Mason.
+
+Tim Shearer stepped forward coolly, ready as always to assume the
+perilous duty.  He was thrust back by Thorpe, who seized the chain,
+cold-shut and hammer which Scotty Parsons brought, and ran lightly
+out over the booms, shouting,
+
+"Back! back!  Don't follow me, on your lives!  Keep 'em back, Tim!"
+
+The swift water boiled from under the booms.  BANG! SMASH! BANG!
+crashed the logs, a mile upstream, but plainly audible above the
+waters and the wind.  Thorpe knelt, dropped the cold-shut through on
+either side of the weakened link, and prepared to close it with his
+hammer.  He intended further to strengthen the connection with the
+other chain.
+
+"Lem' me hold her for you.  You can't close her alone," said an
+unexpected voice next his elbow.
+
+Thorpe looked up in surprise and anger.  Over him leaned Big Junko.
+The men had been unable to prevent his following.  Animated by the
+blind devotion of the animal for its master, and further stung to
+action by that master's doubt of his fidelity, the giant had
+followed to assist as he might.
+
+"You damned fool," cried Thorpe exasperated, then held the hammer
+to him, "strike while I keep the chain underneath," he commanded.
+
+Big Junko leaned forward to obey, kicking strongly his caulks into
+the barked surface of the boom log.  The spikes, worn blunt by the
+river work already accomplished, failed to grip.  Big Junko slipped,
+caught himself by an effort, overbalanced in the other direction,
+and fell into the stream.  The current at once swept him away, but
+fortunately in such a direction that he was enabled to catch the
+slanting end of a "dead head" log whose lower end was jammed in the
+crib.  The dead head was slippery, the current strong; Big Junko had
+no crevice by which to assure his hold.  In another moment he would
+be torn away.
+
+"Let go and swim!" shouted Thorpe.
+
+"I can't swim," replied Junko in so low a voice as to be scarcely
+audible.
+
+For a moment Thorpe stared at him.
+
+"Tell Carrie," said Big Junko.
+
+Then there beneath the swirling gray sky, under the frowning jam,
+in the midst of flood waters, Thorpe had his second great Moment of
+Decision.  He did not pause to weigh reasons or chances, to discuss
+with himself expediency, or the moralities of failure.  His actions
+were foreordained, mechanical.  All at once the great forces which
+the winter had been bringing to power, crystallized into something
+bigger than himself or his ideas.  The trail lay before him; there
+was no choice.
+
+Now clearly, with no shadow of doubt, he took the other view: There
+could be nothing better than Love.  Men, their works, their deeds
+were little things.  Success was a little thing; the opinion of men
+a little thing.  Instantly he felt the truth of it.
+
+And here was Love in danger.  That it held its moment's habitation
+in clay of the coarser mould had nothing to do with the great
+elemental truth of it.  For the first time in his life Thorpe
+felt the full crushing power of an abstraction.  Without thought,
+instinctively, he threw before the necessity of the moment all that
+was lesser.  It was the triumph of what was real in the man over
+that which environment, alienation, difficulties had raised up
+within him.
+
+At Big Junko's words, Thorpe raised his hammer and with one mighty
+blow severed the chains which bound the ends of the booms across
+the opening.  The free end of one of the poles immediately swung
+down with the current in the direction of Big Junko.  Thorpe like
+a cat ran to the end of the boom, seized the giant by the collar,
+and dragged him through the water to safety.
+
+"Run!" he shouted.  "Run for your life!"
+
+The two started desperately back, skirting the edge of the logs
+which now the very seconds alone seemed to hold back.  They were
+drenched and blinded with spray, deafened with the crash of timbers
+settling to the leap.  The men on shore could no longer see them for
+the smother.  The great crush of logs had actually begun its first
+majestic sliding motion when at last they emerged to safety.
+
+At first a few of the loose timbers found the opening, slipping
+quietly through with the current; then more; finally the front of
+the jam dove forward; and an instant later the smooth, swift motion
+had gained its impetus and was sweeping the entire drive down
+through the gap.
+
+Rank after rank, like soldiers charging, they ran.  The great
+fierce wind caught them up ahead of the current.  In a moment the
+open river was full of logs jostling eagerly onward.  Then suddenly,
+far out above the uneven tossing skyline of Superior, the strange
+northern "loom," or mirage, threw the specters of thousands of
+restless timbers rising and falling on the bosom of the lake.
+
+
+
+Chapter LVI
+
+
+They stood and watched them go.
+
+"Oh, the great man!  Oh, the great man! murmured the writer,
+fascinated.
+
+The grandeur of the sacrifice had struck them dumb.  They did not
+understand the motives beneath it all; but the fact was patent.
+Big Junko broke down and sobbed.
+
+After a time the stream of logs through the gap slackened.  In a
+moment more, save for the inevitably stranded few, the booms were
+empty.  A deep sigh went up from the attentive multitude.
+
+"She's GONE!" said one man, with the emphasis of a novel discovery;
+and groaned.
+
+Then the awe broke from about their minds, and they spoke many
+opinions and speculations.  Thorpe had disappeared.  They respected
+his emotion and did not follow him.
+
+"It was just plain damn foolishness;--but it was great!" said
+Shearer.  "That no-account jackass of a Big Junko ain't worth as
+much per thousand feet as good white pine."
+
+Then they noticed a group of men gathering about the office steps,
+and on it someone talking.  Collins, the bookkeeper, was making a
+speech.
+
+Collins was a little hatchet-faced man, with straight, lank hair,
+nearsighted eyes, a timid, order-loving disposition, and a great
+suitability for his profession.  He was accurate, unemotional, and
+valuable.  All his actions were as dry as the saw-dust in the burner.
+No one had ever seen him excited.  But he was human; and now his
+knowledge of the Company's affairs showed him the dramatic contrast.
