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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Blazed Trail, by Stewart Edward White
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Blazed Trail
+
+Author: Stewart Edward White
+
+Posting Date: January 28, 2009 [EBook #3413]
+Release Date: September, 2002
+Last Updated: March 12, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLAZED TRAIL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Douglas E. Levy
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BLAZED TRAIL
+
+By Stewart Edward White
+
+
+TO MY FATHER--From whose early pioneer life are drawn many of Harry
+Thorpe's experiences.
+
+
+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 Charley, 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 to 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 '81 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
+11,000 feet; while Long Pine Jim and Rollway Charley had put in but
+10,500 and 10,250 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 Charley. 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 three 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 V. 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 throbbing with emotion.
+
+“Oh!” she cried, stretching her arms out to them passionately, “Oh! I
+love you; I love you all!”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Blazed Trail, by Stewart Edward White
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diff --git a/3413-0.zip b/3413-0.zip
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Blazed Trail, by Stewart Edward White
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Blazed Trail, by Stewart Edward White
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Blazed Trail
+
+Author: Stewart Edward White
+
+Release Date: January 28, 2009 [EBook #3413]
+Last Updated: March 12, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLAZED TRAIL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Douglas E. Levy, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE BLAZED TRAIL
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Stewart Edward White
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      TO MY FATHER&mdash;From whose early pioneer life<br /> are drawn many of
+      Harry Thorpe's experiences.
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART1"> PART I: THE FOREST </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> Chapter I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> Chapter II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> Chapter III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> Chapter IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> Chapter V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> Chapter VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> Chapter VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> Chapter VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> Chapter IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> Chapter X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> Chapter XI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> Chapter XII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0013"> Chapter XIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0014"> Chapter XIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0015"> Chapter XV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART2"> PART II. THE LANDLOOKER </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> Chapter XVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0017"> Chapter XVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0018"> Chapter XVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0019"> Chapter XIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0020"> Chapter XX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0021"> Chapter XXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0022"> Chapter XXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0023"> Chapter XXIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0024"> Chapter XXIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0025"> Chapter XXV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART3"> PART III. THE BLAZING OF THE TRAIL </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0026"> Chapter XXVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0027"> Chapter XXVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0028"> Chapter XXVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0029"> Chapter XXIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0030"> Chapter XXX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0031"> Chapter XXXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0032"> Chapter XXXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0033"> Chapter XXXIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0034"> Chapter XXXIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0035"> Chapter XXXV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0036"> Chapter XXXVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART4"> PART IV. THORPE'S DREAM GIRL </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0037"> Chapter XXXVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0038"> Chapter XXXVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0039"> Chapter XXXIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0040"> Chapter XL </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0041"> Chapter XLI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0042"> Chapter XLII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0043"> Chapter XLIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART5"> PART V. THE FOLLOWING OF THE TRAIL </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0044"> Chapter XLIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0045"> Chapter XLV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0046"> Chapter XLVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0047"> Chapter XLVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0048"> Chapter XLVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0049"> Chapter XLIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0050"> Chapter L </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0051"> Chapter LI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0052"> Chapter LII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0053"> Chapter LIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0054"> Chapter LIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0055"> Chapter LV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0056"> Chapter LVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0057"> Chapter LVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0058"> Chapter LVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0059"> Chapter LIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0060"> Chapter LX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <br />
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_PART1" id="link2H_PART1">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART I: THE FOREST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;which would frighten most men to sobriety&mdash;with a
+      happy, reckless spirit that carries him beyond the limits of even his
+      extraordinary forces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the network of streams draining the eastern portion of Michigan and
+      known as the Saginaw waters, the great firm of Morrison &amp; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;woods
+      partner&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Radway,&rdquo; said he, when the two found themselves alone in the mill office,
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much a thousand do you give?&rdquo; asked Radway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four dollars,&rdquo; replied the lumberman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll look at it,&rdquo; replied the jobber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Radway got the &ldquo;descriptions&rdquo; and a little map divided into townships,
+      sections, and quarter sections; and went out to look at it. He searched
+      until he found a &ldquo;blaze&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;forties&rdquo; (forty acres),
+      &ldquo;eighties,&rdquo; quarter sections, and sections in a primeval wilderness. The
+      feat, however, required considerable woodcraft, an exact sense of
+      direction, and a pocket compass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take it,&rdquo; said he to Daly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Customarily a jobber is paid a certain proportion of the agreed price as
+      each stage of the work is completed&mdash;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 &ldquo;drive&rdquo; down the waters of the river is
+      finished. Daly objected to this method of procedure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, Radway,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I can, Mr. Daly,&rdquo; the jobber assured him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For that reason,&rdquo; went on Daly, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &amp; Daly to get a certain
+      amount of work, short of absolute completion, done for nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much does the timber estimate?&rdquo; he inquired finally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About five millions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd need a camp of forty or fifty men then. I don't see how I can run
+      such a camp without borrowing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have some money, haven't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; a little. But I have a family, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right. Now look here.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;especially
+      in the creek bottoms where a logging road finds often its levelest way&mdash;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,&mdash;but a few months at most,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men who were to fell the trees, Radway distributed along one boundary
+      of a &ldquo;forty.&rdquo; They were instructed to move forward across the forty in a
+      straight line, felling every pine tree over eight inches in diameter.
+      While the &ldquo;saw-gangs,&rdquo; three in number, prepared to fell the first trees,
+      other men, called &ldquo;swampers,&rdquo; 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
+      &ldquo;travois&rdquo;). 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime the sawyers were busy. Each pair of men selected a tree, the
+      first they encountered over the blazed line of their &ldquo;forty.&rdquo; After
+      determining in which direction it was to fall, they set to work to chop a
+      deep gash in that side of the trunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll do, Hank,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better wedge her, Tom,&rdquo; advised Hank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the trunk was nearly severed, Tom drove another and thicker wedge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Timber!&rdquo; hallooed Hank in a long-drawn melodious call that melted through
+      the woods into the distance. The swampers ceased work and withdrew to
+      safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the tree stood obstinately upright. So the saw leaped back and forth a
+      few strokes more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crack!&rdquo; called the tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hank coolly unhooked his saw handle, and Tom drew the blade through and
+      out the other side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allez, Molly!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gee!&rdquo; cried Laveque.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allez!&rdquo; commanded Laveque.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a bumper!&rdquo; said Bob. &ldquo;Look out, Mike!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the top of the little incline, the timber hovered for a second.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One more!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the chain was thrown down for another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;whoa!&rdquo; from the top of the
+      skidway, the driver did not trouble to stop the horse,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A fine t'ing!&rdquo; said Mike, spitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;punk&rdquo;; a
+      certain bit of ground proved soft for travoying, and so on. At
+      election-time, of course, a number of the men went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And one evening, two days after election-time, another and important
+      character entered the North woods and our story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess I'll take up tickets,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;Perhaps it will quiet the boys
+      down a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The conductor was a big man, raw-boned and broad, with a hawk face. His
+      every motion showed lean, quick, panther-like power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her went,&rdquo; replied the brakeman, rising as a matter of course to
+      follow his chief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tickets, please!&rdquo; clicked the conductor sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ticket, Jack!&rdquo; repeated the conductor, &ldquo;come on, now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The big bearded man leaned uncertainly against the seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now look here, Bud,&rdquo; he urged in wheedling tones, &ldquo;I ain't got no ticket.
+      You know how it is, Bud. I blows my stake.&rdquo; He fished uncertainly in his
+      pocket and produced the quart bottle, nearly empty, &ldquo;Have a drink?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the conductor sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A' right,&rdquo; replied Jack, amiably, &ldquo;take one myself.&rdquo; He tipped the
+      bottle, emptied it, and hurled it through a window. The conductor paid no
+      apparent attention to the breaking of the glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you haven't any ticket, you'll have to get off,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The big man straightened up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go to hell!&rdquo; he snorted, and with the sole of his spiked boot
+      delivered a mighty kick at the conductor's thigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get at 'em, Jimmy,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as the big man finally swayed to his feet, he was seized by the collar
+      and trousers in the grip known to &ldquo;bouncers&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conductor stood over the heap, at a manifest advantage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You lumber-jacks had enough, or do you want to catch it plenty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now is it ticket or bounce?&rdquo; inquired the conductor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;It is interesting,&mdash;now,&rdquo; she
+      wrote, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a trump!&rdquo; said Thorpe to himself, &ldquo;and she shall have her
+      everlasting fortune, if there's such a thing in the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He jingled the three dollars and sixty cents in his pocket, and smiled.
+      That was the extent of his everlasting fortune at present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter had been answered from Detroit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad you are settled,&rdquo; he wrote. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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&mdash;merely
+      finished products. We like to be in at the making, even though the product
+      spoil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knows how to hit, doesn't he!&rdquo; he observed. &ldquo;That fellow was knocked
+      well off his feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He does,&rdquo; agreed the other dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &amp; Daly camps at Beeson Lake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know anything about logging?&rdquo; inquired the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; Thorpe confessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ain't much show for anything but lumber-jacks. What did you think of
+      doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; said Thorpe, doubtfully. &ldquo;I have driven horses a good
+      deal; I thought I might drive team.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The woodsman turned slowly and looked Thorpe over with a quizzical eye.
+      Then he faced to the front again and spat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite like,&rdquo; he replied still more dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think M. &amp; D. is rather full up just now,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;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&rdquo; (he strongly accented the first word) &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The whistle of the locomotive blew, and the conductor appeared in the
+      doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's that fellow's turkey?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the 'turkey'&mdash;&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;his war bag. Bud'll throw it
+      off at Scott's, and Jack'll get it there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How far back is he?&rdquo; asked Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About ten mile. He'll hoof it in all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;with
+      the exception of Shearer and Thorpe,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a bad thing,&rdquo; said the walking-boss, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bees'n Lake!&rdquo; cried Jimmy fiercely through an aperture of the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll find th' boardin'-house just across over the track,&rdquo; said the
+      woodsman, holding out his hand, &ldquo;so long. See you again if you don't find
+      a job with the Old Fellow. My name's Shearer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mine is Thorpe,&rdquo; replied the other. &ldquo;Thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The woodsman stepped forward past the carousers to the baggage
+      compartment, where he disappeared. The revellers stumbled out the other
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;an
+      individual much muffled,&mdash;turned to the disposition of some light
+      freight that had been dropped from the baggage car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;turkeys&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A growl went up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What'n hell's that for I!&rdquo; snarled one of the owners of the whisky
+      threateningly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't allow no whisky here,&rdquo; snuffed the harelip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bully for you, peg-leg!&rdquo; they cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rules 'n regerlations, boys,&rdquo; replied the latter, without, however, a
+      shade of compromising in his tones. &ldquo;Had supper?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;protection against fire&mdash;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 &ldquo;Office.&rdquo; He followed and entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am looking for work,&rdquo; said Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait there,&rdquo; briefly commanded the clerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few moments the door of the inner room opened, and Shearer came out.
+      A man's head peered from within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, boys,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, Dennis?&rdquo; he asked the first of the men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been out,&rdquo; replied the lumberman. &ldquo;Have you got anything for me, Mr.
+      Daly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mill-owner laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess so. Report to Shearer. Did you vote for the right man, Denny?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lumberman grinned sheepishly. &ldquo;I don't know, sir. I didn't get that
+      far.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better let it alone. I suppose you and Bill want to come back, too?&rdquo; he
+      added, turning to the next two in the line. &ldquo;All right, report to Tim. Do
+      you want work?&rdquo; he inquired of the last of the quartette, a big bashful
+      man with the shoulders of a Hercules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; answered the latter uncomfortably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a cant-hook man, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where have you worked?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had a job with Morgan &amp; Stebbins on the Clear River last winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, we need cant-hook men. Report at 'seven,' and if they don't
+      want you there, go to 'thirteen.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Daly looked directly at the man with an air of finality. The lumberman
+      still lingered uneasily, twisting his cap in his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything you want?&rdquo; asked Daly at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; blurted the big man. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Daly chuckled a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Bub,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;to hell it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man went out. Daly turned to Thorpe with the last flickers of
+      amusement in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can I do for you?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am looking for work,&rdquo; Thorpe replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What kind of work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any kind, so I can learn something about the lumber business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The older man studied him keenly for a few moments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you had any other business experience?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you been doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lumberman's eyes hardened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are a very busy firm here,&rdquo; he said with a certain deliberation; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After his speech the business man had whirled back to his desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you anything for me to do in the woods, then?&rdquo; the other asked
+      quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Daly over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before leaving Detroit he had, on the advice of friends, visited the city
+      office of Morrison &amp; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That noon he carried out his resolve. To his surprise Shearer was cordial&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is it?&rdquo; asked Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe considered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm busted,&rdquo; he said at last frankly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's all right,&rdquo; replied the walking-boss. &ldquo;Marshall, come here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The peg-legged boarding-house keeper stumped in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he trumpeted snufflingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; snorted Marshall, &ldquo;take that ax and split some dry wood that
+      you'll find behind the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm very much obliged to you,&rdquo; began Thorpe to the walking-boss, &ldquo;and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right,&rdquo; interrupted the latter, &ldquo;some day you can give me a
+      job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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;&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;Southeast of the southwest of eight.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;tapping&rdquo; the ice with an ax,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're dressed pretty light,&rdquo; he advised; &ldquo;better hoof it a ways and get
+      warm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words tipped the balance of Thorpe's decision. He descended stiffly,
+      conscious of a disagreeable shock from a six-inch jump.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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;&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;cook camp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a commodious building,&mdash;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 &ldquo;cookee,&rdquo; a hulking youth, assisted Thorpe and the driver
+      to carry them in. During the course of the work Thorpe made a mistake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That stuff doesn't come here,&rdquo; objected the cookee, indicating a box of
+      tobacco the newcomer was carrying. &ldquo;She goes to the 'van.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe did not know what the &ldquo;van&rdquo; 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
+      &ldquo;van.&rdquo; The horses were unhitched, and stabled in the third of the big log
+      buildings. The driver indicated the second.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better go into the men's camp and sit down 'till th' boss gets in,&rdquo; he
+      advised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Set down,&rdquo; said a voice, &ldquo;on th' floor if you want to; but I'd prefer th'
+      deacon seat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe obediently took position on the bench, or &ldquo;deacon seat.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught, perhaps, Thorpe's surprised expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think th' old man's no good, do you?&rdquo; he cackled, without the
+      slightest malice, &ldquo;looks is deceivin'!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old Jackson's still purty smart,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; confessed Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Jackson, reflectively but rapidly, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe did not know he was getting valuable points on the camp bullies.
