Workers - An Experiment in Reality: The East — Chapter 6 - Part III - In a Logging Camp

I found a dry spot on the bench near the stove, and shoving my pack under me, I sat down, facing the outer door, and awaited developments.

It had grown quite dark Without.

The young woman who met me at the kitchen-door now came in with a small oil-lamp, which she placed on the shelf near the mirror.

I began to think that the men must all have left the camp for Sunday, and my spirits rose at the thought of an easy initiation into camp life.

But I was soon roused from this revery by the sound of many footsteps approaching the cabin, and the deep, gruff voices of men.

The wooden latch lifted, the heavy door swung open, and there came trooping in a crew of fifteen lumbermen, all dripping water from their hair and faces and hands, for they were fresh from the evening wash in the run.

They went first to the towels, and then formed in line for their turns at the mirror, where the comb was passed from hand to hand.

Fifteen pairs of wet, blinking eyes were fixed on me, and I was obliged to meet each searching gaze in turn.

But when this ordeal was passed, I began to feel a little at my ease, for the men ignored me completely.

The air with which they turned away from the inspection seemed to say: "There is something exceedingly irregular in there being in the camp so abnormal a specimen as this, but the way in which to treat the case, at least for the present, is to let it alone."

It was precisely the manner of well-bred men toward, let us say, some inharmonious figure in their club, whose presence is for the moment unaccounted for.

As they finished their preparation for supper, the men crowded about the stove to warm their hands, chilled by the cold ablution.

Chiefly they talked shop about the day's work, but in terms that were often unintelligible to me, and the sentences were surcharged with oaths.

I

watched them with deep personal interest, and pictured myself in line, and wondered whether I should ever be so fortunate as to find a clean, dry section on a towel, or come early to the much-used comb.

The last man had barely completed his toilet when the door in the partition opened, and a woman's voice announced supper.

Instantly there was loud shuffling of heavy boots on the bare floor, and a momentary press about the door, and then we were soon seated at one of the two long tables in the mess-room of the cabin, and there arose a clatter of hungry men feeding, and the hubbub of their talk.

The meal was excellent.

Its chief dish was corned beef and cabbage, and there were boiled potatoes and boiled beans besides, with abundance of home-made white bread, and strong hot tea.

My seat was last in the row on one side of the table.

The end seat was unoccupied, and my nearest neighbor ignored me; I was free to satisfy a well-developed appetite, and grow more familiar with my surroundings.

First of all I ate a very hearty supper.

The food was admirably cooked, and was served with a high degree of cleanness.

The oil-cloth, of marble design, which covered the table was spotless, and the rude, coarse service, befitting a camp, had all been thoroughly washed.

It is true that the men were without their coats, most of them with their waistcoats off, but these are men whose work is of the cleanest, and there was nothing in all the setting of the supper to mar a healthy appetite; there was much, I thought, that really heightened the pleasure of eating.

The conversation ran on as it had begun in the lobby.

There was much talk about the progress of the work, and gossip about neighboring camps, and proposals for the disposing of Sunday; and it struck me with swift terror that the presence of the three young women, who waited on the table, was no least check to profanity.

The talk never rose to the pitch of excitement, it was the mere give and take of ordinary conversation, and yet there mingled in it the blackest oaths.

With a curse of eternal perdition upon his lips, a man would speak to his neighbor of some casual incident of the day, and would end his sentence with a volley of nameless insults and hideous blasphemies.

This was their common language.

With no realization of what they did, they flung eternal curses and foul insults at one another in lightest banter.

Half an hour later we had all returned to the lobby.

The teamsters lit their lanterns, and went to care for the horses.

Some of the men went up into the loft.

Four had soon started a game of cards at the table, while most of the others filled the bench near the stove, or drew empty beer-kegs and old soap-boxes from their hiding, and completed the circle around the fire.

Everyone was smoking, and all seemed highly content.

I was crowded in between a lank young fellow with dark hair and eyes, and a long, lean nose, who was swearing comfortably at a gawky youth across the stove, and an older man, of heavier build, who had fine black eyes and a black mustache, a very pale complexion, and long black hair that lay in pasty ringlets about his face and on his neck.