+HE KNEW!  He knew that the property of the firm had been mortgaged
+to the last dollar in order to assist expansion, so that not another
+cent could be borrowed to tide over present difficulty.  He knew that
+the notes for sixty thousand dollars covering the loan to Wallace
+Carpenter came due in three months; he knew from the long table of
+statistics which he was eternally preparing and comparing that the
+season's cut should have netted a profit of two hundred thousand
+dollars--enough to pay the interest on the mortgages, to take up the
+notes, and to furnish a working capital for the ensuing year.  These
+things he knew in the strange concrete arithmetical manner of the
+routine bookkeeper.  Other men saw a desperate phase of firm rivalry;
+he saw a struggle to the uttermost.  Other men cheered a rescue: he
+thrilled over the magnificent gesture of the Gambler scattering his
+stake in largesse to Death.
+
+It was the simple turning of the hand from full breathed prosperity
+to lifeless failure.
+
+His view was the inverse of his master's.  To Thorpe it had suddenly
+become a very little thing in contrast to the great, sweet elemental
+truth that the dream girl had enunciated.  To Collins the affair was
+miles vaster than the widest scope of his own narrow life.
+
+The firm could not take up its notes when they came due; it could
+not pay the interest on the mortgages, which would now be foreclosed;
+it could not even pay in full the men who had worked for it--that
+would come under a court's adjudication.
+
+He had therefore watched Thorpe's desperate sally to mend the
+weakened chain, in all the suspense of a man whose entire universe
+is in the keeping of the chance moment.  It must be remembered that
+at bottom, below the outer consciousness, Thorpe's final decision had
+already grown to maturity.  On the other hand, no other thought than
+that of accomplishment had even entered the little bookkeeper's head.
+The rescue and all that it had meant had hit him like a stroke of
+apoplexy, and his thin emotions had curdled to hysteria.  Full of
+the idea he appeared before the men.
+
+With rapid, almost incoherent speech he poured it out to them.
+Professional caution and secrecy were forgotten.  Wallace Carpenter
+attempted to push through the ring for the purpose of stopping him.
+A gigantic riverman kindly but firmly held him back.
+
+"I guess it's just as well we hears this," said the latter.
+
+It all came out--the loan to Carpenter, with a hint at the motive:
+the machinations of the rival firm on the Board of Trade; the
+notes, the mortgages, the necessity of a big season's cut; the
+reasons the rival firm had for wishing to prevent that cut from
+arriving at the market; the desperate and varied means they had
+employed.  The men listened silent.  Hamilton, his eyes glowing
+like coals, drank in every word.  Here was the master motive he
+had sought; here was the story great to his hand!
+
+"That's what we ought to get," cried Collins, almost weeping, "and
+now we've gone and bust, just because that infernal river-hog had
+to fall off a boom.  By God, it's a shame!  Those scalawags have
+done us after all!"
+
+Out from the shadows of the woods stole Injin Charley.  The whole
+bearing and aspect of the man had changed.  His eye gleamed with a
+distant farseeing fire of its own, which took no account of anything
+but some remote vision.  He stole along almost furtively, but with
+a proud upright carriage of his neck, a backward tilt of his fine
+head, a distention of his nostrils that lent to his appearance a
+panther-like pride and stealthiness.  No one saw him.  Suddenly he
+broke through the group and mounted the steps beside Collins.
+
+"The enemy of my brother is gone," said he simply in his native
+tongue, and with a sudden gesture held out before them--a scalp.
+
+The medieval barbarity of the thing appalled them for a moment.  The
+days of scalping were long since past, had been closed away between
+the pages of forgotten histories, and yet here again before them
+was the thing in all its living horror.  Then a growl arose.  The
+human animal had tasted blood.
+
+All at once like wine their wrongs mounted to their heads.  They
+remembered their dead comrades.  They remembered the heart-breaking
+days and nights of toil they had endured on account of this man and
+his associates.  They remembered the words of Collins, the little
+bookkeeper.  They hated.  They shook their fists across the skies.
+They turned and with one accord struck back for the railroad right-
+of-way which led to Shingleville, the town controlled by Morrison
+& Daly.
+
+The railroad lay for a mile straight through a thick tamarack swamp,
+then over a nearly treeless cranberry plain.  The tamarack was a
+screen between the two towns.  When half-way through the swamp,
+Red Jacket stopped, removed his coat, ripped the lining from it,
+and began to fashion a rude mask.
+
+"Just as well they don't recognize us," said he.
+
+"Somebody in town will give us away," suggested Shorty, the chore-boy.
+
+"No, they won't; they're all here," assured Kerlie.
+
+It was true.  Except for the women and children, who were not yet
+about, the entire village had assembled.  Even old Vanderhoof, the
+fire-watcher of the yard, hobbled along breathlessly on his rheumatic
+legs.  In a moment the masks were fitted.  In a moment more the
+little band had emerged from the shelter of the swamp, and so came
+into full view of its objective point.
+
+Shingleville consisted of a big mill; the yards, now nearly empty
+of lumber; the large frame boarding-house; the office; the stable;
+a store; two saloons; and a dozen dwellings.  The party at once
+fixed its eyes on this collection of buildings, and trudged on down
+the right-of-way with unhastening grimness.
+
+Their approach was not unobserved.  Daly saw them; and Baker, his
+foreman, saw them.  The two at once went forth to organize opposition.
+When the attacking party reached the mill-yard, it found the boss
+and the foreman standing alone on the saw-dust, revolvers drawn.
+
+Daly traced a line with his toe.
+
+"The first man that crosses that line gets it," said he.
+
+They knew he meant what he said.  An instant's pause ensued, while
+the big man and the little faced a mob.  Daly's rivermen were still
+on drive.  He knew the mill men too well to depend on them.  Truth
+to tell, the possibility of such a raid as this had not occurred to
+him; for the simple reason that he did not anticipate the discovery
+of his complicity with the forces of nature.  Skillfully carried out,
+the plan was a good one.  No one need know of the weakened link, and
+it was the most natural thing in the world that Sadler & Smith's
+drive should go out with the increase of water.
+
+The men grouped swiftly and silently on the other side of the
+sawdust line.  The pause did not mean that Daly's defense was good.
+I have known of a crew of striking mill men being so bluffed down,
+but not such men as these.
+
+"Do you know what's going to happen to you?" said a voice from the
+group.  The speaker was Radway, but the contractor kept himself well
+in the background.  "We're going to burn your mill; we're going to
+burn your yards; we're going to burn your whole shooting match, you
+low-lived whelp!"