+      The old man hitched nearer and peered in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They don't bluff you a bit,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;unless you likes them, and then
+      they can back you way off the skidway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;deacon seat&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll find the old man in the office,&rdquo; said Jackson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;old man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was sent here by Shearer,&rdquo; said Thorpe directly; &ldquo;he said you might
+      give me some work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So long a silence fell that the applicant began to wonder if his question
+      had been heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might,&rdquo; replied the man drily at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, will you?&rdquo; Thorpe inquired, the humor of the situation overcoming
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever worked in the woods?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man smoked silently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll put you on the road in the morning,&rdquo; he concluded, as though this
+      were the deciding qualification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the men entered abruptly and approached the counter. The writer at
+      the desk laid aside his tablets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, Albert?&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jot of chewin',&rdquo; was the reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The scaler took from the shelf a long plug of tobacco and cut off two
+      inches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ain't hitting the van much, are you, Albert?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At supper he learned something else,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please pass the beans,&rdquo; he said with the deliberate intonation of a man
+      who does not expect that his request will be granted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;seventeen.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down on the road Thorpe heard it too, and wondered what it might be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, Bub! she means chew!&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;stake&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get out of that, you big tow-head!&rdquo; he cried with an oath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give it to 'im!&rdquo; whispered Nolan, who had been watching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get at it!&rdquo; cried the cookee, as though setting a pack of dogs on their
+      prey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's see; what's the name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm with the game as long as you say, boys,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and I'll have as
+      much fun as anybody, but that's going too far for a tired man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The reptilian gentleman let out a string of oaths whose meaning might be
+      translated, &ldquo;We'll see about that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe was a good boxer, but he knew by now the lumber-jack's method of
+      fighting,&mdash;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 &ldquo;clean out&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know which of you boys is coming first,&rdquo; said he quietly, &ldquo;but
+      he's going to get it good and plenty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you hanker for trouble so much,&rdquo; drawled the unexpected voice of old
+      Jackson from the corner, &ldquo;mebbe you could put on th' gloves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea was acclaimed. Somebody tossed out a dirty torn old set of
+      buckskin boxing gloves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The young feller's all right,&rdquo; observed Heath; &ldquo;he cuffed Ben up to a
+      peak all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Went down like a peck of wet fish-nets,&rdquo; replied Jackson tranquilly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That 'seventeen' white pine is going to underrun,&rdquo; said Dyer. &ldquo;It won't
+      skid over three hundred thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's small stuff,&rdquo; agreed Radway, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The scaler nodded comprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you going to dray-haul that Norway across Pike Lake?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About forty thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Radway fell silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's mighty little for such a crew,&rdquo; he observed at last, doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always said you were too easy with them. You got to drive them more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it's a rough country,&rdquo; apologized Radway, trying, as was his
+      custom, to find excuses for the other party as soon as he was agreed with
+      in his blame, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;boss&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old Shearer, he's the bully boy,&rdquo; said Bob Stratton. &ldquo;I remember when he
+      was foremap for M. &amp; 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;faute de mieux,&rdquo; in which one would give an honest day's
+      work, and no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;hands,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Oh, no, not tired; just a
+      little stiff, sir!&rdquo; in cheerful reply to his master's inquiry,&mdash;for
+      the right man! Only it must be a strong man,&mdash;with the strength of
+      the wilderness in his eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;dray.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kitch Jenny by dat he't!&rdquo; he cried to Pat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Lord!&rdquo; cried Pat, clinging desperately to Jenny's headpiece. &ldquo;What
+      will we'z be doin'? We can't niver haul them two horses on the ice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tak' de log-chain,&rdquo; said Fabian to Henrys, &ldquo;an' tie him around de nec' of
+      Jenny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assassins!&rdquo; hissed Laveque at the two unfortunate youths. That was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Fabian Laveque elaborated the details of the catastrophe with volubility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hee's not fonny dat she bre'ks t'rough,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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&mdash;sacre Dieu! eet is so easy, to
+      chok' dat cheval&mdash;she make me cry wit' de eye!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it was a good deal my fault,&rdquo; commented Radway, doubtfully
+      shaking his head, after Laveque had left the office. &ldquo;I ought to have been
+      surer about the ice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eight inches is a little light, with so much snow atop,&rdquo; remarked the
+      scaler carelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;were
+      not instructed to &ldquo;get their time.&rdquo; Fabian Laveque promptly demanded his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sacre bleu!&rdquo; said he to old Jackson. &ldquo;I no work wid dat dam-fool dat no
+      t'ink wit' hees haid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;decker&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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;&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's waitin' down there for me, and it ain't so very long till spring,&rdquo;
+       said Paul wistfully. &ldquo;She's the best little woman a man ever had, and
+      there ain't nothin' too good for her, chummy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got another letter, chummy,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;come in yesterday. She tells me,&rdquo;
+       he hesitated with a blush, and then a happy laugh, &ldquo;that they ain't going
+      to be only two of us at the farm next year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean!&rdquo; queried Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; laughed Paul, &ldquo;and if it's a girl she gets named after her mother,
+      you bet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;TimBER!&rdquo; came the cry, and then the swish-sh-sh,&mdash;CRASH of the
+      tree's fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two of the older woodsmen, kneeling, were conducting coolly a hasty
+      examination. At the front every man is more or less of a surgeon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he hurt badly?&rdquo; asked Thorpe; &ldquo;what is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's dead,&rdquo; answered one of the other men soberly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You in, chummy?&rdquo; he asked in a quiet voice. &ldquo;It's a five apiece for
+      Hank's woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;from the boys.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;dray.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;jack.&rdquo; Several times they surprised the wolves, and shone the
+      animals' eyes like the scattered embers of a camp fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pine there grew thick on isolated &ldquo;islands&rdquo; of not more than an acre
+      or so in extent,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;corduroying,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;tramped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Radway was evidently worried. He often paused before a gang to inquire how
+      they were &ldquo;making it.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;except on the part of the cook, who was supposed to attend
+      to his business himself&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't pose for no tough son-of-a-gun,&rdquo; said he to Radway, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; Radway assented, a little doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was stan' ten below,&rdquo; sputtered Baptiste Tellier, the Frenchman who
+      played the fiddle. &ldquo;He freeze t'rou to hees eenside. Dat is too cole for
+      mak de work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Them plains is sure a holy fright,&rdquo; assented Purdy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Th' old man knows it himself,&rdquo; agreed big Nolan; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd shiver like a dog in a briar path on a warm day in July,&rdquo; said
+      Jackson Hines contemptuously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shut up!&rdquo; said they. &ldquo;You're barn-boss. You don't have to be out in th'
+      cold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was true. So Jackson's intervention went for a little worse than
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ain't lak' he has nuttin' besides,&rdquo; went on Baptiste. &ldquo;He can mak' de
+      cut in de meedle of de fores'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's right,&rdquo; agreed Bob Stratton, &ldquo;they's the west half of eight ain't
+      been cut yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So they sent a delegation to Radway. Big Nolan was the spokesman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Boss,&rdquo; said he bluntly, &ldquo;she's too cold to work on them plains to-day.
+      She's the coldest day we had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Radway was too old a hand at the business to make any promises on the
+      spot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll see, boys,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &amp; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning he came in from a talk with the supply-teamster, and woke
+      Dyer, who was not yet up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going down home for two or three weeks,&rdquo; he announced to Dyer, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dyer twisted the little points of his mustache. &ldquo;All right, sir,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do as much as you can in the marsh, Dyer,&rdquo; went on the jobber. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, sir,&rdquo; repeated Dyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sort of pounded my ear a little long this morning,&rdquo; he remarked with an
+      unwonted air of bonhomie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose the men got out to the marsh on time,&rdquo; suggested Dyer, still
+      easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cook laid aside his paper and looked the scaler in the eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're the foreman; I'm the cook,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;You ought to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cookee had paused, the paste brush in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How's this, men!&rdquo; cried Dyer sharply; &ldquo;why aren't you out on the marsh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No one answered for a minute. Then Baptiste:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He mak' too tam cole for de marsh. Meester Radway he spik dat we kip off
+      dat marsh w'en he mak' cole.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dyer knew that the precedent was indisputable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn't you cut on eight then?&rdquo; he asked, still in peremptory tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't have no one to show us where to begin,&rdquo; drawled a voice in the
+      corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dyer turned sharp on his heel and went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sore as a boil, ain't he!&rdquo; commented old Jackson Hines with a chuckle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the cook camp Dyer was saying to the cook, &ldquo;Well, anyway, we'll have
+      dinner early and get a good start for this afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cook again laid down his paper. &ldquo;I'm tending to this job of cook,&rdquo;
+       said he, &ldquo;and I'm getting the meals on time. Dinner will be on time to-day
+      not a minute early, and not a minute late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he resumed his perusal of the adventures of ladies to whom the
+      illustrations accorded magnificent calf-development.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;went out.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the convivial souls had lost to Dyer the days of their debauch, and
+      until their thirst for recuperative &ldquo;Pain Killer,&rdquo; &ldquo;Hinckley&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Peerless&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;eighty&rdquo; on section eight was
+      skidded without a break. The weather held cold and clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;corduroyed&rdquo; by carpeting them with long parallel poles. Now the first
+      difficulty began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;corduroy&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;road monkeys,&rdquo; saw now why
+      such care had been required of him in smoothing the way of stubs, knots,
+      and hummocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No use, break her through, boys,&rdquo; said Radway. So a dozen men hurled
+      their bodies through, making an opening for the horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hi! YUP!&rdquo; shouted the three teamsters, gathering up their reins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then silently the wilderness stretched forth her hand and pushed these
+      struggling atoms back to their place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's goin' to rain,&rdquo; said old Jackson. &ldquo;The air is kind o' holler.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hollow?&rdquo; said Thorpe, laughing. &ldquo;How is that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don' no,&rdquo; confessed Hines, &ldquo;but she is. She jest feels that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Radway was down looking at the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's holdin' her own,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;but there ain't any use putting more
+      water on her. She ain't freezing a mite. We'll plow her out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll freeze a little to-night,&rdquo; said Radway hopefully. &ldquo;You sprinkler
+      boys get at her and wet her down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Until two o'clock in the morning the four teams and the six men creaked
+      back and forth spilling hardly-gathered water&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I often heard this was a sort 'v summer resort,&rdquo; observed Tom Broadhead,
+      &ldquo;but danged if I knew it was a summer resort all the year 'round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll freeze before morning, sure,&rdquo; was the hopeful comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then in the morning the air would be more balmily insulting than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old man is as blue as a whetstone,&rdquo; commented Jackson Hines, &ldquo;an' I don't
+      blame him. This weather'd make a man mad enough to eat the devil with his
+      horns left on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by it got to be a case of looking on the bright side of the affair
+      from pure reaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; said Radway, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The inscrutable goddess of the wilderness smiled, and calmly,
+      relentlessly, moved her next pawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all so unutterably simple, and yet so effective. Something there
+      was in it of the calm inevitability of fate. It snowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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;&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;boom.&rdquo; In that enclosure they remain
+      until sawed in the mill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;She.&rdquo; Mike McGovern raked up a saint somewhere whom he apostrophized in a
+      personal and familiar manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hit his head against an overhanging branch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a nice wan, now ain't ye?&rdquo; he cried angrily at the unfortunate
+      guardian of his soul. &ldquo;Dom if Oi don't quit ye! Ye see!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be the gate of Hivin!&rdquo; he shouted, when he opened the door of mornings
+      and discovered another six inches of snow, &ldquo;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'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jackson Hines was righteously indignant, but with the shrewdness of the
+      old man, put the blame partly where it belonged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't sayin',&rdquo; he observed judicially, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With this magnificent bit of invective, Jackson seized a lantern and
+      stumped out to see that the teamsters fed their horses properly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't know you were a miner, Jackson,&rdquo; called Thorpe, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young feller,&rdquo; replied Jackson at the door, &ldquo;it's a lot easier to tell
+      what I AIN'T been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So floundering, battling, making a little progress every day, the strife
+      continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning in February, Thorpe was helping load a big butt log. He was
+      engaged in &ldquo;sending up&rdquo;; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;top&rdquo; man, had prepared for
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a fine deed, quickly thought, quickly dared. No one saw it. Jim
+      Gladys was a hero, but a hero without an audience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would have made a good boss,&rdquo; said the old fellow. &ldquo;He's a hard man to
+      nick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe was carried in from the front, and the battle went on without him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;stake,&rdquo; he would receive some sort of unskilled attention in one of the
+      numerous and fearful lumberman's boarding-houses,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the date?&rdquo; he asked of the Sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The eleventh of March.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it early for the thaw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen to 'im!&rdquo; exclaimed the Sister delightedly. &ldquo;Early is it! Sure th'
+      freshet co't thim all. Look, darlint, ye kin see th' drive from here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Thorpe wearily, &ldquo;when can I get out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for wan week,&rdquo; replied the Sister decidedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;stern,
+      earnest, purposeful winter, and gay, laughing, careless spring. It was
+      impossible not to draw in fresh spirits with every step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;a last ethereal
+      incarnation,&mdash;had lingered in its substance. Around every bend Thorpe
+      looked for some of Radway's crew &ldquo;driving&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo, young man,&rdquo; he shouted at Thorpe's mud-splashed figure, &ldquo;come back
+      to view, the remains? All well again, heigh? That's good!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know you were through,&rdquo; explained Thorpe, &ldquo;I came to see if I
+      could get a job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well now I AM sorry!&rdquo; cried Radway, &ldquo;you can turn in and help though, if
+      you want to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought by rights to take the lumber of the roofs and floors,&rdquo; observed
+      Radway thoughtfully, &ldquo;but I guess she don't matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not much like old times, is she?&rdquo; laughed Radway. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jackson Hines looked whimsically down the bare board. &ldquo;More room than God
+      made for geese in Ireland,&rdquo; was his comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been in the hospital for about a month,&rdquo; he wrote. &ldquo;Nothing
+      serious&mdash;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,&rdquo; and so on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Miss Helen Thorpe, aged seventeen, received this document she stamped
+      her foot almost angrily. &ldquo;You'd think he was a day-laborer!&rdquo; she cried.
+      &ldquo;Why doesn't he try for a clerkship or something in the city where he'd
+      have a chance to use his brains!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The thought of her big, strong, tanned brother chained to a desk rose to
+      her, and she smiled a little sadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; she went on to herself, &ldquo;he'd rather be a common laborer in the
+      woods than railroad manager in the office. He loves his out-of-doors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Helen!&rdquo; called a voice from below, &ldquo;if you're through up there, I wish
+      you'd come down and help me carry this rug out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl's eyes cleared with a snap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So do I!&rdquo; she cried defiantly, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;how could she?&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter with the boss, anyway?&rdquo; asked Thorpe in a low voice of
+      Jackson Hines, when the seven-up game was finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;H'aint ye heard?&rdquo; inquired the old man in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, no. What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Busted,&rdquo; said the old man sententiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How? What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a queer rig,&rdquo; commented Thorpe. &ldquo;He's done a lot of valuable work
+      here,&mdash;the timber's cut and skidded, anyway; and he's delivered a
+      good deal of it to the main drive. The M. &amp; D. outfit get all the
+      advantage of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;drive&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a very little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got behind; that's all there is to it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eye followed listlessly a frenzied squirrel swinging from the tops of
+      poplars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't 'a done it for myself,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;I don't like the
+      confounded responsibility. They's too much worry connected with it all. I
+      had a good snug little stake&mdash;mighty nigh six thousand. She's all
+      gone now. That'd have been enough for me&mdash;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&mdash;I'd a had twelve thousand in th'
+      bank, if things'd have gone right&mdash;and then we'll jest move down
+      around Detroit an' I'll put Lida in school.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know when I left Christmas?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Radway paused. Thorpe was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The boys thought it was a mighty poor rig, my leaving that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused again in evident expectation of a reply. Again Thorpe was
+      silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't they?&rdquo; Radway insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, they did,&rdquo; answered Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The older man sighed. &ldquo;I thought so,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No bad after-effects, I hope?&rdquo; inquired Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She died,&rdquo; said Radway simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't you going to get anything out of M. &amp; D.?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got anything left?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a cent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do!&rdquo; cried the old woodsman, the fire springing to his eye. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe dedicated a musing instant to the incongruity of rejoicing over a
+      freedom gained by ceasing to be master and becoming servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Radway,&rdquo; said he suddenly, &ldquo;I need money and I need it bad. I think you
+      ought to get something out of this job of the M. &amp; D.&mdash;not much,
+      but something. Will you give me a share of what I can collect from them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure!&rdquo; agreed the jobber readily, with a laugh. &ldquo;Sure! But you won't get
+      anything. I'll give you ten per cent quick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good enough!&rdquo; cried Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But don't be too sure you'll earn day wages doing it,&rdquo; warned the other.
+      &ldquo;I saw Daly when I was down here last week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My time's not valuable,&rdquo; replied Thorpe. &ldquo;Now when we get to town I want
+      your power of attorney and a few figures, after which I will not bother
+      you again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, young man, what can I do for you?&rdquo; asked the latter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been informed,&rdquo; said Thorpe without preliminary, &ldquo;that you intend
+      to pay John Radway nothing for the work done on the Cass Branch this
+      winter. Is that true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Daly studied his antagonist meditatively. &ldquo;If it is true, what is it to
+      you?&rdquo; he asked at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am acting in Mr. Radway's interest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are one of Radway's men?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what capacity have you been working for him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cant-hook man,&rdquo; replied Thorpe briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Daly slowly. Then suddenly, with an intensity of energy that
+      startled Thorpe, he cried: &ldquo;Now you get out of here! Right off! Quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The younger man recognized the compelling and autocratic boss addressing a
+      member of the crew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall do nothing of the kind!&rdquo; he replied with a flash of fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have Radway's power of attorney,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Daly sat down, controlled himself with an effort, and growled out, &ldquo;Why
+      didn't you say so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I would like to know your position,&rdquo; went on Thorpe. &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he
+      suggested, as though convinced that a detailing of the other side might
+      change his views.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's like this,&rdquo; said he abruptly, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly,&rdquo; replied Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's how I understand it,&rdquo; commented Thorpe. &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he didn't get in the five million. There's a million and a half
+      hung up in the woods.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have in your hands three million and a half, which under the
+      present arrangement you get free of any charge whatever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we ought to get it,&rdquo; cried Daly. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is exceedingly annoying,&rdquo; conceded Thorpe, &ldquo;and it is a good deal of
+      Radway's fault, I am willing to admit, but it's your fault too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure,&rdquo; replied Daly with the accent of sarcasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had no business entering into any such contract. It gave him no
+      show.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose that was mainly his lookout, wasn't it? And as I already told
+      you, we had to protect ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't care what you call it,&rdquo; answered Daly, who had recovered his
+      good-humor in contemplation of the security of his position. &ldquo;The fact
+      stands all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does,&rdquo; replied Thorpe unexpectedly, &ldquo;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&rdquo; (standing trees) &ldquo;was worth ten thousand dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold on!&rdquo; cried Daly, &ldquo;we paid Radway four dollars; we could have done it
+      ourselves for less.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could not have done it for one cent less than four-twenty in that
+      country,&rdquo; replied Thorpe, &ldquo;as any expert will testify.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did we give it to Radway at four, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You saved the expense of a salaried overseer, and yourselves some
+      bother,&rdquo; replied Thorpe. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We could have done it for four,&rdquo; insisted Daly stubbornly, &ldquo;but get on.
+      What are you driving at? My time's valuable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, put her at four, then,&rdquo; agreed Thorpe. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Daly seemed amused. &ldquo;How about the million and a half feet of ours HE
+      appropriated?&rdquo; he asked quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's Radway's lookout.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How have we gained by this bit of philanthropy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; replied Thorpe sharply. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you know, young man, that white pine logs on skids will spoil
+      utterly in a summer? Worms get into em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do,&rdquo; replied Thorpe, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Daly laughed. &ldquo;You are a shrewd figurer, and your remarks are
+      interesting,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you give five thousand dollars?&rdquo; asked Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not,&rdquo; replied Daly, then with a sudden change of humor, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's your last word, is it?&rdquo; asked Thorpe, rising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said he slowly and distinctly, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fight ahead,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Furthermore,&rdquo; pursued Thorpe in addition, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, lastly,&rdquo; concluded Thorpe, playing his trump card, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think we can arrange a basis of settlement,&rdquo; he said finally. &ldquo;Be here
+      to-morrow morning at ten with Radway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the way,&rdquo; remarked Daly, &ldquo;I don't believe I know your name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thorpe,&rdquo; was the reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mr. Thorpe,&rdquo; said the lumberman with cold anger, &ldquo;if at any time
+      there is anything within my power or influence that you want&mdash;I'll
+      see that you don't get it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are lookin' real well, Mr. Thorpe,&rdquo; she was saying, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank you, Mrs. Renwick,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;I'll come back later. How is
+      Helen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's purty well; and sech a nice girL I think she's getting right
+      handsome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you tell me where she went?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mrs. Renwick did not know. So Thorpe wandered about the maple-shaded
+      streets of the little town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but you're tanned and&mdash;and BIG!&rdquo; she cried, kissing her brother.