Soon I came to know these two as "Long-nosed Harry" and "Fred the Barber."

I should explain at once that the camps have a curious nomenclature of their own.

As among other workingmen whom I have known, so here, only a man's Christian name is used, but it is nearly always accompanied with an explanatory phrase.

A new-comer in the camp is called "Buddy" until his name is learned, and some appropriate epithet is found, or until a nickname springs complete from the mysterious source of those appellatives.

I knew that Fred the Barber was making ready to speak to me, and I was on my guard, when, while the talk was running high, I heard a voice close to my ear: "Say, Buddy, you ain't a pedler, are you?"

"No." "I thought you warn't." And Fred the Barber settled farther down upon his seat, and folded his arms, and puffed in silence on his pipe, with the air of a man who finds deep satisfaction in his own sagacity.

Soon he returned to the cross-examination.

"Say, Buddy, are you going to work in the woods?"

"Yes, the boss took me on this evening."

"Ain't you never worked in the woods before?"

His pipe was out of his mouth now, and his eyes shone with a livelier interest.

"No." "How's that?"

"Why, I'm working my way out West, and my money gave out in Williamsport; and when I went looking for a job, I was told that I could get work in the woods.

So I came up here."

"Well, you ain't struck a soft snap, Buddy.

Jim the Boss is a square man, but he can beat the devil at work, and he don't go easy on a new hand.

This is my tenth season in the woods, and I earn two dollars a day right along; but I'm going to quit, it's too rough."

There was a sudden commotion just then, for the outer door had opened to the touch of a young woodsman, who, standing sharply defined against the black night, regarded the company with a radiant smile.

He was the finest specimen of them all; not much over twenty, I should say, and grown to a good six feet of height, and as straight as the trees among which he worked.

Through the covering of rough clothes you felt with delight the curves of his splendid figure, and the sinewy muscles in symmetrical development.

And then the lines of his throat and neck were so clean and strong, and his face charmed you with its fresh beauty, and its expression of frank joyousness.

No wonder that he was a favorite in the camp.

The men were rising from their seats, and the air was full of welcome, while he stood there for a moment, his teeth gleaming as he smiled, and his eyes shining with delight.

[Illustration: THE MEN WERE RISING FROM THEIR SEATS, AND THE AIR WAS FULL OF WELCOME.

] There rose a tumult of loud voices: "I'm eternally lost, if it ain't Dick the Kid!"

"Dickie, me boy, you God-forsaken whelp, are ye drunk?"

"You ain't spent it all in two days, have you, Dick?"

"Shut that lost door, and sit down by this condemned fire, you ill-begotten cur, and eternal torment be your lot!"

"Tell us what hellish thing brings you here, you blessed boy, and why--ripe for endless misery as you are--why ain't you in Williamsport?"

The smile did not fade from Dick's face, as with easy deliberation he took a seat on a beer-keg and looked at the crew with answering affection in his eyes.

"I'm forever lost if I've been to Williamsport," he began.

"And I ain't drunk a drop, you perjured hell-hounds of shameless begetting.

I've got all my reprobate stuff with me except the two God-condemned dollars that it's cost me to live at the Temperance House in English Centre, where you can get for a quarter the best meal that any of you unveracious ones, you food for unquenchable fire, ever ate."

God help us!

it was like that, only a great deal worse, until the blessed stillness of the night fell upon the camp.

For an hour or more Dick the Kid sat talking to the other men.

A

stranger in English Centre had fired his ambition for the lumber-camps in the mountains somewhere in West Virginia, and Dick was freely imparting his plans--how he meant to beat his way to Harrisburg and then to Pittsburg, and so on to his destination, hoarding, the while, his savings of about sixty-five dollars, as capital to launch him in a new enterprise, where he was sure that more money could be made than here.

The men listened in rapt attention, knowing perfectly that Williamsport was the destined end of Dick's journey, and that the dram-shops there and brothels would get every dollar to the last; yet charmed by his fresh enthusiasm, which touched a hidden memory, or gave momentary flight to some new-fledged hope that fluttered in their breasts.