+
+"Yes, and we're going to string you to your own trestle!" growled
+another voice harshly.
+
+"Dyer!" said Injin Charley, simply, shaking the wet scalp arm's
+length towards the lumbermen.
+
+At this grim interruption a silence fell.  The owner paled slightly;
+his foreman chewed a nonchalant straw.  Down the still and deserted
+street crossed and recrossed the subtle occult influences of a half-
+hundred concealed watchers.  Daly and his subordinate were very much
+alone, and very much in danger.  Their last hour had come; and they
+knew it.
+
+With the recognition of the fact, they immediately raised their
+weapons in the resolve to do as much damage as possible before
+being overpowered.
+
+Then suddenly, full in the back, a heavy stream of water knocked
+them completely off their feet, rolled them over and over on the
+wet sawdust, and finally jammed them both against the trestle,
+where it held them, kicking and gasping for breath, in a choking
+cataract of water.  The pistols flew harmlessly into the air.  For
+an instant the Fighting Forty stared in paralyzed astonishment.
+Then a tremendous roar of laughter saluted this easy vanquishment
+of a formidable enemy.
+
+Daly and Baker were pounced upon and captured.  There was no
+resistance.  They were too nearly strangled for that.  Little
+Solly and old Vanderhoof turned off the water in the fire hydrant
+and disconnected the hose they had so effectively employed.
+
+"There, damn you!" said Rollway Charley, jerking the millman to
+his feet.  "How do YOU like too much water? hey?"
+
+The unexpected comedy changed the party's mood.
+
+It was no longer a question of killing.  A number broke into the
+store, and shortly emerged, bearing pails of kerosene with which
+they deluged the slabs on the windward side of the mill.  The flames
+caught the structure instantly.  A thousand sparks, borne by the
+off-shore breeze, fastened like so many stinging insects on the
+lumber in the yard.
+
+It burned as dried balsam thrown on a camp fire.  The heat of it
+drove the onlookers far back in the village, where in silence they
+watched the destruction.  From behind locked doors the inhabitants
+watched with them.
+
+The billow of white smoke filled the northern sky.  A whirl of gray
+wood ashes, light as air, floated on and ever on over Superior.  The
+site of the mill, the squares where the piles of lumber had stood,
+glowed incandescence over which already a white film was forming.
+
+Daly and his man were slapped and cuffed hither and thither at the
+men's will.  Their faces bled, their bodies ached as one bruise.
+
+"That squares us," said the men.  "If we can't cut this year,
+neither kin you.  It's up to you now!"
+
+Then, like a destroying horde of locusts, they gutted the office
+and the store, smashing what they could not carry to the fire.  The
+dwellings and saloons they did not disturb.  Finally, about noon,
+they kicked their two prisoners into the river, and took their way
+stragglingly back along the right-of-way.
+
+"I surmise we took that town apart SOME!" remarked Shorty with
+satisfaction.
+
+"I should rise to remark," replied Kerlie.  Big Junko said nothing,
+but his cavernous little animal eyes glowed with satisfaction.  He
+had been the first to lay hands on Daly; he had helped to carry the
+petroleum; he had struck the first match; he had even administered
+the final kick.
+
+At the boarding-house they found Wallace Carpenter and Hamilton
+seated on the veranda.  It was now afternoon.  The wind had abated
+somewhat, and the sun was struggling with the still flying scuds.
+
+"Hello, boys," said Wallace, "been for a little walk in the woods?"
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Jack Hyland, "we---"
+
+"I'd rather not hear," interrupted Wallace.  "There's quite a fire
+over east.  I suppose you haven't noticed it."
+
+Hyland looked gravely eastward.
+
+"Sure 'nough!" said he.
+
+"Better get some grub," suggested Wallace.
+
+After the men had gone in, he turned to the journalist.
+
+"Hamilton," he began, "write all you know about the drive, and
+the break, and the rescue, but as to the burning of the mill---"
+
+The other held out his hand.
+
+"Good," said Wallace offering his own.
+
+And that was as far as the famous Shingleville raid ever got.  Daly
+did his best to collect even circumstantial evidence against the
+participants, but in vain.  He could not even get anyone to say that
+a single member of the village of Carpenter had absented himself
+from town that morning.  This might have been from loyalty, or it
+might have been from fear of the vengeance the Fighting Forty would
+surely visit on a traitor.  Probably it was a combination of both.
+The fact remains, however, that Daly never knew surely of but one
+man implicated in the destruction of his plant.  That man was Injin
+Charley, but Injin Charley promptly disappeared.
+
+After an interval, Tim Shearer, Radway and Kerlie came out again.
+
+"Where's the boss?" asked Shearer.
+
+"I don't know, Tim," replied Wallace seriously.
+
+"I've looked everywhere.  He's gone.  He must have been all cut up.
+I think he went out in the woods to get over it.  I am not worrying.
+Harry has lots of sense.  He'll come in about dark."
+
+"Sure!" said Tim.
+
+"How about the boy's stakes?" queried Radway.  "I hear this is a
+bad smash for the firm."
+
+"We'll see that the men get their wages all right," replied
+Carpenter, a little disappointed that such a question should be
+asked at such a time.
+
+"All right," rejoined the contractor.  "We're all going to need
+our money this summer."
+
+
+
+Chapter LVII
+
+
+Thorpe walked through the silent group of men without seeing
+them.  He had no thought for what he had done, but for the
+triumphant discovery he had made in spite of himself.  This he
+saw at once as something to glory in and as a duty to be fulfilled.
+
+It was then about six o'clock in the morning.  Thorpe passed the
+boarding-house, the store, and the office, to take himself as far
+as the little open shed that served the primitive town as a railway
+station.  There he set the semaphore to flag the east-bound train
+from Duluth.  At six thirty-two, the train happening on time, he
+climbed aboard.  He dropped heavily into a seat and stared straight
+in front of him until the conductor had spoken to him twice.
+
+"Where to, Mr. Thorpe?" he asked.
+
+The latter gazed at him uncomprehendingly.