+      &ldquo;You've had such a strange winter, haven't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he replied absently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Things came a little better than I thought they were going to, toward the
+      last,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and I made a little money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'm so glad!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Was it much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not much,&rdquo; he answered. The actual figures would have been so much
+      better! &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said the girl, and fell silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a time, &ldquo;Thank you very much, Harry dear.&rdquo; Then after another
+      interval, &ldquo;I think I'll go get ready for supper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of getting ready for supper, she paced excitedly up and down her
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, why DIDN'T he say what he was about?&rdquo; she cried to herself. &ldquo;Why
+      didn't he! Why didn't he!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning she opened the subject again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry, dear,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;I have a little scheme, and I want to see if it
+      is not feasible. How much will the girl and the Seminary cost?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About four hundred dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo; she
+      cried, all interest. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why not live here, Helen?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I'm TIRED of it!&rdquo; she cried; &ldquo;sick to the soul of the stuffiness,
+      and the glass cases, and the&mdash;the GOODNESS of it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid you would not find the girls' boarding-club scheme a good one,
+      Helen,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;You'd find it would work better in theory than in
+      practice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it has worked with the other girls!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you would be better off here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen bravely choked back her disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might live here, but let the Seminary drop, anyway. That would save a
+      good deal,&rdquo; she begged. &ldquo;I'd get quite as much good out of my work
+      outside, and then we'd have all that money besides.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know; I'll see,&rdquo; replied Thorpe. &ldquo;The mental discipline of
+      class-room work might be a good thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Thorpe told her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've fixed it, Helen,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Harry!&rdquo; she cried reproachfully. &ldquo;Why didn't you tell me before!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Harry!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;aren't they fine! What are you going to do with
+      them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going camping,&rdquo; replied Thorpe, his head in the excelsior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This summer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen's eyes lit up with a fire of delight. &ldquo;How nice! May I go with you?&rdquo;
+       she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid not, little girl. It's going to be a hard trip a long ways
+      from anywhere. You couldn't stand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure I could. Try me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Thorpe. &ldquo;I know you couldn't. We'll be sleeping on the
+      ground and going on foot through much extremely difficult country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you'd take me somewhere,&rdquo; pursued Helen. &ldquo;I can't get away this
+      summer unless you do. Why don't you camp somewhere nearer home, so I can
+      go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't, little girl; that's all. We've got our way to make.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is your bill,&rdquo; she said with a strange choke in her voice, and left
+      the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can spend sixty dollars on his old guns; but he can't afford to let me
+      leave this hateful house,&rdquo; she complained to the apple tree. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry! Harry!&rdquo; she cried wildly; but it was too late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART II. THE LANDLOOKER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;vast,
+      solemn, grand, with the patrician aloofness of the truly great; sometimes
+      the hardwood,&mdash;bright, mysterious, full of life; sometimes the
+      swamps,&mdash;dark, dank, speaking with the voices of the shyer creatures;
+      sometimes the spruce and balsam thickets,&mdash;aromatic, enticing. But
+      never the clear, open sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;looking&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you want to-day, old man?&rdquo; inquired a wholesale lumber dealer of an
+      individual whose name now stands for domestic and civic virtue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; expostulated the dealer with a laugh, &ldquo;ain't you got that forty
+      all cut yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She holds out pretty well,&rdquo; replied the other with a grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;sugaring.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;on the square,&rdquo; but as to that I
+      cannot, of course, venture an opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Accent the last syllable.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;wood-lots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the ten-mile point he came upon a dam. It was a crude dam,&mdash;built
+      of logs,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;drive&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;slashing&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;the &ldquo;section corners&rdquo; of the tract,
+      on which the government surveyor had long ago marked the &ldquo;descriptions.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe sat down, lit a pipe, and did a little thinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're going to cut, and keep on cutting, working down river as fast as
+      they can,&rdquo; argued Thorpe. &ldquo;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,&mdash;at least until after they have
+      folded their tents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these things he did hastily, as though he might be in a hurry; as
+      indeed he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glad I don't have to do that every day!&rdquo; he commented, wiping his brow
+      with the back of his wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know whether it's all necessary,&rdquo; he said to himself doubtfully,
+      &ldquo;but if you're going to assume a disguise, let it be a good one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do,&rdquo; greeted the newcomer gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man was an Indian, silent, solemn, with the straight, unwinking gaze
+      of his race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do,&rdquo; replied Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No good,&rdquo; said he, feeling of its texture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe laughed. &ldquo;Not very,&rdquo; he confessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good,&rdquo; continued the Indian, touching lightly his own moccasins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you do?&rdquo; he inquired after a long silence, punctuated by the puffs
+      of tobacco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hunt; trap; fish,&rdquo; replied Thorpe with equal sententiousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good,&rdquo; concluded the Indian, after a ruminative pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I show,&rdquo; said the Indian:&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look 'um tree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo; cried Thorpe, startled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You no hunter, no trapper. You look 'um tree, for make 'um lumber.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes you think that, Charley?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You good man in woods,&rdquo; replied Injin Charley sententiously, &ldquo;I tell by
+      way you look at him pine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe ruminated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Charley,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;why are you staying here with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Big frien',&rdquo; replied the Indian promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why are you my friend? What have I ever done for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You gottum chief's eye,&rdquo; replied his companion with simplicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe looked at the Indian again. There seemed to be only one course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'm a lumberman,&rdquo; he confessed, &ldquo;and I'm looking for pine. But,
+      Charley, the men up the river must not know what I'm after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They gettum pine,&rdquo; interjected the Indian like a flash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly,&rdquo; replied Thorpe, surprised afresh at the other's perspicacity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; ejaculated Injin Charley, and fell silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three days later he was intensely thankful the conversation had taken
+      place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;cruisers &ldquo;; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo Charley,&rdquo; said one of them, &ldquo;what you doing here? Ain't seen you
+      since th' Sturgeon district.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mak' 'um canoe,&rdquo; replied Charley rather obviously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I see. But what you expect to get in this Godforsaken country?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beaver, muskrat, mink, otter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trapping, eh?&rdquo; The man gazed keenly at Thorpe's recumbent figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's the other fellow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe held his breath; then exhaled it in a long sigh of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him white man,&rdquo; Injin Charley was replying, &ldquo;him hunt too. He mak' 'um
+      buckskin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Howdy,&rdquo; he drawled, &ldquo;got any smokin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How are you,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the usual proposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty good, I guess. Come up and see,&rdquo; advised the scaler. &ldquo;The crew's
+      right behind us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll send up Charley,&rdquo; drawled Thorpe, &ldquo;I'm busy now makin' traps,&rdquo; he
+      waved his pipe, calling attention to the pine and rawhide dead-falls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that outfit?&rdquo; he inquired with the sharpness of suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old Injin Charley&mdash;you remember, the old boy that tanned that buck
+      for you down on Cedar Creek.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but the other fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, a hunter,&rdquo; replied the scaler carelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man laughed. &ldquo;Couldn't be nothin' else,&rdquo; he asserted with confidence.
+      &ldquo;Regular old backwoods mossback.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same time Injin Charley was setting about the splitting of a cedar
+      log.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; he remarked, &ldquo;I big frien'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;unsight unseen&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;either for game or for
+      spots in which later to set his traps. The expedient was, however,
+      unnecessary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;descriptions&rdquo; containing the
+      best pine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally he wrote accurate notes concerning the topography of each and
+      every pine district,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a good place,&rdquo; he said to the guide, &ldquo;we'll camp here.&rdquo; Then he
+      turned up the steep bank without looking back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo!&rdquo; he called in a cheerful, unembarrassed fashion to Thorpe and
+      Charley. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat on one of the outcropping boulders and took off his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We only kill the bucks,&rdquo; replied Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like fishing, too,&rdquo; went on the boy; &ldquo;are there any here? In the pool?
+      John,&rdquo; he called to his guide, &ldquo;bring me my fishing tackle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good! he grunted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do that well,&rdquo; Thorpe remarked. &ldquo;Is it difficult?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It takes practice,&rdquo; replied the boy. &ldquo;See that riffle?&rdquo; He whipped the
+      fly lightly within six inches of a little suction hole; a fish at once
+      rose and struck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The others had been little fellows and easily handled. At the end of
+      fifteen minutes the newcomer landed a fine two-pounder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That must be fun,&rdquo; commented Thorpe. &ldquo;I never happened to get in with
+      fly-fishing. I'd like to try it sometime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try it now!&rdquo; urged the boy, enchanted that he could teach a woodsman
+      anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; Thorpe declined, &ldquo;not to-night, to-morrow perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've got quite a pantry,&rdquo; remarked Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won't you eat with me?&rdquo; proffered the boy hospitably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Thorpe declined. He could, however, see canned goods, hard tack, and
+      condensed milk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;jerking&rdquo; venison,&mdash;all these awakened
+      his enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be good to live in the woods,&rdquo; he said with a sigh, &ldquo;to do all
+      things for yourself. It's so free!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The men's moccasins interested him. He asked a dozen questions about them,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought ANY leather would wet through in the snow!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I wish I
+      could get a pair somewhere!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;You don't know where I could
+      buy any, do you?&rdquo; he asked of Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; answered he, &ldquo;perhaps Charley here will make you a pair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WILL you, Charley?&rdquo; cried the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mak' him,&rdquo; replied the Indian stolidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I just DO love this!&rdquo; he cried again and again. &ldquo;Oh, it's great, after
+      all that fuss down there!&rdquo; and he cried it so fervently that the other men
+      present smiled; but so genuinely that the smile had in it nothing but
+      kindliness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came out for a month,&rdquo; said he suddenly, &ldquo;and I guess I'll stay the
+      rest of it right here. You'll let me go with you sometimes hunting, won't
+      you?&rdquo; he appealed to them with the sudden open-heartedness of a child.
+      &ldquo;I'd like first rate to kill a deer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; said Thorpe, &ldquo;glad to have you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Wallace Carpenter,&rdquo; said the boy with a sudden unmistakable
+      air of good-breeding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; laughed Thorpe, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Harry,&rdquo; replied Wallace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the
+      nightingale of the North. Injin Charley knocked the last ashes from his
+      pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him nice boy!&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say you have lived here six weeks and only brought in what
+      you could carry on your backs!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; Thorpe replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My man Friday helps me out,&rdquo; answered Thorpe, laughingly indicating Injin
+      Charley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;cruel hard
+      work it was too&mdash;including the toting and skinning. Even the tanning
+      he had a share in. At first he wanted the hide cured, &ldquo;with the hair on.&rdquo;
+       Injin Charley explained that the fur would drop out. It was the wrong
+      season of the year for pelts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we'll have buckskin and I'll get a buckskin shirt out of it,&rdquo;
+       suggested Wallace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; he cried, a little disappointed, &ldquo;I wanted to see it done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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!&mdash;These were tremendous forces in
+      motion, here was intrigue, here was direct practical application of the
+      powers he had been playing with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, it's great! It's better than any book I ever read!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He wanted to know what he could do to help.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing except keep quiet,&rdquo; replied Thorpe, already uneasy, not lest the
+      boy should prove unreliable, but lest his very eagerness to seem
+      unconcerned should arouse suspicion. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; agreed Wallace, bubbling with excitement. &ldquo;And then what do
+      you do&mdash;after you get the timber estimated?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; commented Wallace, suddenly grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry,&rdquo; he said suddenly with a crisp decision new to his voice, &ldquo;will
+      you take a little walk with me down by the dam. I want to talk with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They strolled to the edge of the bank and stood for a moment looking at
+      the swirling waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to tell me all about logging,&rdquo; began Wallace. &ldquo;Start from the
+      beginning. Suppose, for instance, you had bought this pine here we were
+      talking about,&mdash;what would be your first move?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I am home,&rdquo; said he simply, &ldquo;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;&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young follow spoke with unexpected swiftness and earnestness. Thorpe
+      looked at him in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you are thinking,&rdquo; said the boy, flushing. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I left college at nineteen because my father died,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So have I,&rdquo; cried Thorpe, and stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The estates have not suffered,&rdquo; went on the boy simply. &ldquo;I have done well
+      with them. But,&rdquo; he cried fiercely, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have some tobacco,&rdquo; said Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wallace accepted with a nod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An expression of doubt crossed the landlooker's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh PLEASE!&rdquo; cried the boy, &ldquo;I do want to get in something real! It will
+      be the making of me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now see here,&rdquo; interposed Thorpe suddenly, &ldquo;you don't even know my name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know YOU,&rdquo; replied the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Harry Thorpe,&rdquo; pursued the other. &ldquo;My father was Henry Thorpe,
+      an embezzler.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry,&rdquo; replied Wallace soberly, &ldquo;I am sorry I made you say that. I do
+      not care for your name&mdash;except perhaps to put it in the articles of
+      partnership,&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so much as you think,&rdquo; interposed Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There remains,&rdquo; went on Wallace without attention to Thorpe's remark,
+      &ldquo;only the question of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My honesty,&rdquo; interjected Thorpe grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; cried the boy hotly, &ldquo;of your letting me in on a good thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe considered a few moments in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wallace,&rdquo; he said gravely at last, &ldquo;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;&mdash;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;Success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wallace gazed at him with fascinated admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you will?&rdquo; he asked tremulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wallace,&rdquo; he replied again, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hooray!&rdquo; cried the boy, throwing his cap up in the air. &ldquo;We'll do 'em up
+      in the first round!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm through with them,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;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,&mdash;just as keepsakes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Wallace,&rdquo; replied Thorpe, &ldquo;and much obliged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo; asked the boy anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honest Injin,&rdquo; laughed Thorpe. &ldquo;Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him nice boy,&rdquo; repeated Injin Charley, turning to his canoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Ho-o-o! DYER!&rdquo; the first repeated. &ldquo;Here's that
+      infernal comer; over here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yop!&rdquo; assented the other. &ldquo;Coming!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later he stumbled on their camp. He paused in wonder at what he
+      saw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was about to withdraw carefully lest he be discovered, when he was
+      startled by a touch on his elbow. It was Injin Charley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dey go up river,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I come see what de row.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Indian examined rapidly the condition of the little camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dey look for somethin',&rdquo; said he, making his hand revolve as though
+      rummaging, and indicating the packs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I t'ink dey see you in de woods,&rdquo; he concluded. &ldquo;Dey go camp gettum boss.
