第4章

"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.Aman 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.