+
+"Oh! Mackinaw City," he replied at last.
+
+"How're things going up your way?" inquired the conductor by way of
+conversation while he made out the pay-slip.
+
+"Good!" responded Thorpe mechanically.
+
+The act of paying for his fare brought to his consciousness that he
+had but a little over ten dollars with him.  He thrust the change
+back into his pocket, and took up his contemplation of nothing.  The
+river water dripped slowly from his "cork" boots to form a pool on
+the car floor.  The heavy wool of his short driving trousers steamed
+in the car's warmth.  His shoulders dried in a little cloud of vapor.
+He noticed none of these things, but stared ahead, his gaze vacant,
+the bronze of his face set in the lines of a brown study, his strong
+capable hands hanging purposeless between his knees.  The ride to
+Mackinaw City was six hours long, and the train in addition lost some
+ninety minutes; but in all this distance Thorpe never altered his
+pose nor his fixed attitude of attention to some inner voice.
+
+The car-ferry finally landed them on the southern peninsula.  Thorpe
+descended at Mackinaw City to find that the noon train had gone.  He
+ate lunch at the hotel,--borrowed a hundred dollars from the agent
+of Louis Sands, a lumberman of his acquaintance; and seated himself
+rigidly in the little waiting room, there to remain until the nine-
+twenty that night.  When the cars were backed down from the siding,
+he boarded the sleeper.  In the doorway stood a disapproving colored
+porter.
+
+"Yo'll fin' the smokin' cab up fo'wu'd, suh," said the latter, firmly
+barring the way.
+
+"It's generally forward," answered Thorpe.
+
+"This yeah's th' sleepah," protested the functionary.  "You pays
+extry."
+
+"I am aware of it," replied Thorpe curtly.  "Give me a lower."
+
+"Yessah!" acquiesced the darkey, giving way, but still in doubt.  He
+followed Thorpe curiously, peering into the smoking room on him from
+time to time.  A little after twelve his patience gave out.  The
+stolid gloomy man of lower six seemed to intend sitting up all night.
+
+Yo' berth is ready, sah," he delicately suggested.
+
+Thorpe arose obediently, walked to lower six, and, without undressing,
+threw himself on the bed.  Afterwards the porter, in conscientious
+discharge of his duty, looked diligently beneath the seat for boots
+to polish.  Happening to glance up, after fruitless search he
+discovered the boots still adorning the feet of their owner.
+
+"Well, for th' LANDS sake!" ejaculated the scandalized negro, beating
+a hasty retreat.
+
+He was still more scandalized when, the following noon, his strange
+fare brushed by him without bestowing the expected tip.
+
+Thorpe descended at Twelfth Street in Chicago without any very clear
+notion of where he was going.  For a moment he faced the long park-
+like expanse of the lake front, then turned sharp to his left and
+picked his way south up the interminable reaches of Michigan Avenue.
+He did this without any conscious motive--mainly because the reaches
+seemed interminable, and he proved the need of walking.  Block after
+block he clicked along, the caulks of his boots striking fire from
+the pavement.  Some people stared at him a little curiously.  Others
+merely glanced in his direction, attracted more by the expression of
+his face than the peculiarity of his dress.  At that time rivermen
+were not an uncommon sight along the water front.
+
+After an interval he seemed to have left the smoke and dirt behind.
+The street became quieter.  Boarding-houses and tailors' shops
+ceased.  Here and there appeared a bit of lawn, shrubbery, flowers.
+The residences established an uptown crescendo of magnificence.
+Policemen seemed trimmer, better-gloved.  Occasionally he might have
+noticed in front of one of the sandstone piles, a besilvered pair
+champing before a stylish vehicle.  By and by he came to himself
+to find that he was staring at the deep-carved lettering in a stone
+horse-block before a large dwelling.
+
+His mind took the letters in one after the other, perceiving them
+plainly before it accorded them recognition.  Finally he had
+completed the word "Farrad."  He whirled sharp on his heel, mounted
+the broad white stone steps, and rang the bell.
+
+It was answered almost immediately by a cleanshaven, portly and
+dignified man with the most impassive countenance in the world.
+This man looked upon Thorpe with lofty disapproval.
+
+"Is Miss Hilda Farrand at home?" he asked.
+
+"I cannot say," replied the man.  "If you will step to the back door,
+I will ascertain."
+
+"The flowers will do.  Now see that the south room is ready, Annie,"
+floated a voice from within.
+
+Without a word, but with a deadly earnestness, Thorpe reached
+forward, seized the astonished servant by the collar, yanked him
+bodily outside the door, stepped inside, and strode across the hall
+toward a closed portiere whence had come the voice.  The riverman's
+long spikes cut little triangular pieces from the hardwood floor.
+Thorpe did not notice that.  He thrust aside the portiere.
+
+Before him he saw a young and beautiful girl.  She was seated, and
+her lap was filled with flowers.  At his sudden apparition, her
+hands flew to her heart, and her lips slightly parted.  For a second
+the two stood looking at each other, just as nearly a year before
+their eyes had crossed over the old pole trail.
+
+To Thorpe the girl seemed more beautiful than ever.  She exceeded
+even his retrospective dreams of her, for the dream had persistently
+retained something of the quality of idealism which made the vision
+unreal, while the woman before him had become human flesh and blood,
+adorable, to be desired.  The red of this violent unexpected encounter
+rushed to her face, her bosom rose and fell in a fluttering catch
+for breath; but her eyes were steady and inquiring.
+
+Then the butter pounced on Thorpe from behind with the intent to do
+great bodily harm.
+
+"Morris!" commanded Hilda sharply, "what are you doing?"
+
+The man cut short his heroism in confusion.
+
+"You may go," concluded Hilda.
+
+Thorpe stood straight and unwinking by the straight portiere.  After
+a moment he spoke.
+
+"I have come to tell you that you were right and I was wrong,"
+said he steadily.  "You told me there could be nothing better than
+love.  In the pride of my strength I told you this was not so.  I
+was wrong."
+
+He stood for another instant, looking directly at her, then turned
+sharply, and head erect walked from the room.
+
+Before he had reached the outer door the girl was at his side.