+      Boss he gone on river trail two t'ree hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're right, Charley,&rdquo; replied Thorpe, who had been drawing his own
+      conclusions. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;W'ot you do?&rdquo; asked Injin Charley curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got to get to Detroit before they do; that's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly the Indian became all action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You come,&rdquo; he ordered, and set out at a rapid pace for camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You come,&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe hastily unearthed his &ldquo;descriptions&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour after noon they repeated the rest. Thorpe rose with a certain
+      physical reluctance. The Indian seemed as fresh&mdash;or as tired&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I get to that square patch of light, I'll quit,&rdquo; he would say to
+      himself, and struggle painfully the required twenty rods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I won't quit here,&rdquo; he would continue, &ldquo;I'll make it that birch. Then
+      I'll lie down and die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You come,&rdquo; repeated the Indian, stolid as ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Boat come by to-day,&rdquo; said Injin Charley, indicating the tall stacks of a
+      mill. &ldquo;Him no stop. You mak' him stop take you with him. You get train
+      Mackinaw City tonight. Dose men, dey on dat train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he cried, all his energy returning to him. &ldquo;Here goes! We'll
+      beat him out yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You come back?&rdquo; inquired the Indian, peering with a certain anxiety into
+      his companion's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come back!&rdquo; cried Thorpe. &ldquo;You bet your hat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wait,&rdquo; replied the Indian, and was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Charley!&rdquo; shouted Thorpe in surprise. &ldquo;Come on and get a square meal,
+      anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Indian was already on his way back to the distant Ossawinamakee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The proprietor, still sleepy, was mopping out the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does that boat stop here?&rdquo; shouted Thorpe across the suds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes,&rdquo; replied the man somnolently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not always?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only when there's freight for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn't she stop for passengers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How does she know when there's freight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, they signal her from the mill&mdash;&rdquo; but Thorpe was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does the boat stop here this morning?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Weel,&rdquo; replied the engineer with fearful deliberation, &ldquo;I canna say. But
+      I hae received na orders to that effect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't you whistle her in for me?&rdquo; asked Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I canna,&rdquo; answered the engineer, promptly enough this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye're na what a body might call freight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No other way out of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Na.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe was seized with an idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;See that boulder over there? I want to ship that to
+      Mackinaw City by freight on this boat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Scotchman's eyes twinkled appreciatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm dootin' ye hae th' freight-bill from the office,&rdquo; he objected simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here,&rdquo; replied Thorpe, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Scotchman deliberated, looking aslant at the ground and thoughtfully
+      oiling a cylinder with a greasy rag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It'll na be a matter of life and death?&rdquo; he asked hopefully. &ldquo;She aye
+      stops for life and death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Thorpe reluctantly. Then with an explosion, &ldquo;Yes, by God, it
+      is! If I don't make that boat, I'll kill YOU.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Scotchman chuckled and pocketed the money. &ldquo;I'm dootin' that's in
+      order,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;I'll no be party to any such proceedin's. I'm goin'
+      noo for a fresh pail of watter,&rdquo; he remarked, pausing at the door, &ldquo;but as
+      a wee item of information: yander's th' wheestle rope; and a mon wheestles
+      one short and one long for th' boat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then with a grand free sweep she turned and headed directly for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The train was just leisurely making up for departure. Thorpe, dressed as
+      he was in old &ldquo;pepper and salt&rdquo; 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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the last thought, Thorpe decided to send a second message from the next
+      station. He did so. It read: &ldquo;Another buyer of timber on same train with
+      me. Must have money at nine o'clock or lose land.&rdquo; He paid day rates on it
+      to insure immediate delivery. Suppose the boy should be away from home!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;pepper and salt&rdquo;
+       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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is magnificent!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I thought such men had died with Cooper!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe whirled sharp on his heel and returned at once to a boarding-house
+      off Fort Street, where he had &ldquo;outfitted&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At nine o'clock neither of the partners had appeared. Thorpe entered the
+      office and approached the desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there a telegram here for Harry Thorpe?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this the desk for buying Government lands?&rdquo; he asked hurriedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the clerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have some descriptions I wish to buy in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; replied the clerk, &ldquo;what township?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morning, Mr. Smithers,&rdquo; it said with the deliberation of the
+      consciously great man. &ldquo;I have a few descriptions I would like to buy in
+      the northern peninsula.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morning, Mr. Morrison. Archie there will attend to you. Archie, see
+      what Mr. Morrison wishes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take a seat, Mr. Morrison. This gentleman is looking over these
+      townships, and will have finished in a few minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Morrison's eye suddenly became uneasy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am somewhat busy this morning,&rdquo; he objected with a shade of command in
+      his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If this gentleman&mdash;?&rdquo; suggested the clerk delicately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; put in Thorpe with brevity, &ldquo;my time, too, is valuable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Morrison looked at him sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My deal is a big one,&rdquo; he snapped. &ldquo;I can probably arrange with this
+      gentleman to let him have his farm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I claim precedence,&rdquo; replied Thorpe calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Morrison swift as light, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold on,&rdquo; he interrupted, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; shouted Morrison, assuming surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will have to await your turn, Mr. Morrison,&rdquo; said the clerk, virtuous
+      before so many witnesses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The business man was in a white rage of excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I insist on my application being filed at once!&rdquo; he cried waving his
+      check. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Morrison,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you have the amount actually with you,&rdquo; said the clerk, quite
+      respectfully, &ldquo;because if you have not, Mr. Morrison's claim will take
+      precedence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would hardly have any business in a land office, if I did not know
+      that,&rdquo; replied Thorpe, and began his dictation of the description as
+      calmly as though his inside pocket contained the required amount in bank
+      bills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;and
+      sometimes come face to face with miracles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;17 W&mdash;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&mdash;NW 49&mdash;17&mdash;8, meant the southwest
+      forty of the northwest quarter of section 8 in the township already
+      described.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clerk marked across each square of his map as Thorpe read them, the
+      date and the purchaser's name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Northwest quarter of section 8,&rdquo; he made of it four separate
+      descriptions, as follows:&mdash;Northwest quarter of northwest quarter;
+      northeast of northwest quarter; southwest of northwest quarter; and
+      southeast of northwest quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe's face lighted up as he rose to greet his partner. The boy had not
+      forgotten their compact after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it's all right?&rdquo; queried the latter breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; answered Thorpe heartily, &ldquo;got 'em in good shape.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same time he was drawing the youth beyond the vigilant watchfulness
+      of Mr. Morrison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're just in time,&rdquo; he said in an undertone. &ldquo;Never had so close a
+      squeak. I suppose you have cash or a certified check: that's all they'll
+      take here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; asked Carpenter blankly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven't you that money?&rdquo; returned Thorpe quick as a hawk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For Heaven's sake, isn't it here?&rdquo; cried Wallace in consternation. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; repeated Thorpe in his turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can we do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you get your check certified here near at hand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't you get them to wait a few minutes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wallace,&rdquo; said Thorpe, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; Smithers was saying, &ldquo;I'll give you a receipt for the amount, and
+      later will send to your address the title deeds of the descriptions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wh&mdash;what is it?&rdquo; he stammered, drawing his hand back as though from
+      a red-hot iron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You asked me for a telegram,&rdquo; said the boy stubbornly, as though trying
+      to excuse himself, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where'd you get it?&rdquo; asked Thorpe breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A fellow came here early and left it for you while I was sweeping out,&rdquo;
+       explained the boy. &ldquo;Said he had to catch a train. It's yours all right,
+      ain't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; replied Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope there's no bad news, sir?&rdquo; said the clerk, startled at the
+      paleness of the face Thorpe turned to the desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied the landlooker. &ldquo;Give me a receipt. There's a certified
+      check for your money!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet we did 'em, Wallace,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;but it looked like a hard
+      proposition for a while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How was it? Tell me about it!&rdquo; insisted the boy eagerly. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While Thorpe washed and shaved and leisurely freshened himself, he
+      detailed his experiences of the last week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; he concluded gravely, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the most exciting thing I ever heard of,&rdquo; sighed Wallace drawing a
+      full breath, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that case we couldn't have gotten hold of the money, remember,&rdquo; smiled
+      Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so.&rdquo; Wallace brightened. &ldquo;I did count, didn't I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought so about ten o'clock this morning,&rdquo; Thorpe replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo; marvelled Wallace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's always the way,&rdquo; philosophized Thorpe in reply. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We did!&rdquo; cried the boy, his enthusiasm rekindling, &ldquo;and to-night we'll
+      celebrate with the best dinner we ran buy in town!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe was tempted, but remembered the thirty dollars in his pocket, and
+      looked doubtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carpenter possessed, as part of his volatile enthusiastic temperament,
+      keen intuitions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't refuse!&rdquo; he begged. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wallace,&rdquo; said Thorpe, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on then,&rdquo; cried Wallace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to order this dinner,&rdquo; said he, handing over to Thorpe the
+      card which an impossibly correct waiter presented him. &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he
+      suggested on a sudden inspiration. &ldquo;I assure you I'll try to be just as
+      critical and exigent as she would be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe took up the card dreamily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are no oysters and clams now,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he told the waiter, &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he addressed Wallace with a little laugh, &ldquo;but it's
+      very, very good. We'll have roast beef, rare and juicy;&mdash;if you bring
+      it any way but a cooked red, I'll send it back;&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; replied the waiter, his pencil poised. &ldquo;And the wines?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe ruminated sleepily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A rich red Burgundy,&rdquo; he decided, &ldquo;for all the dinner. If your cellar
+      contains a very good smooth Beaune, we'll have that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; answered the waiter, and departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm stupid this evening, I'm afraid,&rdquo; said he, shaking himself. &ldquo;Don't
+      think on that account I am not enjoying your dinner. I believe,&rdquo; he
+      asserted earnestly, &ldquo;that I never had such an altogether comfortable,
+      happy evening before in my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; replied Wallace sympathetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems just now,&rdquo; went on Thorpe, sinking more luxuriously into his
+      armchair, &ldquo;that this alone is living&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did it ever occur to you that what you needed, when sort of tired out
+      this way,&rdquo; he said abruptly after a moment, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Thorpe, stretching his arms over his head, &ldquo;a woman would
+      have talked. It takes a friend and a man, to know when to keep silent for
+      three straight hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The waiter brought the bill on a tray, and Carpenter paid it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wallace,&rdquo; said Thorpe suddenly after a long interval, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Morrison was a smart little man with an ingratiating manner and a
+      fishy eye. He greeted Thorpe with marked geniality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My opponent of yesterday!&rdquo; he cried jocularly. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I walked across the upper peninsula, and caught a boat,&rdquo; replied Thorpe
+      briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, INDEED!&rdquo; replied Mr. Morrison, placing the tips of his fingers
+      together. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not for sale,&rdquo; answered Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;we will come to an agreement afterwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not understand me, Mr. Morrison. I told you the pine is not for
+      sale, and I mean it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely&mdash;What did you buy it for, then?&rdquo; cried Mr. Morrison, with
+      evidences of a growing excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We intend to manufacture it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Morrison's fishy eyes nearly popped out of his head. He controlled
+      himself with an effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Thorpe,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three hundred millions are not to be sneezed at,&rdquo; replied Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not,&rdquo; agreed Morrison, suavely, gaining confidence from the
+      sound of his own voice. &ldquo;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 &amp; 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that case, you will have to hunt up another locality,&rdquo; replied Thorpe
+      calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Morrison's eyes flashed. But he retained his appearance of geniality, and
+      appealed to Wallace Carpenter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you will retain the advantage of our dams and improvements,&rdquo; said
+      he. &ldquo;Is that fair?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not on the face of it,&rdquo; admitted Thorpe. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suit yourself,&rdquo; answered Thorpe carelessly. &ldquo;You can always log your
+      present holdings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; cried Morrison, so suddenly in a passion that Wallace started
+      back. &ldquo;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!&rdquo; He crisped an envelope
+      vindictively, and threw it in the waste-basket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crush ahead,&rdquo; replied Thorpe with great good humor. &ldquo;Good-day, Mr.
+      Morrison,&rdquo; and the two went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hadn't we better see a lawyer?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Oughtn't we to look out that
+      they don't take some of our pine? Oughtn't we&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You just leave all that to me,&rdquo; replied Thorpe. &ldquo;The first thing we want
+      to do is to rustle some money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you can leave THAT to ME,&rdquo; echoed Wallace. &ldquo;I know a little of such
+      things, and I have business connections who know more. You just get the
+      camp running.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll start for Bay City to-night,&rdquo; submitted Thorpe. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART3" id="link2H_PART3">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART III. THE BLAZING OF THE TRAIL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;wild, picturesque,
+      lawless. As long as the money lasts, they blow it in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hot money!&rdquo; is the cry. &ldquo;She's burnt holes in all my pockets already!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;take the town apart.&rdquo; For a time he
+      leaves rack and ruin, black eyes and broken teeth behind him, until he
+      meets a more redoubtable &ldquo;knocker&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;a l'outrance&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;pretty waiter girls.&rdquo; When the boys struck town, the proprietors and
+      waitresses stood in their doorways to welcome them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Jack!&rdquo; one would cry, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And after the first drink, Jack, of course, had to treat, and then the
+      chum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or if Jack resisted temptation and walked resolutely on, one of the girls
+      would remark audibly to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ain't no lumber-jack! You can see that easy 'nuff! He's jest off th'
+      hay-trail!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten to one that brought him, for the woodsman is above all things proud
+      and jealous of his craft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Pen,&rdquo; the &ldquo;White Row,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Water
+      Streets&rdquo; of Alpena, Port Huron, Ludington, Muskegon, and a dozen other
+      lumber towns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four bars supplied the drinkables. Dozens of &ldquo;pretty waiter girls&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third story contained a dance hall and a theater. The character of
+      both would better be left to the imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Night after night during the season, this den ran at top-steam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;blown-in,&rdquo; the last bitter dregs of his
+      pleasure gulped down, the shanty boy would again start for the woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Now in August, however, the first turmoil had died. The &ldquo;jam&rdquo; had boiled
+      into town, &ldquo;taken it apart,&rdquo; and left the inhabitants to piece it together
+      again as they could; the &ldquo;rear&rdquo; had not yet arrived. As a consequence,
+      Thorpe found the city comparatively quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;stagged&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;behind
+      which pressed the full power of the freshet,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One old fellow, a good deal of a character in his way, used to be on the
+      &ldquo;drive&rdquo; for a firm lumbering near Six Lakes. He was intensely loyal to his
+      &ldquo;Old Fellows,&rdquo; and every time he got a little &ldquo;budge&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;corks&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his fighting blood was not all spilled. He raided the butcher-shop,
+      seized the big carving knife, and returned to the battle field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The enemy decamped&mdash;rapidly&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning, weak from the combined effects of war and whisky, he
+      reported to headquarters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, Dan?&rdquo; asked the Old Fellow without turning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I come to get my time,&rdquo; replied the riverman humbly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What for?&rdquo; inquired the lumberman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been over to Howard City,&rdquo; confessed Dan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The owner turned and looked him over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They sort of got ahead of me a little,&rdquo; explained Dan sheepishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lumberman took stock of the old man's cuts and bruises, and turned
+      away to hide a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I'll let you off this trip,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Go to work&mdash;when you
+      can. I don't believe you'll go back there again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; replied Dan humbly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so the life of alternate work and pleasure, both full of personal
+      danger, develops in time a class of men whose like is to 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;jam,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;hung out&rdquo; between bursts of
+      prosperity. In the first of these Thorpe was helped materially in his
+      vague and uncertain quest by encountering an old acquaintance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;cork&rdquo; shoes, and broad
+      belt typical of his craft. In the aggressor Thorpe recognized old Jackson
+      Hines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damn you!&rdquo; cried the old man, qualifying the oath, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll settle with you in the morning, Jackson,&rdquo; laughed the riverman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You want to eat a good breakfast, then, because you won't have no
+      appetite for dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The men roared, with encouraging calls. The riverman put on a ludicrous
+      appearance of offended dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you needn't swell up like a poisoned pup!&rdquo; cried old Jackson
+      plaintively, ceasing his attacks from sheer weariness. &ldquo;You know you're as
+      safe as a cow tied to a brick wall behind that table.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe seized the opportunity to approach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Jackson,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man peered at him out of the blur of his excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you know me?&rdquo; inquired Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Them lamps gives 'bout as much light as a piece of chalk,&rdquo; complained
+      Jackson testily. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been landlooking in the upper peninsula,&rdquo; explained Thorpe, &ldquo;on the
+      Ossawinamakee, up in the Marquette country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sho'&rdquo; commented Jackson in wonder, &ldquo;way up there where the moon changes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a fine country,&rdquo; went on Thorpe so everyone could hear, &ldquo;with a
+      great cutting of white pine. It runs as high as twelve hundred thousand to
+      the forty sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trees clean an' free of limbs?&rdquo; asked Jackson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're as good as the stuff over on seventeen; you remember that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clean as a baby's leg,&rdquo; agreed Jackson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have a glass of beer?&rdquo; asked Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dry as a tobacco box,&rdquo; confessed Hines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have something, the rest of you?&rdquo; invited Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they all drank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jackson listened attentively to the other's brief recital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you see Tim Shearer? He ain't doin' nothin' since the jam came
+      down,&rdquo; was his comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't he with the M. &amp; D. people?&rdquo; asked Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nope. Quit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How's that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'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.
+      &ldquo;'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.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tim didn't hit him; but I guess he felt like th' man who met the bear
+      without any weapon,&mdash;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. &amp; D. right along. Somethin's behind it all, I reckon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where'll I find him?&rdquo; asked Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The boarding-house proved to be of the typical lumber-jack class, a narrow
+      &ldquo;stoop,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;cork&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, bub,&rdquo; finally drawled a voice from the corner, &ldquo;blowed that stake
+      you made out of Radway, yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you, Shearer?&rdquo; inquired Thorpe advancing. &ldquo;You're the man I'm
+      looking for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've found me,&rdquo; replied the old man dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe was requested elaborately to &ldquo;shake hands&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a little pine up in the northern peninsula within walking distance
+      of Marquette,&rdquo; said Thorpe, &ldquo;and I want to get a crew of about twenty men.
+      It occurred to me that you might be willing to help me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The riverman frowned steadily at his interlocutor from under his bushy
+      brows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much pine you got?&rdquo; he asked finally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About three hundred millions,&rdquo; replied Thorpe quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man's blue eyes fixed themselves with unwavering steadiness on
+      Thorpe's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're jobbing some of it, eh?&rdquo; he submitted finally as the only probable
+      conclusion. &ldquo;Do you think you know enough about it? Who does it belong
+      to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It belongs to a man named Carpenter and myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The riverman pondered this slowly for an appreciable interval, and then
+      shot out another question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How'd you get it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe told him simply, omitting nothing except the name of the firm
+      up-river. When he had finished, Shearer evinced no astonishment nor
+      approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You done well,&rdquo; he commented finally. Then after another interval:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you found out who was the men stealin' the pine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Thorpe quietly, &ldquo;it was Morrison &amp; Daly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man flickered not an eyelid. He slowly filled his pipe and lit it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll get you a crew of men,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;if you'll take me as foreman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it's a little job at first,&rdquo; protested Thorpe. &ldquo;I only want a camp of
+      twenty. It wouldn't be worth your while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's my look-out. I'll take th' job,&rdquo; replied the logger grimly. &ldquo;You
+      got three hundred million there, ain't you? And you're goin' to cut it? It
+      ain't such a small job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's th' way to talk!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How could he know what to buy,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deep in these thoughts, he wandered on at random. He suddenly came to
+      himself in the toughest quarter of Bay City.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo; asked the latter finally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The creature made no reply, but drew his arms closer about his instrument,
+      and blinked his wolf eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moved by some strange, half-tolerant whim of compassion, Thorpe made a
+      sign to the unknown to rise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come with me,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and I'll have your forehead attended to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wolf eyes gleamed into his with a sudden savage concentration. Then
+      their owner obediently arose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he attempted to interrogate his find.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is your name?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Phil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Phil what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you get hurt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you playing your fiddle in one of those houses?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cripple nodded slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you hungry?&rdquo; asked Thorpe, with a sudden thoughtfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the cripple, with a lightning gleam in his wolf eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe rang the bell. To the boy who answered it he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring me half a dozen beef sandwiches and a glass of milk, and be quick
+      about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you play the fiddle much?&rdquo; continued Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cripple nodded again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's hear what you can do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They cut my strings!&rdquo; cried Phil with a passionate wail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cry came from the heart, and Thorpe was touched by it. The price of
+      strings was evidently a big sum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll get you more in the morning,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Would you like to leave Bay
+      City?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; cried the boy with passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do it,&rdquo; said the cripple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will do it!&rdquo; repeated the cripple with a shade more earnestness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, then I'll take you,&rdquo; replied Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little later Thorpe interviewed the proprietor of the hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you'd give this boy a good cheap room and charge his keep to me,&rdquo;
+       said he. &ldquo;He's going north with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Phil was led away by the irreverent porter, hugging tightly his unstrung
+      violin to his bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe lay awake for some time after retiring. Phil claimed a share of his
+      thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Three weeks later the steam barge Pole Star sailed down the reach of
+      Saginaw Bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The blacksmith is also a good wood-butcher (carpenter),&rdquo; explained
+      Shearer. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;cocky&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;You're the boss, but I'm as good a
+      man as you any day.&rdquo; They would be a rough, turbulent, unruly mob to
+      handle, but under a strong man they might accomplish wonders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Constituting the elite of the profession, as it were,&mdash;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 &ldquo;bully boys&rdquo; was
+      truly the aristocracy of class,&mdash;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 &ldquo;Old Fellows&rdquo;; 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 &ldquo;that winter in
+      '81 when the Old Fellows put in sixty million on Flat River.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;young fellow had
+      sand enough for a lake front.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;make a camp&rdquo; in spite of the big concern
+      up-river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shearer knew that this attitude was tentative. Everything depended on how
+      well Thorpe lived up to his reputation at the outset,&mdash;how good a
+      first impression of force and virility he would manage to convey,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little incident at the beginning of the voyage did much to reassure him.
