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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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