+
+"Why are you going?" she asked.
+
+"I have nothing more to say."
+
+"NOTHING?"
+
+"Nothing at all."
+
+She laughed happily to herself.
+
+"But I have--much.  Come back."
+
+They returned to the little morning room, Thorpe's caulked boots
+gouging out the little triangular furrows in the hardwood floor.
+Neither noticed that.  Morris, the butler, emerged from his hiding
+and held up the hands of horror.
+
+"What are you going to do now?" she catechised, facing him in the
+middle of the room.  A long tendril of her beautiful corn-silk
+hair fell across her eyes; her red lips parted in a faint wistful
+smile; beneath the draperies of her loose gown the pure slender
+lines of her figure leaned toward him.
+
+"I am going back," he replied patiently.
+
+"I knew you would come," said she.  "I have been expecting you."
+
+She raised one hand to brush back the tendril of hair, but it was
+a mechanical gesture, one that did not stir even the surface
+consciousness of the strange half-smiling, half-wistful, starry
+gaze with which she watched his face.
+
+"Oh, Harry," she breathed, with a sudden flash of insight, "you
+are a man born to be much misunderstood."
+
+He held himself rigid, but in his veins was creeping a molten fire,
+and the fire was beginning to glow dully in his eye.  Her whole being
+called him.  His heart leaped, his breath came fast, his eyes swam.
+With almost hypnotic fascination the idea obsessed him--to kiss her
+lips, to press the soft body of the young girl, to tumble her hair
+down about her flower face.  He had not come for this.  He tried to
+steady himself, and by an effort that left him weak he succeeded.
+Then a new flood of passion overcame him.  In the later desire was
+nothing of the old humble adoration.  It was elemental, real, almost
+a little savage.  He wanted to seize her so fiercely as to hurt her.
+Something caught his throat, filled his lungs, weakened his knees.
+For a moment it seemed to him that he was going to faint.
+
+And still she stood there before him, saying nothing, leaning
+slightly towards him, her red lips half parted, her eyes fixed
+almost wistfully on his face.
+
+"Go away!" he whispered hoarsely at last.  The voice was not his
+own.  "Go away!  Go away!"
+
+Suddenly she swayed to him.
+
+"Oh, Harry, Harry," she whispered, "must I TELL you?  Don't you SEE?"
+
+The flood broke through him.  He seized her hungrily.  He crushed her
+to him until she gasped; he pressed his lips against hers until she
+all but cried out with the pain of it, he ran his great brown hands
+blindly through her hair until it came down about them both in a
+cloud of spun light.
+
+"Tell me!" he whispered.  "Tell me!"
+
+"Oh! Oh!" she cried.  "Please! What is it?"
+
+"I do not believe it," he murmured savagely.
+
+She drew herself from him with gentle dignity.
+
+"I am not worthy to say it," she said soberly, "but I love you with
+all my heart and soul!"
+
+Then for the first and only time in his life Thorpe fell to weeping,
+while she, understanding, stood by and comforted him.
+
+
+
+Chapter LVIII
+
+
+The few moments of Thorpe's tears eased the emotional strain under
+which, perhaps unconsciously, he had been laboring for nearly a year
+past.  The tenseness of his nerves relaxed.  He was able to look
+on the things about him from a broader standpoint than that of the
+specialist, to front life with saving humor.  The deep breath after
+striving could at last be taken.
+
+In this new attitude there was nothing strenuous, nothing demanding
+haste; only a deep glow of content and happiness.  He savored
+deliberately the joy of a luxurious couch, rich hangings, polished
+floor, subdued light, warmed atmosphere.  He watched with soul-deep
+gratitude the soft girlish curves of Hilda's body, the poise of her
+flower head, the piquant, half-wistful, half-childish set of her red
+lips, the clear starlike glimmer of her dusky eyes.  It was all near
+to him; his.
+
+"Kiss me, dear," he said.
+
+She swayed to him again, deliciously graceful, deliciously
+unselfconscious, trusting, adorable.  Already in the little
+nothingnesses of manner, the trifles of mental and bodily attitude,
+she had assumed that faint trace of the maternal which to the
+observant tells so plainly that a woman has given herself to a man.
+
+She leaned her cheek against her hand, and her hand against his
+shoulder.
+
+"I have been reading a story lately," said she, "that has interested
+me very much.  It was about a man who renounced all he held most dear
+to shield a friend."
+
+"Yes," said Thorpe.
+
+"Then he renounced all his most valuable possessions because a poor
+common man needed the sacrifice."
+
+"Sounds like a medieval story," said he with unconscious humor.
+
+"It happened recently," rejoined Hilda.  "I read it in the papers."
+
+"Well, he blazed a good trail," was Thorpe's sighing comment.
+"Probably he had his chance.  We don't all of us get that.  Things
+go crooked and get tangled up, so we have to do the best we can.  I
+don't believe I'd have done it."
+
+"Oh, you are delicious!" she cried.
+
+After a time she said very humbly: "I want to beg your pardon for
+misunderstanding you and causing you so much suffering.  I was very
+stupid, and didn't see why you could not do as I wanted you to."
+
+"That is nothing to forgive.  I acted like a fool."
+
+"I have known about you," she went on.  "It has all come out in
+the Telegram.  It has been very exciting.  Poor boy, you look tired."
+
+He straightened himself suddenly.  "I have forgotten,--actually
+forgotten," he cried a little bitterly.  "Why, I am a pauper, a
+bankrupt, I---"
+
+"Harry," she interrupted gently, but very firmly, "you must not
+say what you were going to say.  I cannot allow it.  Money came
+between us before.  It must not do so again.  Am I not right, dear?"
+
+She smiled at him with the lips of a child and the eyes of a woman.
+
+"Yes," he agreed after a struggle, "you are right.  But now I must
+begin all over again.  It will be a long time before I shall be able
+to claim you.  I have my way to make."
+
+"Yes," said she diplomatically.
+
+"But you!" he cried suddenly.  "The papers remind me.  How about
+that Morton?"
+
+"What about him?" asked the girl, astonished.  "He is very happily
+engaged."
+
+Thorpe's face slowly filled with blood.