+      It was on the old question of whisky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very beautiful; isn't it, Phil?&rdquo; said Thorpe after a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the Heart Song of the Sea,&rdquo; replied the cripple in a hushed voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe looked down surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who told you that?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Heart Song of the Sea,&rdquo; he repeated gropingly. &ldquo;I don't know ...I
+      play it,&rdquo; and he made the motion of drawing a bow across strings, &ldquo;very
+      still and low.&rdquo; And this was all Thorpe's question could elicit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your Song,&rdquo; said the cripple timidly, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has your violin a song of its own?&rdquo; queried the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo; and he drew
+      nearer Thorpe and touched his arm&mdash;&ldquo;that day will be very bad for me.
+      I lose something.&rdquo; His eyes of the wistful dog were big and wondering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Queer little Phil!&rdquo; cried Thorpe laughing whimsically. &ldquo;Who tells you
+      these things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody,&rdquo; said the cripple dreamily, &ldquo;they come when it is like to-night.
+      In Bay City they do not come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment a third voice broke in on them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it's you, Mr. Thorpe,&rdquo; said the captain of the vessel. &ldquo;Thought it
+      was some of them lumber-jacks, and I was going to fire 'em below. Fine
+      night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is that,&rdquo; answered Thorpe, again the cold, unresponsive man of
+      reticence. &ldquo;When do you expect to get in, Captain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About to-morrow noon,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's her,&rdquo; said the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &amp; 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 &amp; Daly owned
+      the pier itself, the land on which it abutted belonged to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Catch this line!&rdquo; sung out the mate, hurling the coil of a handline on
+      the wharf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one moved, and the little rope, after a moment, slid overboard with a
+      splash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain, with a curse, signalled full speed astern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Captain Morse!&rdquo; cried Dyer, stepping forward. &ldquo;My orders are that you are
+      to land here nothing but M. &amp; D. merchandise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a right to land,&rdquo; answered Thorpe. &ldquo;The shore belongs to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This dock doesn't,&rdquo; retorted the other sharply, &ldquo;and you can't set foot
+      on her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have no legal status. You had no business building in the first place&mdash;&rdquo;
+       began Thorpe, and then stopped with a choke of anger at the futility of
+      arguing legality in such a case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;thrown him a heavy iron belaying
+      pin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of the crew received the mooring lines. All was ready for
+      disembarkation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quit it!&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;Let them go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The men grumbled. One or two were inclined to be openly rebellious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I hear another peep out of you,&rdquo; said Thorpe to these latter, &ldquo;you can
+      climb right aboard and take the return trip.&rdquo; He looked them in the eye
+      until they muttered, and then went on: &ldquo;Now, we've got to get unloaded and
+      our goods ashore before those fellows report to camp. Get right moving,
+      and hustle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't think this is so funny when you get in the law-courts!&rdquo; he
+      shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe made no reply. &ldquo;I guess we'll keep even,&rdquo; he muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the jumping Moses,&rdquo; snarled Scotty Parsons turning in threat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scotty!&rdquo; said Thorpe sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep the men at it, Tim,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No trouble from above, boys?&rdquo; asked Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nary trouble,&rdquo; they replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you like it, Tim?&rdquo; asked Thorpe that evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's all right,&rdquo; replied the riverman with emphasis; which, for him, was
+      putting it strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Injin Charley looked up and grunted as Thorpe approached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How are you, Charley?&rdquo; greeted Thorpe reticently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You gettum pine? Good!&rdquo; replied Charley in the same tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all; for strong men never talk freely of what is in their hearts.
+      There is no need; they understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXXI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Two months passed away. Winter set in. The camp was built and inhabited.
+      Routine had established itself, and all was going well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first move of the M. &amp; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this Thorpe agreed. Baker, the walking-boss, tried to get him to sign a
+      contract to that effect. Thorpe refused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave your dock where it is and use it when you want to,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I'll
+      agree not to interfere as long as you people behave yourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;roads
+      which could be extended in years to come&mdash;while another million could
+      be travoyed directly to the landing from its immediate vicinity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We won't skid them,&rdquo; said Tim. &ldquo;We'll haul from the stump to the bank.
+      And we'll tackle only a snowroad proposition:&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Phil,&rdquo; he said to himself. &ldquo;He has the musical soul without even the
+      musical ear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day, while passing out of the cook camp he addressed one of the men:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Billy,&rdquo; he inquired, &ldquo;how do you like your fiddler?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All RIGHT!&rdquo; replied Billy with emphasis. &ldquo;She's got some go to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the pine log. The
+      banks grew daily. Everybody was safe and sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe listened to his vague objections in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he remarked simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day he touched the man on the shoulder just as he was starting to
+      work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Step into the office and get your time,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo; asked the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't need you any longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two entered the little office. Thorpe looked through the ledger and
+      van book, and finally handed the man his slip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do I get this?&rdquo; asked the teamster, looking at it uncertainly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the bank in Marquette,&rdquo; replied Thorpe without glancing around.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I got to go 'way up to Marquette?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; replied Thorpe briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's going to pay my fare south?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are. You can get work at Marquette.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That ain't a fair shake,&rdquo; cried the man excitedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll have no growlers in this camp,&rdquo; said Thorpe with decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By God!&rdquo; cried the man, &ldquo;you damned&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You get out of here!&rdquo; cried Thorpe with a concentrated blaze of energetic
+      passion that made the fellow step back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't goin' to get on the wrong side of the law by foolin' with this
+      office,&rdquo; cried the other at the door, &ldquo;but if I had you outside for a
+      minute&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave this office!&rdquo; shouted Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;S'pose you make me!&rdquo; challenged the man insolently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to see you around here again!&rdquo; shouted Thorpe after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then in a moment he returned to the office and sat down overcome with
+      contrition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might have been murder!&rdquo; he told himself, awe-stricken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, as it happened, nothing could have turned out better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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;&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Red Jacket, the teamster of the sorrels, one day was credited with 11,000
+      feet; while Long Pine Jim and Rollway Charley had put in but 10,500 and
+      10,250 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid I didn't give you a very good team, Jimmy,&rdquo; said he, and
+      passed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wallace made one visit before the big snows came, and was charmed. He ate
+      with gusto of the &ldquo;salt-horse,&rdquo; 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 Charley. 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 &amp; Daly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;hopeless, but glorious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;for his strength was not great&mdash;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,&mdash;something uncanny, and something indefinably
+      beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXXII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &amp; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tim Shearer found that the gate at the dam above had been closed. The man
+      in charge had simply obeyed orders. He supposed M. &amp; D. wished to back
+      up the water for their own logs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tim indulged in some picturesque language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ain't got no right to close off more'n enough to leave us th' nat'ral
+      flow unless by agreement,&rdquo; he concluded, and opened the gates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it was a question of breaking the jam. This had to be done by pulling
+      out or chopping through certain &ldquo;key&rdquo; logs which locked the whole mass.
+      Men stood under the face of imminent ruin&mdash;over them a frowning sheer
+      wall of bristling logs, behind which pressed the weight of the rising
+      waters&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time Thorpe went back with Shearer. No one was at the dam, but the
+      gates were closed. The two opened them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That very evening a man rode up on horseback inquiring for Mr. Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm he,&rdquo; said the young fellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &amp; Daly,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe called his foreman. The latter read the injunction attentively
+      through a pair of steel-bowed spectacles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what you going to do?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of all the consummate gall!&rdquo; exploded Thorpe. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you're all right, ain't ye?&rdquo; inquired Tim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It'll be the middle of summer before we get a hearing in court,&rdquo; said he.
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He arose and began to pace back and forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tim,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;is there a man in the crew who's afraid of nothing and
+      will obey orders?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dozen,&rdquo; replied Tim promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's the best?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scotty Parsons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask him to step here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment the man entered the office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scotty,&rdquo; said Thorpe, &ldquo;I want you to understand that I stand responsible
+      for whatever I order you to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, sir,&rdquo; replied the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the morning,&rdquo; said Thorpe, &ldquo;you take two men and build some sort of a
+      shack right over the sluice-gate of that second dam,&mdash;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet,&rdquo; answered Scotty with enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; concluded Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get out!&rdquo; was his first and last word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Thorpe was summoned legally on two counts. First, Judge Sherman cited
+      him for contempt of court. Second, Morrison &amp; Daly sued him for
+      alleged damages in obstructing their drive by holding open the dam-sluice
+      beyond the legal head of water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXXIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So it was that Helen Thorpe saw him first, and came fluttering to meet
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Harry! What a surprise!&rdquo; she cried, and flung her arms about his neck
+      to kiss him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do, Helen,&rdquo; he replied sedately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;and talked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How have you done, Harry?&rdquo; she inquired anxiously. &ldquo;Your letters have
+      been so vague.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty well,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;If things go right, I hope some day to have a
+      better place for you than this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry,&rdquo; she said quietly, &ldquo;can't you take me away from Mrs. Renwick's
+      this year?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know, Helen. I can't tell yet. Not just now, at any rate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;you don't know what you're doing. I tell you I can't
+      STAND Mrs. Renwick any longer.&rdquo; She calmed herself with an effort, and
+      went on more quietly. &ldquo;Really, Harry, she's awfully disagreeable. If you
+      can't afford to keep me anywhere else&mdash;&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;I know you've worked hard, Harry
+      dear,&rdquo; she said with a sudden sympathy, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you'd better wait, Helen,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And in the meantime stay with Mrs. Renwick?&rdquo; flashed Helen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I hope it will not have to be for very long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long do you think, Harry?&rdquo; pleaded the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That depends on circumstances,&rdquo; replied Thorpe
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry,&rdquo; she ventured after a time, &ldquo;why not write to Uncle Amos?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe stopped and looked at her searchingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't mean that, Helen,&rdquo; he said, drawing a long breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why not?&rdquo; she persisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who would have done any different? If you had a brother and discovered
+      that he had&mdash;appropriated&mdash;most all the money of a concern of
+      which you were president, wouldn't you think it your duty to have him
+      arrested?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; cried Thorpe suddenly excited. &ldquo;Never! If he was my brother, I'd
+      help him, even if he'd committed murder!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We differ there,&rdquo; replied the girl coldly. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will do nothing of the kind,&rdquo; commanded Thorpe sternly. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl did not reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe stared after her in hurt astonishment. Mrs. Renwick sniffed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That afternoon the latter estimable lady attempted to reprove Miss Helen,
+      and was snubbed; she persisted, and an open quarrel ensued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not be dictated to by you, Mrs. Renwick,&rdquo; said Helen, &ldquo;and I don't
+      intend to have you interfere in any way with my family affairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They won't stand MUCH investigation,&rdquo; replied Mrs. Renwick, goaded out of
+      her placidity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And to think, just to THINK that he let that woman insult me so, and
+      didn't say a word!&rdquo; cried Helen to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Helen,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have made arrangements for some money. What would you
+      like to do this year?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to Uncle Amos's,&rdquo; she replied distinctly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; asked Thorpe incredulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer she pointed to a letter lying open on the table. Thorpe took it
+      and read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Niece:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aff. your uncle,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amos Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;New York, June 6, 1883.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On finishing the last paragraph the reader crumpled the letter and threw
+      it into the grate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry you did that, Helen,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;but I don't blame you, and it
+      can't be helped. We won't need to take advantage of his 'kind offer' now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I intend to do so, however,&rdquo; replied the girl coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;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&mdash;caress,&rdquo; she fairly sobbed out the last
+      word. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know that is not true, Helen,&rdquo; he replied, almost sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It IS true!&rdquo; she asseverated, &ldquo;and I'm THROUGH!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a little hard,&rdquo; said Thorpe passing his hand wearily before his
+      eyes, &ldquo;to work hard this way for years, and then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed with a hard little note of scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Helen,&rdquo; said Thorpe with new energy, &ldquo;I forbid you to have anything to do
+      with Amos Thorpe. I think he is a scoundrel and a sneak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What grounds have you to think so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None,&rdquo; he confessed, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall do as I please,&rdquo; she replied, crossing her hands behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe's eyes darkened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have talked this over a great many times,&rdquo; he warned, &ldquo;and you've
+      always agreed with me. Remember, you owe something to the family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most of the family seem to owe something,&rdquo; she replied with a flippant
+      laugh. &ldquo;I'm sure I didn't choose the family. If I had, I'd have picked out
+      a better one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may take your choice, Helen,&rdquo; he said formally. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They faced each other with the cool, deadly glance of the race, so similar
+      in appearance but so unlike in nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I, too, offer you a home, such as it is,&rdquo; repeated the man. &ldquo;Choose!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The choice was made. He turned and went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXXIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;again as
+      in his business,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid we have no show,&rdquo; he replied to Thorpe's question. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Thorpe, &ldquo;they can't prove much damage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't expect that they will be able to procure a very heavy judgment,&rdquo;
+       replied Northrop. &ldquo;The facts I shall be able to adduce will cut down
+      damages. But the costs will be very heavy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; agreed Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; then pursued Northrop with a dry smile, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's it,&rdquo; nodded Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In other words, it's a case for compromise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just what I wanted to get at,&rdquo; said Thorpe with satisfaction. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; answered Northrop without hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Provided suit is brought within six years of the time the trespass was
+      committed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good! Now see here. These M. &amp; 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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would do very well indeed,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; responded Thorpe, &ldquo;but I can get it; and I can pick up witnesses
+      from the woodsmen as to the cutting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There ought to be about eight or ten million,&rdquo; guessed Thorpe after an
+      instant's silence, &ldquo;worth in the stump anywhere from sixteen to twenty
+      thousand dollars. It would cost me only eight hundred to buy it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I think not,&rdquo; replied Thorpe. &ldquo;I'll just hold it back as a sort of
+      club to keep them in line.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXXV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Five years passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the four years in which the Morrison &amp; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &amp; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're altogether too confounded anxious to help us on that freight,
+      Wallace,&rdquo; said Thorpe wrinkling his brow uneasily. &ldquo;I don't like it. It
+      isn't natural.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; laughed Wallace, &ldquo;neither is it natural for a dog to draw a sledge.
+      But he does it&mdash;when he has to. They're afraid of you, Harry: that's
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe shook his head, but had to acknowledge that he could evidence no
+      grounds for his mistrust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't care if I get in only two thousand feet this winter, and if a boy
+      does that,&rdquo; he answered Shearer's expostulations, &ldquo;it's got to be a good
+      boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Thorpe's One.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;grub.&rdquo; As they were authorities, others perforce had to accept the
+      dictum. There grew a desire among the better class to see what Thorpe's
+      &ldquo;One&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;push&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can do it, John,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see how you dare risk it, after that Cass Branch deal, Mr.
+      Thorpe,&rdquo; replied Radway, almost brokenly. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll call it a deal, then,&rdquo; answered Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe, however, spent a little money&mdash;not much&mdash;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
+      &ldquo;bedroom&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;put in&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of these men Thorpe demanded one thing&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The procedure was very simple. Thorpe never explained his reasons even to
+      Shearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask Tom to step in a moment,&rdquo; he requested of the latter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tom,&rdquo; he said to that individual, &ldquo;I think I can use you better at Four.
+      Report to Kerlie there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;with the exception
+      always of Tim Shearer and Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they were loyal. It was a point of honor with them to stay &ldquo;until the
+      last dog was hung.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Fighting Forty.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;for his mother was of old New
+      England stock&mdash;gave to him in the course of six years' striving a
+      sort of daily and familiar religion to which he conformed his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;personal comfort,
+      inclination, affection, desire, love of ease, individual liking,&mdash;was
+      bad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do, Charley,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do,&rdquo; replied Charley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They filled pipes and smoked. At rare intervals one of them made a remark,
+      tersely,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Catch um three beaver las' week,&rdquo; remarked Charley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good haul,&rdquo; commented Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw a mink track by the big boulder,&rdquo; offered Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;H'm!&rdquo; responded Charley in a long-drawn falsetto whine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;none
+      worse&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a shame, so it is, doggies!&rdquo; he laughed at the tried pack. &ldquo;We'll
+      get one to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXXVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or he could do as many other firms have done; start on borrowed money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;bunks,&rdquo; 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&mdash;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,&mdash;even in the
+      railroad districts,&mdash;but the locomotive now does the heavy work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;dump&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've sot up nights with her,&rdquo; said Herrick, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe looked out of the window, tapping his desk slowly with the end of a
+      lead pencil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Collins,&rdquo; said he to the bookkeeper, without raising his voice or
+      altering his position, &ldquo;make out Herrick's time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man stood there astonished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I had hard luck, sir,&rdquo; he expostulated. &ldquo;She'll go all right now, I
+      think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe turned and looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Herrick,&rdquo; he said, not unkindly, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I had&mdash;&rdquo; began the man once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ask every man to succeed in what I give him to do,&rdquo; interrupted Thorpe.
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man stood puzzling over this logic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't got any other job,&rdquo; he ventured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can go to piling on the docks,&rdquo; replied Thorpe, &ldquo;if you want to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Wallace, I didn't know you were coming!&rdquo; began Thorpe, and stopped.
+      The boy, usually so fresh and happily buoyant, looked ten years older.
+      Wrinkles had gathered between his eyes. &ldquo;Why, what's the matter?&rdquo; cried
+      Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose swiftly and shut the door into the outer office. Wallace seated
+      himself mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything! everything!&rdquo; he said in despair. &ldquo;I've been a fool! I've been
+      blind!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So bitter was his tone that Thorpe was startled. The lumberman sat down on
+      the other side of the desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll do, Wallace,&rdquo; he said sharply. &ldquo;Tell me briefly what is the
+      matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been speculating!&rdquo; burst out the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said his partner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the name of Carpenter is so old-established, so honorable!&rdquo; cried the
+      unhappy boy, &ldquo;and my sister!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easy!&rdquo; warned Thorpe. &ldquo;Being penniless isn't the worst thing that can
+      happen to a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but I am in debt,&rdquo; went on the boy more calmly. &ldquo;I have given notes.
+      When they come due, I'm a goner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much?&rdquo; asked Thorpe laconically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirty thousand dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you have that amount in this firm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you want it, you can have it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wallace considered a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would leave me without a cent,&rdquo; he replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it would save your commercial honor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry,&rdquo; cried Wallace suddenly, &ldquo;couldn't this firm go on my note for
+      thirty thousand more? Its credit is good, and that amount would save my
+      margins.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are partner,&rdquo; replied Thorpe, &ldquo;your signature is as good as mine in
+      this firm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you know I wouldn't do it without your consent,&rdquo; replied Wallace
+      reproachfully. &ldquo;Oh, Harry!&rdquo; cried the boy, &ldquo;when you needed the amount, I
+      let you have it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you'll never have to pay it,&rdquo; assured Wallace eagerly. &ldquo;If I can save
+      my margins, I'll be all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man has to figure on paying whatever he puts his signature to,&rdquo;
+       asserted Thorpe. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew you'd help me out. Now it's all right,&rdquo; said Wallace, with a
+      relieved air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe shook his head. He was already trying to figure how to increase his
+      cut to thirty million feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do it,&rdquo; he muttered to himself, after Wallace had gone out to visit
+      the mill. &ldquo;I've been demanding success of others for a good many years;
+      now I'll demand it of myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART4" id="link2H_PART4">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART IV. THORPE'S DREAM GIRL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0037" id="link2HCH0037">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXXVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;and wondered how he had ever accomplished
+      it! He confessed that it should be finished as it had begun,&mdash;and
+      could not discover in himself the Titan who had watched over its
+      inception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;regions
+      hitherto practically untouched,&mdash;by the men in the four camps inland.
+      Camp One and Camp Three could attend to section nine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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&mdash;dream on&mdash;vaguely, comfortably, sweetly&mdash;dream of
+      the summer&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe, with a mighty and impatient effort, snapped the silken cords
+      asunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord, Lord!&rdquo; he cried impatiently. &ldquo;What's coming to me? I must be a
+      little off my feed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glad it isn't the busy season!&rdquo; he commented to himself. &ldquo;Here, I must
+      quit this! Guess it's the warm weather. I'll get down to the mill for a
+      day or two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;bust.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;when the men sang, and the night-wind rose and
+      died in the hemlock tops&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;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!&mdash;we'll range the wild woods o'er while a-lumbering we go.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Here was the bold unabashed front of the pioneer, here was absolute
+      certainty in the superiority of his calling,&mdash;absolute scorn of all
+      others. Thorpe passed his hand across his brow. The same spirit was once
+      fully and freely his.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;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!&mdash;we'll range the wild woods o'er while a-lumbering we go!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A single voice, clear and high, struck into a quick measure:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      And then with a rattle and crash the whole Fighting Forty shrieked out the
+      chorus:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Bung yer eye! bung yer eye!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Active, alert, prepared for any emergency that might arise; hearty, ready
+      for everything, from punching bulls to felling trees&mdash;that was
+      something like! Thorpe despised himself. The song went on.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      And again as before the Fighting Forty howled truculently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bung yer eye! bung yer eye!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;all these he had checked
+      off approvingly. Here now was the idea of the Mate. Somewhere for each of
+      them was a &ldquo;Kitty,&rdquo; a &ldquo;daisy Sunday best-day girl&rdquo;; 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,&mdash;would
+      have symbolized however rudely, companionship and the human delight of
+      acting a part before a woman.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;I took her to a dance one night,
+     A mossback gave the bidding&mdash;
+   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.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      And with the increasing war and turmoil of the quick water the last shout
+      of the Fighting Forty mingled faintly and was lost.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Bung yer eye! bung yer eye!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe found himself at the edge of the woods facing a little glade into
+      which streamed the radiance of a full moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0038" id="link2HCH0038">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;the color of
+      corn-silk, but finer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet these words meant nothing. A painter might have caught her charm,
+      but he must needs be a poet as well,&mdash;and a great poet, one capable
+      of grandeurs and subtleties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;eagerly&mdash;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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dared not look. At length he turned and stumbled back through the
+      moonlit forest crying on his old gods in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, faint but clear down the current of a chance breeze drifted the
+      chorus of the Fighting Forty.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks, God,&rdquo; said he briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0039" id="link2HCH0039">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXXIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Curiosity, speculation, longing,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;most would say by accident,&mdash;he
+      saw her again. It was near the &ldquo;pole trail&rdquo;; which was less like a trail
+      than a rail-fence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For when the snows are deep and snowshoes not the property of every man
+      who cares to journey, the old-fashioned &ldquo;pole trail&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;just standing there&mdash;but the
+      awe of the forest was in her wide, clear eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great sweet feeling clutched the young man's throat again. But while
+      the other,&mdash;the vision of the frost-work glade and the spirit-like
+      figure of silence,&mdash;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,&mdash;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&mdash;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. &ldquo;Ah, God! Ah, God!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he saw her again from the shelter of the pole trail, he dared not,
+      and so stood there prey to a novel sensation,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment she had reached the fringe of brush about the pole trail. They
+      stood face to face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think you stare a little rudely&mdash;Mr. Thorpe?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0040" id="link2HCH0040">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, moon of my soul! light of my life!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you know my name?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She planted both elbows on the Norway and framed her little face
+      deliciously with her long pointed hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Mr. Harry Thorpe can ask that question,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;he is not quite
+      so impolite as I had thought him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you don't stop pouting your lips, I shall kiss them!&rdquo; cried Harry&mdash;to
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is that?&rdquo; he inquired breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you know who I am?&rdquo; she asked in return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A goddess, a beautiful woman!&rdquo; he answered ridiculously enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked straight at him. This time his gaze dropped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a friend of Elizabeth Carpenter, who is Wallace Carpenter's sister,
+      who I believe is Mr. Harry Thorpe's partner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, heart o' mine, what clear, pure eyes she has! How they look at a man
+      to drown his soul!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which, even had it been spoken, was hardly the comment one would have
+      expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I never received the letter. I'm so sorry,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;It must be at
+      the mill. You see, I've been up in the woods for nearly a month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we'll have to forgive you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I should think they would have done something for you at the mill&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, we didn't come by way of your mill. We drove from Marquette.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; cried Thorpe, enlightened. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she replied, dropping her hands and straightening her erect figure.
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; she cried impatiently, sweeping aside to leave a way clear,
+      &ldquo;you shall meet my friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe imagined she referred to the rest of the tenting party. He
+      hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am hardly in fit condition,&rdquo; he objected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed, parting her red lips. &ldquo;You are extremely picturesque just as
+      you are,&rdquo; she said with rather embarrassing directness. &ldquo;I wouldn't have
+      you any different for the world. But my friends don't mind. They are used
+      to it.&rdquo; She laughed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then suddenly they were among the pines, and the air was cool, the vista
+      dim, and the bird songs inconceivably far away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl walked directly to the foot of a pine three feet through, and
+      soaring up an inconceivable distance through the still twilight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is Jimmy,&rdquo; said she gravely. &ldquo;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,&rdquo; she confided, suiting the action to the word, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Harry?&rdquo; asked Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought one in a woods was quite sufficient,&rdquo; she replied with the
+      least little air of impertinence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you name them such common, everyday names?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+       she begged with an appearance of the utmost anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;that he was losing his cause outright for lack
+      of a ready word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think you had better come with me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Make your call
+      and be forgiven on your own account. I don't want to drag you in at my
+      chariot wheels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. I'll come this afternoon,&rdquo; Thorpe had replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love her, I must have her. I must go&mdash;at once,&rdquo; his soul had
+      cried, &ldquo;quick&mdash;now&mdash;before I kiss her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How strong he is,&rdquo; she said to herself, &ldquo;how brave-looking; how honest!
+      He is different from the other men. He is magnificent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0041" id="link2HCH0041">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XLI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 three Indian guides. They inhabited tents, which
+      made quite a little encampment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Simple things enough they were to do&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do, Mrs. Cary,&rdquo; he would say. &ldquo;Nice weather. Enjoying yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On receiving the reply he would answer heartily, &ldquo;That's good!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing to interest you,&rdquo; he affirmed. &ldquo;We're just cutting roads now. You
+      ought to be here for the drive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'd like to hear him,&rdquo; cried Elizabeth Carpenter. &ldquo;Can't you get him
+      to sing for us, Mr. Thorpe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe went to the men's camp, where he singled out the unfortunate
+      lumber-jack in question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, Archie,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The ladies want to hear you sing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man objected, refused, pleaded, and finally obeyed what amounted to a
+      command. Thorpe reentered the office with triumph, his victim in tow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is Archie Harris,&rdquo; he announced heartily. &ldquo;He's our best singer just
+      now. Take a chair, Archie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man perched on the edge of the chair and looked straight out before
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do sing for us, won't you, Mr. Harris?&rdquo; requested Mrs. Cary in her
+      sweetest tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man said nothing, nor moved a muscle, but turned a brick-red. An
+      embarrassed silence of expectation ensued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hit her up, Archie,&rdquo; encouraged Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't much in practice no how,&rdquo; objected the man in a little voice,
+      without moving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure you'll find us very appreciative,&rdquo; said Elizabeth Carpenter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give us a song, Archie, let her go,&rdquo; urged Thorpe impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; replied the man very meekly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The audience listened politely. When the song was finished it murmured
+      faint thanks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, give us 'Jack Haggerty,' Archie,&rdquo; urged Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;and Mrs. Cary&mdash;had allotted Hilda to his care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are more beautiful than the sea at night,&rdquo; he said directly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The others laughed. &ldquo;There's sincerity for you, Miss Hilda,&rdquo; said young
+      Mr. Morton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is he?&rdquo; asked the girl after they had moved
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our chore-boy,&rdquo; answered Thorpe with great brevity, for he was thinking
+      of something much more important.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the rest of the party had gone ahead, leaving them sauntering more
+      slowly down the trail, he gave it voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you come to the pine grove any more?&rdquo; he asked bluntly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; countered Hilda in the manner of women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to see you there. I want to talk with you. I can't talk with all
+      that crowd around.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll come to-morrow,&rdquo; she said&mdash;then with a little mischievous
+      laugh, &ldquo;if that'll make you talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must think I'm awfully stupid,&rdquo; agreed Thorpe bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, no! Ah, no!&rdquo; she protested softly. &ldquo;You must not say that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; he replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;the only voice in the
+      wilderness. In the heart of the man, too, a little voice raised itself
+      alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart!&rdquo; it breathed over and over again.
+      After a while he said it gently in a half voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, hush!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;You must not. It
+      is not right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0042" id="link2HCH0042">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XLII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some interest that I haven't been able to make out yet has been hammering
+      our stocks down day after day,&rdquo; he wrote. &ldquo;I don't understand it, for the
+      stocks are good&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat down on a log. Hilda turned to him with her graceful air of
+      confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now talk to me,&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; replied Thorpe in a practical tone of voice, &ldquo;what do you
+      want me to talk about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shot a swift, troubled glance at him, concluded herself mistaken, and
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me about what you do up here&mdash;your life&mdash;all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo; replied Thorpe formally, &ldquo;we haven't much to interest a girl
+      like you. It is a question of saw logs with us&rdquo;&mdash;and he went on in
+      his dryest, most technical manner to detail the process of manufacture. It
+      might as well have been bricks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened to you?&rdquo; she asked finally out of her great sincerity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me? Nothing,&rdquo; replied Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A forced silence fell upon him. Hilda seemed gradually to lose herself in
+      reverie. After a time she said softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you love this woods?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's an excellent bunch of pine,&rdquo; replied Thorpe bluntly. &ldquo;It'll cut
+      three million at least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried drawing back, her hands pressed against the log either
+      side of her, her eyes wide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a moment she caught her breath convulsively, and Thorpe became
+      conscious that she was studying him furtively with a quickening doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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&mdash;so that over it continually like a
+      grand full organ-tone repeated the notes of the bird itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, beautiful!&rdquo; she murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he whispered marvelling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A violin,&mdash;played by a master.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;dreaming&mdash;dreaming&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0043" id="link2HCH0043">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XLIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That moon saw a variety of changes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bed of French Creek was cleared. Three of the roads were finished, and
+      the last begun. So much for the work of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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;&mdash;now there was no further
+      need for him, he had gone. So much for the tragedy of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw you long ago,&rdquo; said Hilda to Thorpe. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Harry,&rdquo; it ran. &ldquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;etc.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The news aroused all Thorpe's martial spirit. Now at last the mystery
+      surrounding Morrison &amp; 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. &amp; D. looked like a last year's bird's nest. He thrust the letter in
+      his pocket and walked buoyantly to the pines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe listened. Then his face lit mightily with the joy of battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My axmen,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;They are cutting the road.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A faint call echoed. Then without warning, nearer at hand the sharp ring
+      of an ax sounded through the forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART5" id="link2H_PART5">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART V. THE FOLLOWING OF THE TRAIL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0044" id="link2HCH0044">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XLIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are they doing? Are they cutting lumber?&rdquo; asked Hilda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Thorpe, &ldquo;we do not cut saw logs at this time of year. They
+      are clearing out a road.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where does it go to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How clear the axes sound. Can't we go down and watch them a little
+      while?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's not go, then,&rdquo; said Hilda submissively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you come up in the winter,&rdquo; he pursued, &ldquo;you will see any amount of
+      big timber felled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would like to know more about it,&rdquo; she sighed, a quaint little air of
+      childish petulance graving two lines between her eyebrows. &ldquo;Do you know,
+      Harry, you are a singularly uncommunicative sort of being. I have to guess
+      that your life is interesting and picturesque,&mdash;that is,&rdquo; she
+      amended, &ldquo;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.&rdquo; She said these things lightly as one who
+      speaks things not for serious belief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is something that way,&rdquo; he agreed with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know, sir,&rdquo; she persisted, &ldquo;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.&rdquo; She looked at him with a
+      smiling mouth but tender eyes, her head tilted back slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a good deal that way, too,&rdquo; he agreed again. &ldquo;We use a barrel of
+      flour in Camp One every two and a half days!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head in a faint negation that only half understood what he
+      was saying, her whole heart in her tender gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit there,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now tell me,&rdquo; she breathed, still in the fascinated monotone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your life; what you do; all about it. You must tell me a story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The story of the woods,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl placed her hand on his shoulder. He covered it with his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we win!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;We win!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I like,&rdquo; she said softly, &ldquo;the strong spirit that wins!&rdquo; She
+      hesitated, then went on gently, &ldquo;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.&rdquo; She seized his fingers in her
+      other hand. &ldquo;Harry,&rdquo; she said earnestly, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man twisted his shoulder uneasily and withdrew his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry,&rdquo; she said again, after a pause, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe remained silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men do not care much for keepsakes, do they, Harry?&mdash;they don't save
+      letters and flowers as we girls do&mdash;but even a man can feel the value
+      of a great beautiful keepsake such as this, can't he, dear? Our
+      meeting-place&mdash;do you remember how I found you down there by the old
+      pole trail, staring as though you had seen a ghost?&mdash;and that
+      beautiful, beautiful music! It must always be our most sacred memory.
+      Promise me you will save it until the very, very last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hilda,&rdquo; he broke in abruptly at last, &ldquo;the men you hear are clearing a
+      road to this very timber.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This timber is marked for cutting this very winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not a suspicion of the true state of affairs. &ldquo;Isn't it lucky I
+      spoke of it!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;How could you have forgotten to countermand
+      the order! You must see to it to-day; now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hilda, I cannot,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood very still for some seconds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; she asked quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I have not time to cut a road through to another bunch of pine.
+      It is this or nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not nothing, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want the money this will bring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you tell me for what you want the money?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The firm needs it in the business,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her next question countered instantaneously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does the firm need the money more than you do me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not mean that, Hilda,&rdquo; said Thorpe quietly. &ldquo;It hardly comes to
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed it does,&rdquo; she replied, every nerve of her fine organization strung
+      to excitement. &ldquo;I should be more to you than any firm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes it is necessary to look after the bread and butter,&rdquo; Thorpe
+      reminded her gently, although he knew that was not the real reason at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If your firm can't supply it, I can,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;It seems strange
+      that you won't grant my first request of you, merely because of a little
+      money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't a little money,&rdquo; he objected, catching manlike at the practical
+      question. &ldquo;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,&mdash;of course there's the expense
+      of logging to pay out of that,&rdquo; he added, out of his accurate business
+      conservatism, &ldquo;but there's ten thousand dollars' profit in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl, exasperated by cold details at such a time, blazed out. &ldquo;I never
+      heard anything so ridiculous in my life!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The firm needs it, Hilda,&rdquo; said Thorpe, &ldquo;in order to succeed. If we do
+      not cut this pine, we may fail.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were a man,&rdquo; she said, and her voice was tense, &ldquo;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,&mdash;they would be as nothing,
+      as less than nothing to me,&mdash;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,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot, Hilda,&rdquo; he answered steadily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not reply. As long as it remained a dilemma, he would not reply. He
+      was in the right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you need the money more than you do me? more than you do love?&rdquo; she
+      begged, her soul in her eyes; for she was begging also for herself.