+
+"You'll break the engagement at once," he commanded a little harshly.
+
+"Why should I break the engagement?" demanded Hilda, eying him with
+some alarm.
+
+"I should think it was obvious enough."
+
+"But it isn't," she insisted.  "Why?"
+
+Thorpe was silent--as he always had been in emergencies, and as he
+was destined always to be.  His was not a nature of expression, but
+of action.  A crisis always brought him, like a bull-dog, silently
+to the grip.
+
+Hilda watched him puzzled, with bright eyes, like a squirrel.  Her
+quick brain glanced here and there among the possibilities, seeking
+the explanation.  Already she knew better than to demand it of him.
+
+"You actually don't think he's engaged to ME!" she burst out finally.
+
+"Isn't he?" asked Thorpe.
+
+"Why no, stupid!  He's engaged to Elizabeth Carpenter, Wallace's
+sister.  Now WHERE did you get that silly idea?"
+
+"I saw it in the paper."
+
+"And you believe all you see!  Why didn't you ask Wallace--but of
+course you wouldn't!  Harry, you are the most incoherent dumb old
+brute I ever saw!  I could shake you!  Why don't you say something
+occasionally when it's needed, instead of sitting dumb as a sphinx
+and getting into all sorts of trouble?  But you never will.  I know
+you.  You dear old bear!  You NEED a wife to interpret things for
+you.  You speak a different language from most people."  She said
+this between laughing and crying; between a sense of the ridiculous
+uselessness of withholding a single timely word, and a tender
+pathetic intuition of the suffering such a nature must endure.  In
+the prospect of the future she saw her use.  It gladdened her and
+filled her with a serene happiness possible only to those who feel
+themselves a necessary and integral part in the lives of the ones
+they love.  Dimly she perceived this truth.  Dimly beyond it she
+glimpsed that other great truth of nature, that the human being is
+rarely completely efficient alone, that in obedience to his greater
+use he must take to himself a mate before he can succeed.
+
+Suddenly she jumped to her feet with an exclamation.
+
+"Oh, Harry!  I'd forgotten utterly!" she cried in laughing
+consternation.  "I have a luncheon here at half-past one!  It's
+almost that now.  I must run and dress.  Just look at me; just
+LOOK!  YOU did that!"
+
+"I'll wait here until the confounded thing is over," said Thorpe.
+
+"Oh, no, you won't," replied Hilda decidedly.  "You are going down
+town right now and get something to put on.  Then you are coming
+back here to stay."
+
+Thorpe glanced in surprise at his driver's clothes, and his spiked
+boots.
+
+"Heavens and earth!" he exclaimed, "I should think so!  How am I to
+get out without ruining the floor?"
+
+Hilda laughed and drew aside the portiere.
+
+"Don't you think you have done that pretty well already?" she asked.
+"There, don't look so solemn.  We're not going to be sorry for a
+single thing we've done today, are we?"  She stood close to him
+holding the lapels of his jacket in either hand, searching his face
+wistfully with her fathomless dusky eyes.
+
+"No, sweetheart, we are not," replied Thorpe soberly.
+
+
+
+Chapter LIX
+
+
+Surely it is useless to follow the sequel in detail, to tell how
+Hilda persuaded Thorpe to take her money.  She aroused skillfully
+his fighting blood, induced him to use one fortune to rescue another.
+To a woman such as she this was not a very difficult task in the
+long run.  A few scruples of pride; that was all.
+
+"Do not consider its being mine," she answered to his objections.
+"Remember the lesson we learned so bitterly.  Nothing can be greater
+than love, not even our poor ideals.  You have my love; do not
+disappoint me by refusing so little a thing as my money."
+
+"I hate to do it," he replied; "it doesn't look right."
+
+"You must," she insisted.  "I will not take the position of rich
+wife to a poor man; it is humiliating to both.  I will not marry
+you until you have made your success."
+
+"That is right," said Thorpe heartily.
+
+"Well, then, are you going to be so selfish as to keep me waiting
+while you make an entirely new start, when a little help on my part
+will bring your plans to completion?"
+
+She saw the shadow of assent in his eyes.
+
+"How much do you need?" she asked swiftly.
+
+"I must take up the notes," he explained.  "I must pay the men.  I
+may need something on the stock market.  If I go in on this thing,
+I'm going in for keeps.  I'll get after those fellows who have been
+swindling Wallace.  Say a hundred thousand dollars."
+
+"Why, it's nothing," she cried.
+
+"I'm glad you think so," he replied grimly.
+
+She ran to her dainty escritoire, where she scribbled eagerly for a
+few moments.
+
+"There," she cried, her eyes shining, "there is my check book all
+signed in blank.  I'll see that the money is there."
+
+Thorpe took the book, staring at it with sightless eyes.  Hilda,
+perched on the arm of his chair, watched his face closely, as later
+became her habit of interpretation.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+Thorpe looked up with a pitiful little smile that seemed to beg
+indulgence for what he was about to say.
+
+"I was just thinking, dear.  I used to imagine I was a strong man,
+yet see how little my best efforts amount to.  I have put myself
+into seven years of the hardest labor, working like ten men in
+order to succeed.  I have foreseen all that mortal could foresee.
+I have always thought, and think now, that a man is no man unless
+he works out the sort of success for which he is fitted.  I have
+done fairly well until the crises came.  Then I have been absolutely
+powerless, and if left to myself, I would have failed.  At the times
+when a really strong man would have used effectively the strength he
+had been training, I have fallen back miserably on outer aid.  Three
+times my affairs have become critical.  In the crises I have been
+saved, first by a mere boy; then by an old illiterate man; now by
+a weak woman!"
+
+She heard him through in silence.
+
+"Harry," she said soberly when he had quite finished, "I agree
+with you that God meant the strong man to succeed; that without
+success the man hasn't fulfilled his reason for being.  But, Harry,
+ARE YOU QUITE SURE GOD MEANT HIM TO SUCCEED ALONE?"
+
+The dusk fell through the little room.  Out in the hallway a tall
+clock ticked solemnly.  A noiseless servant appeared in the doorway
+to light the lamps, but was silently motioned away.