+      &ldquo;Think, Harry; it is the last chance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have seen a vision,&rdquo; said she simply, and lowered her head to conceal
+      her eyes. Then she looked at him again. &ldquo;There can be nothing better than
+      love,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, one thing,&rdquo; said Thorpe, &ldquo;the duty of success.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0045" id="link2HCH0045">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XLV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+      &ldquo;There can be nothing better than love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;It may be;
+      it may be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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;&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;yards&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &amp; Smith, had
+      put up some twelve million more. The drive promised to be quite an affair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's comin', boys,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, boys, she's on!&rdquo; said he sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lively, boys, lively!&rdquo; shouted Thorpe. &ldquo;She'll be down on us before we
+      know it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men heard it and their eyes brightened with the lust of battle. They
+      cheered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0046" id="link2HCH0046">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XLVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &amp; 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&mdash;spread
+      in the broad marsh flat below the dam&mdash;contained about eight
+      millions; the rest of the season's cut was scattered for thirty miles
+      along the bed of the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the foremen Thorpe assigned their tasks, calling them to him one by
+      one, as a general calls his aids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moloney,&rdquo; said he to the big Irishman, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kerlie,&rdquo; went on Thorpe, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;chevaux de frise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;pull.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;in silence and slowly&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The six men and Bryan Moloney&mdash;who, it will be remembered, were on
+      top&mdash;worked until the last moment. When the logs began to cave under
+      them so rapidly that even the expert rivermen found difficulty in &ldquo;staying
+      on top,&rdquo; the foreman set the example of hunting safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She 'pulls,' boys,&rdquo; he yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The drive was on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0047" id="link2HCH0047">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XLVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't need you boys here any longer,&rdquo; he said quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;take water&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In three days the rollways were broken. Now it became necessary to start
+      the rear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;wanigan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;usually a
+      mile or so below the spot planned,&mdash;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&mdash;he would cheerfully cook away with the water dripping from
+      his battered derby to his chubby and cold-purpled nose&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;men with a reputation as &ldquo;white-water
+      birlers&rdquo;&mdash;men afraid of nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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 &ldquo;sacked&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;in the full of the moon
+      logs will run free at night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus through the wide gate nearly three-quarters of a million feet an hour
+      could be run&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0048" id="link2HCH0048">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XLVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;wings&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rear at once took the trail down the river. Thorpe and Shearer and
+      Scotty Parsons looked over the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She may 'pull,' if she gets a good start,&rdquo; decided Tim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;plugged&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll have to shoot,&rdquo; Shearer reluctantly decided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;shot&rdquo; had failed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men ran forward, examining curiously the great hole in the log
+      formation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll have to flood her,&rdquo; said Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Shearer became angry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've been monkeying long enough,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did 'je see th' Swede at the circus las' summer?&rdquo; he would howl to Red
+      Jacket on the top tier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; Red Jacket would answer, &ldquo;was he there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Jimmy Powers would reply; then, after a pause&mdash;&ldquo;in a cage!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe approved thoroughly of Jimmy Powers; he thought him a good
+      influence. He told Wallace so, standing among the spectators on the
+      cliff-top.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is all right,&rdquo; said Thorpe. &ldquo;I wish I had more like him. The others
+      are good boys, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hire a boy!&rdquo; &ldquo;Get some powder of Junko!&rdquo; &ldquo;Have Jimmy talk it out!&rdquo; &ldquo;Try
+      that little one over by the corner,&rdquo; called the men on top of the jam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmy Powers took off his cap and wiped his forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You boys,&rdquo; he remarked politely, &ldquo;think you are boring with a mighty big
+      auger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My God!&rdquo; screamed one of the spectators on top of the cliff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same instant Wallace Carpenter seized his friend's arm and pointed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;flattening&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an instant's impression,&mdash;the arrested motion seen in the
+      flash of lightning&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So long, boys,&rdquo; they heard Jimmy Powers's voice. Then the rope Thorpe had
+      thrown fell across a caldron of tortured waters and of tossing logs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0049" id="link2HCH0049">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XLIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At once a hundred surmises, questions, ejaculations broke out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What happened?&rdquo; cried Wallace Carpenter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was that man's name?&rdquo; asked the Chicago journalist with the eager
+      instinct of his profession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is terrible, terrible, terrible!&rdquo; a white-haired physician from
+      Marquette kept repeating over and over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The dam's gone out,&rdquo; replied Thorpe. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His mind of the professional had already began to query causes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How about the men?&rdquo; asked Wallace. &ldquo;Isn't there something I can do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can head a hunt down the river,&rdquo; answered Thorpe. &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The horror of the scene was at last beginning to filter through numbness
+      into Wallace Carpenter's impressionable imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; he cried vehemently. &ldquo;There is something criminal about it to
+      me! I'd rather lose every log in the river!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe looked at him curiously. &ldquo;It is one of the chances of war,&rdquo; said
+      he, unable to refrain from the utterance of his creed. &ldquo;We all know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd better divide the crew and take in both banks of the river,&rdquo;
+       suggested Wallace in his constitutional necessity of doing something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See if you can't get volunteers from this crowd,&rdquo; suggested Thorpe. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Harry,&rdquo; cried Carpenter, shocked. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the bodies can be recovered, they shall be,&rdquo; replied Thorpe quietly.
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your men won't work. I'd refuse just as they will!&rdquo; cried Carpenter, his
+      sensibilities still suffering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe smiled proudly. &ldquo;You do not know them. They are mine. I hold them
+      in the hollow of my hand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; cried the journalist in sudden enthusiasm. &ldquo;By Jove! that is
+      magnificent!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; said the journalist again. &ldquo;That is magnificent! They are
+      working over the spot where their comrades died!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe's face lit with gratification. He turned to the young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; he said in proud simplicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the added danger of freshet water, the work went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment Tim Shearer approached from inland, his clothes dripping
+      wet, but his face retaining its habitual expression of iron calmness.
+      &ldquo;Anybody caught?&rdquo; was his first question as he drew near.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five men under the face,&rdquo; replied Thorpe briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shearer cast a glance at the river. He needed to be told no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was afraid of it,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where were you?&rdquo; asked Thorpe of Shearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the pole trail. I got in a little, as you see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In reality the foreman had had a close call for his life. A toughly-rooted
+      basswood alone had saved him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'd better go up and take a look,&rdquo; he suggested. &ldquo;Th' boys has things
+      going here all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men turned towards the brush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hi, Tim,&rdquo; called a voice behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Red Jacket appeared clambering up the cliff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jack told me to give this to you,&rdquo; he panted, holding out a chunk of
+      strangely twisted wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where'd he get this?&rdquo; inquired Thorpe, quickly. &ldquo;It's a piece of the
+      dam,&rdquo; he explained to Wallace, who had drawn near.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Picked it out of the current,&rdquo; replied the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The foreman and his boss bent eagerly over the morsel. Then they stared
+      with solemnity into each other's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dynamite, by God!&rdquo; exclaimed Shearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0050" id="link2HCH0050">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter L
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the three men stared at each other without speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it mean?&rdquo; almost whispered Carpenter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mean? Foul play!&rdquo; snarled Thorpe. &ldquo;Come on, Tim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Morrison and Daly,&rdquo; surmised Shearer. &ldquo;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&mdash;they've been layin' too low.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe strode forward and shook him violently by the shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did this happen?&rdquo; he demanded hoarsely. &ldquo;Speak!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man turned to him in a daze. &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought to know. How was that 'shot' exploded? How did they get in here
+      without you seeing them? Answer me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; repeated the man. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you hired to watch this dam, or weren't you?&rdquo; demanded the tense
+      voice of Thorpe. &ldquo;Answer me, you fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I was,&rdquo; returned the man, a shade of aggression creeping into his
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's men like you who make the trouble,&rdquo; he stormed. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon you'd better mosey,&rdquo; Shearer dryly advised the dam watcher; and
+      followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The dirty whelps,&rdquo; cried Thorpe, &ldquo;they did a good job!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They came up behind me while I was cooking,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;One of 'em grabbed
+      me and the other one kivered my eyes. Then I hears the 'shot' and knows
+      there's trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe listened in silence. Shearer asked a few questions. After the
+      low-voiced conversation Thorpe arose abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where you going?&rdquo; asked Shearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the young man did not reply. He swung, with the same long, nervous
+      stride, into the down-river trail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until late that night the three men&mdash;for Ellis insisted on
+      accompanying them&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't stir the boys up,&rdquo; he panted, for the pace was very swift.
+      &ldquo;They'll kill some one over there, it'll be murder on both sides.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He received no answer. About midnight they came to the camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not go,&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through their anger they looked at him askance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I forbid it,&rdquo; Thorpe cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They shrugged their indifference and arose. This was an affair of caste
+      brotherhood; and the blood of their mates cried out to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The work,&rdquo; Thorpe shouted hoarsely. &ldquo;The work! We must get those logs
+      out! We haven't time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You fellows make me sick,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Spose you go over and take 'em apart; what then? You have a scrap;
+      probably you lick 'em.&rdquo; The men growled ominously, but did not stir. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want to know how to get even?&rdquo; he asked, shading each word. &ldquo;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&mdash;the way a riverman ought to. NOW HUMP
+      YOURSELVES! Don't let 'em die in vain!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better turn in, boys, and get some sleep,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We've got a hard day
+      to-morrow.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0051" id="link2HCH0051">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter LI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I find trail three men,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Both dam, three men. One man go down
+      river. Those men have cork-boot. One man no have cork-boot. He boss.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know?&rdquo; said Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer the Indian threw his shoulders forward in Dyer's nervous
+      fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He make trail big by the toe, light by the heel. He make trail big on
+      inside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Charley arose and walked, after Dyer's springy fashion, illustrating his
+      point in the soft wood ashes of the immediate fireside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe looked doubtful. &ldquo;I believe you are right, Charley,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;But
+      it is mighty little to go on. You can't be sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sure,&rdquo; replied Charley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He puffed strongly at the heel of his smoke, then arose, and without
+      farewell disappeared in the forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &amp; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the
+      sturdiest virtue of the riverman&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll do it!&rdquo; he whispered to them&mdash;and to himself. &ldquo;We'll do it! We
+      can't be wrong. God would not have let us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0052" id="link2HCH0052">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter LII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once Thorpe turned and started for the bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll do, boys,&rdquo; he said quietly to the nearest group. &ldquo;She's down!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cook had, early that morning, moored the wanigan to the bank. One of
+      the teamsters from town had loaded the men's &ldquo;turkeys&rdquo; on his heavy wagon.
+      The wanigan's crew had thereupon trudged into town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad she's over,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I got a good stake comin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Thorpe indifferently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got most six hundred dollars comin',&rdquo; persisted Junko.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Might as well be six hundred cents,&rdquo; commented Thorpe, &ldquo;it'd make you
+      just as drunk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Big Junko laughed self-consciously but without the slightest resentment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;but you betcher life I don't blow this
+      stake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've heard that talk before,&rdquo; shrugged Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but this is different. I'm goin' to git married on this. How's
+      THAT?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is she?&rdquo; he asked abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She used to wash at Camp Four.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe dimly remembered the woman now&mdash;an overweighted creature with
+      a certain attraction of elfishly blowing hair, with a certain pleasing
+      full-cheeked, full-bosomed health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two walked on in re-established silence. Finally the giant, unable to
+      contain himself longer, broke out again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do like that woman,&rdquo; said he with a quaintly deliberate seriousness.
+      &ldquo;That's the finest woman in this district.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe felt the quick moisture rush to his eyes. There was something
+      inexpressibly touching in those simple words as Big Junko uttered them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when you are married,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;what are you going to do? Are you
+      going to stay on the river?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose,&rdquo; suggested Thorpe, irresistibly impelled towards the attempt,
+      &ldquo;suppose I should offer you two hundred dollars a month to stay on the
+      river. Would you stay?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Carrie don't like it,&rdquo; replied Junko.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two hundred dollars is big wages,&rdquo; persisted Thorpe. &ldquo;It's twice what I
+      give Radway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd like to ask Carrie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, take it or leave it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Carrie says she don't like it,&rdquo; answered the riverman with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've changed, Junko,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said the big man. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here it was again, the opposing creed. And from such a source. Thorpe's
+      iron will contracted again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman is no excuse for a man's neglecting his work,&rdquo; he snapped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shorely not,&rdquo; agreed Junko serenely. &ldquo;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,&rdquo; went on the riverman in the expansion of this unwonted
+      confidence with his employer, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; murmured Thorpe indifferently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0053" id="link2HCH0053">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter LIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those men don't know how big they are,&rdquo; remarked the journalist. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And would require about as much trouble to 'work,'&rdquo; laughed Wallace. &ldquo;He
+      won't talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's generally the trouble, confound 'em,&rdquo; sighed Hamilton. &ldquo;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.&rdquo; He spread one of a
+      roll of papers on his knees. &ldquo;I got a set of duplicates for you. Thought
+      you might like to keep them. The office tells me,&rdquo; he concluded modestly,
+      &ldquo;that they are attracting lots of attention, but are looked upon as being
+      a rather clever sort of fiction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wallace picked up the sheet. His eye was at once met by the heading, &ldquo;'So
+      long, boys,'&rdquo; in letters a half inch in height, and immediately underneath
+      in smaller type, &ldquo;said Jimmy Powers, and threw his hat in the face of
+      death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all there,&rdquo; explained the journalist, &ldquo;&mdash;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&mdash;artistically, you
+      know&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got something here to show you, Harry,&rdquo; cried Wallace Carpenter,
+      waving one of the papers. &ldquo;It was a great drive and here's something to
+      remember it by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Wallace, by and by,&rdquo; replied Thorpe dully. &ldquo;I'm dead. I'm
+      going to turn in for a while. I need sleep more than anything else. I
+      can't think now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed through the little passage into the &ldquo;parlor bed-room,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the long dining room the rivermen consumed a belated dinner. They had
+      no comments to make. It was over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Queer thing,&rdquo; commented Hamilton finally, &ldquo;these cold streaks in the air.
+      They are just as distinct as though they had partitions around them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Queer climate anyway,&rdquo; agreed Carpenter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Carpenter,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it isn't that,&rdquo; proffered Carpenter after a moment's scrutiny, &ldquo;there
+      are just as many logs, but they are getting separated a little so you can
+      see the open water between them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess you're right. Say, look here, I believe that the river is rising!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense, we haven't had any rain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;you can
+      see the marks from here. I cut the thing about two feet above the water.
+      Look at it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's pretty near the water line, that's right,&rdquo; admitted Carpenter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think that might make the boys hot,&rdquo; commented Hamilton. &ldquo;If
+      they'd known this was coming, they needn't have hustled so to get the
+      drive down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so,&rdquo; Wallace agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About an hour later the younger man in his turn made a discovery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's been rising right along,&rdquo; he submitted. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know anything about this business,&rdquo; hazarded the journalist, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; hesitated Wallace, &ldquo;I never heard of its happening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd better let someone know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hate to bother Harry or any of the rivermen. I'll just step down to the
+      mill. Mason&mdash;he's our mill foreman&mdash;he'll know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mason came to the edge of the high trestle and took one look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jumping fish-hooks!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Why, the river's up six inches and still
+      a comin'! Here you, Tom!&rdquo; he called to one of the yard hands, &ldquo;you tell
+      Solly to get steam on that tug double quick, and have Dave hustle together
+      his driver crew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you going to do?&rdquo; asked Wallace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got to strengthen the booms,&rdquo; explained the mill foreman. &ldquo;We'll drive
+      some piles across between the cribs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there any danger?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Solly, the tug captain, looked at his mooring hawsers and then at the
+      nearest crib.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's riz two inches in th' las' two hours,&rdquo; he announced, &ldquo;and she's
+      runnin' like a mill race.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;When she begins to feel th' pressure behind,&rdquo; he went
+      on, &ldquo;there's goin' to be trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess you'd better rout out the boss,&rdquo; screamed Solly to Wallace
+      Carpenter; &ldquo;this damn water's comin' up an inch an hour right along. When
+      she backs up once, she'll push this jam out sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the jam breaks once,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard you come in,&rdquo; he explained to Carpenter. At the river he
+      announced his opinion. &ldquo;We can hold her all right,&rdquo; he assured them.