+
+"I had not thought of that," said Thorpe at last.
+
+"You men are so selfish," went on Hilda.  "You would take everything
+from us.  Why can't you leave us the poor little privilege of the
+occasional deciding touch, the privilege of succor.  It is all that
+weakness can do for strength."
+
+"And why," she went on after a moment, "why is not that, too, a
+part of a man's success--the gathering about him of people who can
+and will supplement his efforts.  Who was it inspired Wallace
+Carpenter with confidence in an unknown man?  You.  What did it?
+Those very qualities by which you were building your success.  Why
+did John Radway join forces with you?  How does it happen that your
+men are of so high a standard of efficiency?  Why am I willing to
+give you everything, EVERYTHING, to my heart and soul?  Because it
+is you who ask it.  Because you, Harry Thorpe, have woven us into
+your fortune, so that we have no choice.  Depend upon us in the
+crises of your work!  Why, so are you dependent on your ten fingers,
+your eyes, the fiber of your brain!  Do you think the less of your
+fulfillment for that?"
+
+So it was that Hilda Farrand gave her lover confidence, brought him
+out from his fanaticism, launched him afresh into the current of
+events.  He remained in Chicago all that summer, giving orders that
+all work at the village of Carpenter should cease.  With his affairs
+that summer we have little to do.  His common-sense treatment of the
+stock market, by which a policy of quiescence following an outright
+buying of the stock which he had previously held on margins, retrieved
+the losses already sustained, and finally put both partners on a
+firm financial footing.  That is another story.  So too is his
+reconciliation with and understanding of his sister.  It came
+about through Hilda, of course.  Perhaps in the inscrutable way of
+Providence the estrangement was of benefit,--even necessary,for it
+had thrown him entirely within himself during his militant years.
+
+Let us rather look to the end of the summer.  It now became a
+question of re-opening the camps.  Thorpe wrote to Shearer and
+Radway, whom he had retained, that he would arrive on Saturday
+noon, and suggested that the two begin to look about for men.
+Friday, himself, Wallace Carpenter, Elizabeth Carpenter, Morton,
+Helen Thorpe, and Hilda Farrand boarded the north-bound train.
+
+
+
+Chapter LX
+
+
+The train of the South Shore Railroad shot its way across the
+broad reaches of the northern peninsula.  On either side of the
+right-of-way lay mystery in the shape of thickets so dense and
+overgrown that the eye could penetrate them but a few feet at
+most.  Beyond them stood the forests.  Thus Nature screened her
+intimacies from the impertinent eye of a new order of things.
+
+Thorpe welcomed the smell of the northland.  He became almost eager,
+explaining, indicating to the girl at his side.
+
+"There is the Canada balsam," he cried.  "Do you remember how I
+showed it to you first?  And yonder the spruce.  How stuck up your
+teeth were when you tried to chew the gum before it had been heated.
+Do you remember?  Look! Look there!  It's a white pine!  Isn't it
+a grand tree?  It's the finest tree in the forest, by my way of
+thinking, so tall, so straight, so feathery, and so dignified.  See,
+Hilda, look quick!  There's an old logging road all filled with
+raspberry vines.  We'd find lots of partridges there, and perhaps
+a bear.  Wouldn't you just like to walk down it about sunset?"
+
+"Yes, Harry."
+
+"I wonder what we're stopping for.  Seems to me they are stopping
+at every squirrel's trail.  Oh, this must be Seney.  Yes, it is.
+Queer little place, isn't it? but sort of attractive.  Good deal
+like our town.  You have never seen Carpenter, have you?  Location's
+fine, anyway; and to me it's sort of picturesque.  You'll like Mrs.
+Hathaway.  She's a buxom, motherly woman who runs the boarding-house
+for eighty men, and still finds time to mend my clothes for me.  And
+you'll like Solly.  Solly's the tug captain, a mighty good fellow,
+true as a gun barrel.  We'll have him take us out, some still day.
+We'll be there in a few minutes now.  See the cranberry marshes.
+Sometimes there's a good deal of pine on little islands scattered
+over it, but it's very hard to log, unless you get a good winter.
+We had just such a proposition when I worked for Radway.  Oh, you'll
+like Radway, he's as good as gold.  Helen!"
+
+"Yes," replied his sister.
+
+"I want you to know Radway.  He's the man who gave me my start."
+
+"All right, Harry," laughed Helen.  "I'll meet anybody or anything
+from bears to Indians."
+
+"I know an Indian too--Geezigut, an Ojibwa--we called him Injin
+Charley.  He was my first friend in the north woods.  He helped me
+get my timber.  This spring he killed a man--a good job, too--and
+is hiding now.  I wish I knew where he is.  But we'll see him some
+day.  He'll come back when the thing blows over.  See!  See!"
+
+"What?" they all asked, breathless.
+
+"It's gone.  Over beyond the hills there I caught a glimpse of
+Superior."
+
+"You are ridiculous, Harry," protested Helen Thorpe laughingly.  "I
+never saw you so.  You are a regular boy!"
+
+"Do you like boys?" he asked gravely of Hilda.
+
+"Adore them!" she cried.
+
+"All right, I don't care," he answered his sister in triumph.
+
+The air brakes began to make themselves felt, and shortly the train
+came to a grinding stop.
+
+"What station is this?" Thorpe asked the colored porter.
+
+"Shingleville, sah," the latter replied.
+
+"I thought so.  Wallace, when did their mill burn, anyway?  I haven't
+heard about it."
+
+"Last spring, about the time you went down."
+
+"Is THAT so?  How did it happen?"
+
+"They claim incendiarism," parried Wallace cautiously.
+
+Thorpe pondered a moment, then laughed.  "I am in the mixed attitude
+of the small boy," he observed, "who isn't mean enough to wish
+anybody's property destroyed, but who wishes that if there is a
+fire, to be where he can see it.  I am sorry those fellows had to
+lose their mill, but it was a good thing for us.  The man who set
+that fire did us a good turn.  If it hadn't been for the burning of
+their mill, they would have made a stronger fight against us in
+the stock market."
+
+Wallace and Hilda exchanged glances.  The girl was long since aware
+of the inside history of those days.