+      &ldquo;It'll take a few more piles, but by morning the storm'll be over, and
+      she'll begin to go down again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she breaks loose, she's going to bury us,&rdquo; said they.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She won't break,&rdquo; snapped Shearer, &ldquo;get to work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's dangerous,&rdquo; they objected sullenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By God, you get off this driver,&rdquo; shouted Solly. &ldquo;Go over and lie down in
+      a ten-acre lot, and see if you feel safe there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drove them ashore with a storm of profanity and a multitude of kicks,
+      his steel-blue eyes blazing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's nothing for it but to get the boys out again,&rdquo; said Tim; &ldquo;I
+      kinder hate to do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dozen men were at once despatched for cables, chains, and wire ropes
+      from the supply at the warehouse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd like to have those whelps here,&rdquo; cried Shearer, &ldquo;I'd throw them under
+      the jam.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's part of the same trick,&rdquo; said Thorpe grimly; &ldquo;those fellows have
+      their men everywhere among us. I don't know whom to trust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think it's Morrison &amp; Daly?&rdquo; queried Carpenter astonished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to do now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never thought of it!&rdquo; he said in a low voice. &ldquo;Fool that I am! I don't
+      see how I missed it. Wallace, don't you see what those devils will do
+      next?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, what do you mean?&rdquo; gasped the younger man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are twelve million feet of logs up river in Sadler &amp; Smith's
+      drive. Don't you see what they'll do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't believe&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't imagine they'd think of doing that&mdash;&rdquo; began Wallace by way
+      of assurance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;By the way,&rdquo;
+       he queried, struck with a new idea, &ldquo;how long have you been driving
+      piles?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since about three o'clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Six hours,&rdquo; computed Thorpe. &ldquo;I wish you'd come for me sooner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He cast his eye rapidly over the men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't want to tackle it,&rdquo; panted Thorpe. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Andrews had left that morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tim Shearer might do it,&rdquo; suggested Thorpe, &ldquo;but I hate to spare him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He picked his rifle from its rack and thrust the magazine full of
+      cartridges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, Wallace,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;we'll hunt him up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Injin Charley!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;the very man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0054" id="link2HCH0054">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter LIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is no time to quit,&rdquo; said Thorpe, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't quittin',&rdquo; replied Big Junko.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are you going, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Junko was partially and stammeringly unresponsive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looks bad,&rdquo; commented Thorpe. &ldquo;You'd better get back to your job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dyer!&rdquo; he exclaimed
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right, my son,&rdquo; said the other coolly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you want to know, I am filing this chain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wallace made one step forward and so became aware that at last firearms
+      were taking a part in this desperate game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You stand still,&rdquo; commanded Dyer from behind the revolver. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The scaler picked his file from beside the weakened link.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you against us, anyway, Dyer?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dyer's black eyes gleamed at him suspiciously, but the movement appeared
+      wholly natural in view of the return to shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;I didn't like your gang particularly, but that's
+      nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you take such nervy chances to injure us?&rdquo; queried Carpenter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because there's something in it,&rdquo; snapped the scaler. &ldquo;Now about face;
+      mosey!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What Dyer's ultimate plan might be, he could not guess. He had stated
+      confidently that the jam would break &ldquo;in an hour.&rdquo; He might intend to
+      start it with dynamite. Wallace dragged himself from the water and
+      commenced breathlessly to run toward the boarding-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0055" id="link2HCH0055">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter LV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo; &ldquo;What's happened?&rdquo; burst on Wallace in
+      a volley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Dyer,&rdquo; gasped the young man. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a gone-er now,&rdquo; interjected Solly grimly.&mdash;&ldquo;Charley is on his
+      trail&mdash;and he is hit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe's intelligence leaped promptly to the practical question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Injin Charley, where'd he come from? I sent him up Sadler &amp; Smith's.
+      It's twenty miles, even through the woods.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though by way of colossal answer the whole surface of the jam moved
+      inward and upward, thrusting the logs bristling against the horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's going to break!&rdquo; shouted Thorpe, starting on a run towards the
+      river. &ldquo;A chain, quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's death, certain death, to go out on that boom,&rdquo; muttered Billy Mason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back! back! Don't follow me, on your lives! Keep 'em back, Tim!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lem' me hold her for you. You can't close her alone,&rdquo; said an unexpected
+      voice next his elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You damned fool,&rdquo; cried Thorpe exasperated, then held the hammer to him,
+      &ldquo;strike while I keep the chain underneath,&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;dead head&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let go and swim!&rdquo; shouted Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't swim,&rdquo; replied Junko in so low a voice as to be scarcely audible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Thorpe stared at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell Carrie,&rdquo; said Big Junko.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;Run for your life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;loom,&rdquo; or mirage, threw
+      the specters of thousands of restless timbers rising and falling on the
+      bosom of the lake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0056" id="link2HCH0056">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter LVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      They stood and watched them go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the great man! Oh, the great man!&rdquo; murmured the writer, fascinated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's GONE!&rdquo; said one man, with the emphasis of a novel discovery; and
+      groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was just plain damn foolishness;&mdash;but it was great!&rdquo; said
+      Shearer. &ldquo;That no-account jackass of a Big Junko ain't worth as much per
+      thousand feet as good white pine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they noticed a group of men gathering about the office steps, and on
+      it someone talking. Collins, the bookkeeper, was making a speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the simple turning of the hand from full breathed prosperity to
+      lifeless failure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;that would come under
+      a court's adjudication.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess it's just as well we hears this,&rdquo; said the latter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It all came out&mdash;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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what we ought to get,&rdquo; cried Collins, almost weeping, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The enemy of my brother is gone,&rdquo; said he simply in his native tongue,
+      and with a sudden gesture held out before them&mdash;a scalp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &amp; Daly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as well they don't recognize us,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Somebody in town will give us away,&rdquo; suggested Shorty, the chore-boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, they won't; they're all here,&rdquo; assured Kerlie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Daly traced a line with his toe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first man that crosses that line gets it,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &amp; Smith's drive should go out with the increase of
+      water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what's going to happen to you?&rdquo; said a voice from the group.
+      The speaker was Radway, but the contractor kept himself well in the
+      background. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and we're going to string you to your own trestle!&rdquo; growled another
+      voice harshly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dyer!&rdquo; said Injin Charley, simply, shaking the wet scalp arm's length
+      towards the lumbermen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the recognition of the fact, they immediately raised their weapons in
+      the resolve to do as much damage as possible before being overpowered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, damn you!&rdquo; said Rollway Charley, jerking the millman to his feet.
+      &ldquo;How do YOU like too much water? hey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The unexpected comedy changed the party's mood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That squares us,&rdquo; said the men. &ldquo;If we can't cut this year, neither kin
+      you. It's up to you now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I surmise we took that town apart SOME!&rdquo; remarked Shorty with
+      satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should rise to remark,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, boys,&rdquo; said Wallace, &ldquo;been for a little walk in the woods?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; replied Jack Hyland, &ldquo;we&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd rather not hear,&rdquo; interrupted Wallace. &ldquo;There's quite a fire over
+      east. I suppose you haven't noticed it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hyland looked gravely eastward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure 'nough!&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better get some grub,&rdquo; suggested Wallace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the men had gone in, he turned to the journalist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hamilton,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;write all you know about the drive, and the break,
+      and the rescue, but as to the burning of the mill&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other held out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good,&rdquo; said Wallace offering his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After an interval, Tim Shearer, Radway and Kerlie came out again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's the boss?&rdquo; asked Shearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know, Tim,&rdquo; replied Wallace seriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure!&rdquo; said Tim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How about the boy's stakes?&rdquo; queried Radway. &ldquo;I hear this is a bad smash
+      for the firm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll see that the men get their wages all right,&rdquo; replied Carpenter, a
+      little disappointed that such a question should be asked at such a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; rejoined the contractor. &ldquo;We're all going to need our money
+      this summer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0057" id="link2HCH0057">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter LVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where to, Mr. Thorpe?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter gazed at him uncomprehendingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Mackinaw City,&rdquo; he replied at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How're things going up your way?&rdquo; inquired the conductor by way of
+      conversation while he made out the pay-slip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; responded Thorpe mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;cork&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yo'll fin' the smokin' cab up fo'wu'd, suh,&rdquo; said the latter, firmly
+      barring the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's generally forward,&rdquo; answered Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This yeah's th' sleepah,&rdquo; protested the functionary. &ldquo;You pays extry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am aware of it,&rdquo; replied Thorpe curtly. &ldquo;Give me a lower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yessah!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yo' berth is ready, sah,&rdquo; he delicately suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, for th' LANDS sake!&rdquo; ejaculated the scandalized negro, beating a
+      hasty retreat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was still more scandalized when, the following noon, his strange fare
+      brushed by him without bestowing the expected tip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mind took the letters in one after the other, perceiving them plainly
+      before it accorded them recognition. Finally he had completed the word
+      &ldquo;Farrad.&rdquo; He whirled sharp on his heel, mounted the broad white stone
+      steps, and rang the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Miss Hilda Farrand at home?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot say,&rdquo; replied the man. &ldquo;If you will step to the back door, I
+      will ascertain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The flowers will do. Now see that the south room is ready, Annie,&rdquo;
+       floated a voice from within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the butter pounced on Thorpe from behind with the intent to do great
+      bodily harm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Morris!&rdquo; commanded Hilda sharply, &ldquo;what are you doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man cut short his heroism in confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may go,&rdquo; concluded Hilda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe stood straight and unwinking by the straight portiere. After a
+      moment he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come to tell you that you were right and I was wrong,&rdquo; said he
+      steadily. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood for another instant, looking directly at her, then turned
+      sharply, and head erect walked from the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he had reached the outer door the girl was at his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why are you going?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have nothing more to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;NOTHING?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed happily to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have&mdash;much. Come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to do now?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going back,&rdquo; he replied patiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew you would come,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;I have been expecting you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Harry,&rdquo; she breathed, with a sudden flash of insight, &ldquo;you are a man
+      born to be much misunderstood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go away!&rdquo; he whispered hoarsely at last. The voice was not his own. &ldquo;Go
+      away! Go away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she swayed to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Harry, Harry,&rdquo; she whispered, &ldquo;must I TELL you? Don't you SEE?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me!&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;Tell me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Oh!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Please! What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not believe it,&rdquo; he murmured savagely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew herself from him with gentle dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not worthy to say it,&rdquo; she said soberly, &ldquo;but I love you with all my
+      heart and soul!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then for the first and only time in his life Thorpe fell to weeping, while
+      she, understanding, stood by and comforted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0058" id="link2HCH0058">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter LVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kiss me, dear,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She leaned her cheek against her hand, and her hand against his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been reading a story lately,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;that has interested me
+      very much. It was about a man who renounced all he held most dear to
+      shield a friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he renounced all his most valuable possessions because a poor common
+      man needed the sacrifice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sounds like a medieval story,&rdquo; said he with unconscious humor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It happened recently,&rdquo; rejoined Hilda. &ldquo;I read it in the papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he blazed a good trail,&rdquo; was Thorpe's sighing comment. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you are delicious!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a time she said very humbly: &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is nothing to forgive. I acted like a fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have known about you,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;It has all come out in the
+      Telegram. It has been very exciting. Poor boy, you look tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He straightened himself suddenly. &ldquo;I have forgotten,&mdash;actually
+      forgotten,&rdquo; he cried a little bitterly. &ldquo;Why, I am a pauper, a bankrupt, I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry,&rdquo; she interrupted gently, but very firmly, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled at him with the lips of a child and the eyes of a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he agreed after a struggle, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said she diplomatically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you!&rdquo; he cried suddenly. &ldquo;The papers remind me. How about that
+      Morton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about him?&rdquo; asked the girl, astonished. &ldquo;He is very happily
+      engaged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe's face slowly filled with blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll break the engagement at once,&rdquo; he commanded a little harshly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I break the engagement?&rdquo; demanded Hilda, eying him with some
+      alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think it was obvious enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it isn't,&rdquo; she insisted. &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe was silent&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You actually don't think he's engaged to ME!&rdquo; she burst out finally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't he?&rdquo; asked Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why no, stupid! He's engaged to Elizabeth Carpenter, Wallace's sister.
+      Now WHERE did you get that silly idea?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw it in the paper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you believe all you see! Why didn't you ask Wallace&mdash;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.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she jumped to her feet with an exclamation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Harry! I'd forgotten utterly!&rdquo; she cried in laughing consternation.
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll wait here until the confounded thing is over,&rdquo; said Thorpe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, you won't,&rdquo; replied Hilda decidedly. &ldquo;You are going down town
+      right now and get something to put on. Then you are coming back here to
+      stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe glanced in surprise at his driver's clothes, and his spiked boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heavens and earth!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;I should think so! How am I to get out
+      without ruining the floor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hilda laughed and drew aside the portiere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think you have done that pretty well already?&rdquo; she asked.
+      &ldquo;There, don't look so solemn. We're not going to be sorry for a single
+      thing we've done today, are we?&rdquo; She stood close to him holding the lapels
+      of his jacket in either hand, searching his face wistfully with her
+      fathomless dusky eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sweetheart, we are not,&rdquo; replied Thorpe soberly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0059" id="link2HCH0059">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter LIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not consider its being mine,&rdquo; she answered to his objections.
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hate to do it,&rdquo; he replied; &ldquo;it doesn't look right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must,&rdquo; she insisted. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is right,&rdquo; said Thorpe heartily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw the shadow of assent in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much do you need?&rdquo; she asked swiftly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must take up the notes,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, it's nothing,&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad you think so,&rdquo; he replied grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She ran to her dainty escritoire, where she scribbled eagerly for a few
+      moments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; she cried, her eyes shining, &ldquo;there is my check book all signed
+      in blank. I'll see that the money is there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe looked up with a pitiful little smile that seemed to beg indulgence
+      for what he was about to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard him through in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harry,&rdquo; she said soberly when he had quite finished, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had not thought of that,&rdquo; said Thorpe at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You men are so selfish,&rdquo; went on Hilda. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why,&rdquo; she went on after a moment, &ldquo;why is not that, too, a part of a
+      man's success&mdash;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;even necessary, for it
+      had thrown him entirely within himself during his militant years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0060" id="link2HCH0060">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter LX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe welcomed the smell of the northland. He became almost eager,
+      explaining, indicating to the girl at his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is the Canada balsam,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Harry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied his sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to know Radway. He's the man who gave me my start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Harry,&rdquo; laughed Helen. &ldquo;I'll meet anybody or anything from
+      bears to Indians.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know an Indian too&mdash;Geezigut, an Ojibwa&mdash;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&mdash;a good job, too&mdash;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; they all asked, breathless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's gone. Over beyond the hills there I caught a glimpse of Superior.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are ridiculous, Harry,&rdquo; protested Helen Thorpe laughingly. &ldquo;I never
+      saw you so. You are a regular boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you like boys?&rdquo; he asked gravely of Hilda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adore them!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, I don't care,&rdquo; he answered his sister in triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The air brakes began to make themselves felt, and shortly the train came
+      to a grinding stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What station is this?&rdquo; Thorpe asked the colored porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shingleville, sah,&rdquo; the latter replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought so. Wallace, when did their mill burn, anyway? I haven't heard
+      about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last spring, about the time you went down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is THAT so? How did it happen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They claim incendiarism,&rdquo; parried Wallace cautiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorpe pondered a moment, then laughed. &ldquo;I am in the mixed attitude of the
+      small boy,&rdquo; he observed, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wallace and Hilda exchanged glances. The girl was long since aware of the
+      inside history of those days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll have to tell them that,&rdquo; she whispered over the back of her seat.
+      &ldquo;It will please them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our station is next!&rdquo; cried Thorpe, &ldquo;and it's only a little ways. Come,
+      get ready!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They all crowded into the narrow passage-way near the door, for the train
+      barely paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, sah,&rdquo; said the porter, swinging down his little step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Big Junko and Anderson deposited their burden on the raised platform of
+      the office steps. Thorpe turned and fronted the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At once pandemonium broke loose, as though the previous performance had
+      been nothing but a low-voiced rehearsal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;the glorification in finer
+      matter of the hardy, reliant men who did him honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, aren't you PROUD of him?&rdquo; gasped Hilda, squeezing Helen's arm with a
+      little sob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At once the racket ceased. Everyone stood at attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Thorpe,&rdquo; Wallace began, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You done 'em good.&rdquo; &ldquo;Can't down the Old Fellow,&rdquo; muttered joyous voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Wallace, &ldquo;I think that I first have a story to tell on my own
+      account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point the speaker was interrupted. &ldquo;Saw off,&rdquo; &ldquo;Shut up,&rdquo; &ldquo;Give us
+      a rest,&rdquo; growled the audience. &ldquo;Three million feet ain't worth talkin'
+      about,&rdquo; &ldquo;You make me tired,&rdquo; &ldquo;Say your little say the way you oughter,&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Found purty nigh two millions pocketed on Mare's Island, or we wouldn't a
+      had that much,&rdquo; &ldquo;Damn-fool undertaking, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men,&rdquo; cried Thorpe, &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused and scanned their faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; he continued suddenly, &ldquo;it cannot now, nor ever can afford to lose
+      what those three million feet represent,&mdash;the friends it has made. I
+      can pay you back the money you have spent and the time you have put in&mdash;&rdquo;
+       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.
+      &ldquo;But, comrades, I shall not offer to do it: the gift is accepted in the
+      spirit with which it was offered&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, boys, we have done it,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and so will go back to work. From
+      now on you are my comrades in the fight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      throbbing with emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried, stretching her arms out to them passionately, &ldquo;Oh! I love
+      you; I love you all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/3413.txt b/3413.txt
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/3413.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Blazed Trail, by Stewart Edward White
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Blazed Trail
+
+Author: Stewart Edward White
+
+Posting Date: January 28, 2009 [EBook #3413]
+Release Date: September, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLAZED TRAIL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Douglas E. Levy
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BLAZED TRAIL
+
+By Stewart Edward White
+
+
+TO MY FATHER--From whose early pioneer life are drawn many of Harry
+Thorpe's experiences.
+
+
+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 Charley, 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 to 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 '81 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
+11,000 feet; while Long Pine Jim and Rollway Charley had put in but
+10,500 and 10,250 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 Charley. 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 three 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 V. 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 throbbing with emotion.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, stretching her arms out to them passionately, "Oh! I
+love you; I love you all!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Blazed Trail, by Stewart Edward White
+
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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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+[The actual date this file first posted 04/09/01]
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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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