+
+"You'll have to tell them that," she whispered over the back of
+her seat.  "It will please them."
+
+"Our station is next!" cried Thorpe, "and it's only a little ways.
+Come, get ready!"
+
+They all crowded into the narrow passage-way near the door, for the
+train barely paused.
+
+"All right, sah," said the porter, swinging down his little step.
+
+Thorpe ran down to help the ladies.  He was nearly taken from
+his feet by a wild-cat yell, and a moment later that result was
+actually accomplished by a rush of men that tossed him bodily onto
+its shoulders.  At the same moment, the mill and tug whistles began
+to screech, miscellaneous fire-arms exploded.  Even the locomotive
+engineer, in the spirit of the occasion, leaned down heartily on
+his whistle rope.  The saw-dust street was filled with screaming,
+jostling men.  The homes of the town were brilliantly draped with
+cheesecloth, flags and bunting.
+
+For a moment Thorpe could not make out what had happened.  This
+turmoil was so different from the dead quiet of desertion he had
+expected, that he was unable to gather his faculties.  All about him
+were familiar faces upturned to his own.  He distinguished the broad,
+square shoulders of Scotty Parsons, Jack Hyland, Kerlie, Bryan
+Moloney; Ellis grinned at him from the press; Billy Camp, the fat
+and shiny drive cook; Mason, the foreman of the mill; over beyond
+howled Solly, the tug captain, Rollway Charley, Shorty, the
+chore-boy; everywhere were features that he knew.  As his dimming
+eyes travelled here and there, one by one the Fighting Forty,
+the best crew of men ever gathered in the northland, impressed
+themselves on his consciousness.  Saginaw birlers, Flat River
+drivers, woodsmen from the forests of Lower Canada, bully boys
+out of the Muskegon waters, peavey men from Au Sable, white-water
+dare-devils from the rapids of the Menominee--all were there to
+do him honor, him in whom they had learned to see the supreme
+qualities of their calling.  On the outskirts sauntered the tall
+form of Tim Shearer, a straw peeping from beneath his flax-white
+mustache, his eyes glimmering under his flax-white eyebrows.  He did
+not evidence as much excitement as the others, but the very bearing
+of the man expressed the deepest satisfaction.  Perhaps he remembered
+that zero morning so many years before when he had watched the
+thinly-clad, shivering chore-boy set his face for the first time
+towards the dark forest.
+
+Big Junko and Anderson deposited their burden on the raised platform
+of the office steps.  Thorpe turned and fronted the crowd.
+
+At once pandemonium broke loose, as though the previous performance
+had been nothing but a low-voiced rehearsal.
+
+The men looked upon their leader and gave voice to the enthusiasm
+that was in them.  He stood alone there, straight and tall, the
+muscles of his brown face set to hide his emotion, his head thrust
+back proudly, the lines of his strong figure tense with power,--the
+glorification in finer matter of the hardy, reliant men who did him
+honor.
+
+"Oh, aren't you PROUD of him?" gasped Hilda, squeezing Helen's arm
+with a little sob.
+
+In a moment Wallace Carpenter, his countenance glowing with pride
+and pleasure, mounted the platform and stood beside his friend,
+while Morton and the two young ladies stopped half way up the steps.
+
+At once the racket ceased.  Everyone stood at attention.
+
+"Mr. Thorpe," Wallace began, "at the request of your friends here,
+I have a most pleasant duty to fulfill.  They have asked me to tell
+you how glad they are to see you; that is surely unnecessary.  They
+have also asked me to congratulate you on having won the fight with
+our rivals."
+
+"You done 'em good."  "Can't down the Old Fellow," muttered joyous
+voices.
+
+"But," said Wallace, "I think that I first have a story to tell on
+my own account.
+
+"At the time the jam broke this spring, we owed the men here for a
+year's work.  At that time I considered their demand for wages
+ill-timed and grasping.  I wish to apologize.  After the money was
+paid them, instead of scattering, they set to work under Jack
+Radway and Tim Shearer to salvage your logs.  They have worked long
+hours all summer.  They have invested every cent of their year's
+earnings in supplies and tools, and now they are prepared to show
+you in the Company's booms, three million feet of logs, rescued by
+their grit and hard labor from total loss."
+
+At this point the speaker was interrupted.  "Saw off," "Shut up,"
+"Give us a rest," growled the audience.  "Three million feet ain't
+worth talkin' about," "You make me tired," "Say your little say
+the way you oughter," "Found purty nigh two millions pocketed
+on Mare's Island, or we wouldn't a had that much," "Damn-fool
+undertaking, anyhow."
+
+"Men," cried Thorpe, "I have been very fortunate.  From failure
+success has come.  But never have I been more fortunate than in my
+friends.  The firm is now on its feet.  It could afford to lose
+three times the logs it lost this year---"
+
+He paused and scanned their faces.
+
+"But," he continued suddenly, "it cannot now, nor ever can afford
+to lose what those three million feet represent,--the friends it
+has made.  I can pay you back the money you have spent and the time
+you have put in---"  Again he looked them over, and then for the
+first time since they have known him his face lighted up with a
+rare and tender smile of affection.  "But, comrades, I shall not
+offer to do it: the gift is accepted in the spirit with which it
+was offered---"
+
+He got no further.  The air was rent with sound.  Even the members of
+his own party cheered.  From every direction the crowd surged inward.
+The women and Morton were forced up the platform to Thorpe.  The
+latter motioned for silence.
+
+"Now, boys, we have done it," said he, "and so will go back to work.
+From now on you are my comrades in the fight."
+
+His eyes were dim; his breast heaved; his voice shook.  Hilda was
+weeping from excitement.  Through the tears she saw them all looking
+at their leader, and in the worn, hard faces glowed the affection
+and admiration of a dog for its master.  Something there was
+especially touching in this, for strong men rarely show it.
+She felt a great wave of excitement sweep over her.  Instantly
+she was standing by Thorpe, her eyes streaming, her breast
+trobbing with emotion.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, stretching her arms out to them passionately, "Oh!
+I love you; I love you all!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Blazed Trail, by Stewart Edward White
+
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