He was so young and strong and handsome, so full of life, so rich in native gifts that win and hold affection with no thought of effort!

One knew it from the clear, keen joyance of the man, and the power which he had to hold the others, and to draw out their hardy sympathy.

I could endure the sight no longer; I went out to the mountain-road, and waited where I thought that Dick would pass.

He was startled when I stopped him, and instinctively he clenched his fists.

For a moment I had a vivid sense of my physical insignificance, as I realized how easily, with a single blow, he could smash in my countenance and make swift end of me.

"I'm a new man in the camp," I began.

"The boss took me on this evening.

I was interested in what you said about going to West Virginia, and I wanted to ask you more about it.

Have you ever been there?"

"No." "You are sure that there's a good chance for a man there?"

"It's all straight, Buddy, if that's what you mean."

I told him frankly what I meant, but he was still on his guard, and presently he broke in abruptly with "Say, Buddy, you're a sky-pilot, ain't you?"

We walked on together for a mile or more, and Dick grew friendly, and I lost my heart to him completely.

Only once Dick warmed a little at a question from me.

Perhaps I had no right to ask it upon so slight an acquaintance; but as there was little prospect of my ever seeing him again, I asked him if he felt no sense of wrong in using lightly the name of the Almighty.

I can see him now as he stood against the blackness of the forest under the clear, still stars, and answered me, with protest in his eyes and in his voice: "By the Eternal, Buddy, I ain't swore for a month!

May the Infinite consign me to the tortures of all fiends, if I've swore for a month!

That?

Oh, that ain't nothing; that's the way that us fellows talks.

If you live in the camp long enough, Buddy, you'll hear a man swear."

His face was even more attractive in its expression of manly seriousness when we stood on the roadside at parting, and he put a firm hand on my shoulder, and fixed clear eyes on mine, as he told me, in his frank, open way, that he wanted to make a man of himself and not be a drunken sot, and that, in this new venture before him, he would honestly try, and would ask for help.

The men were going to bed when I got back to camp.

I took my pack and followed them into the loft, where I found three long rows of beds, reaching nearly the length of the cabin.

At my knock the boss came out of his room, which is a lightly boarded-in corner of the loft, and gave me a bed next to that occupied by "Old Man Toler."

I had noticed Old Man Toler in the lobby as being markedly older than most of the others.

He was about fifty-five, I thought, of slender, slightly stooping figure, and with gray hair.

What had impressed me was his exceedingly intelligent and agreeable face, and I had wondered at sight of him as being apparently an ordinary hand in the crew.

He gave me a friendly greeting when the boss consigned me to his care, and then resumed his conversation with a neighbor, while I made ready for bed.

The beds are simple arrangements, admirably suited to the ends which they serve.

A mattress and a bolster stuffed with straw lie upon a rough wooden frame without springs, and on top of these are four or five thicknesses of coarse blankets and tow "comforters."

The men creep under as many strata of bed-clothing as their individual tastes prompt in a given temperature.

And the temperature varies in the loft in nearly exact conformity with its variations out of doors, for the boards in the gables have sprung apart, and there are rifts even between the logs, and the winds sweep with much freedom from end to end of our large bedroom.

I soon became interested, too, in the varying tastes of the men in the manner of their dress for bed.

Some go so far on warmer nights as to take off their boots and trousers, and even their coats and waistcoats.

Others stop at their boots and coats; and on the coolest nights not a few go top-coated and booted to bed, and make a complete toilet in the morning by putting on their hats.

There was more than one surprise for me that night, in the considerate, well-bred manners of the men; and the whole experience of my stay in camp has only served to deepen my appreciation.

Young Arthur met, at Rugby, the fate which a merely casual acquaintance with Sunday-school literature would lead one to imagine as being unfailingly in store for those who prefer to maintain their private habits in the company of unsympathetic associates.

It will be remembered that Arthur became, while kneeling at his bedside on the evening of his first day at school, a target for boots and unkind remarks, until Tom Brown interfered.

Schools have improved since those days, and it has been gratifying to observe that a like improvement has spread among workingmen, even so far as to embrace the lumber-camps.

The momentary expectation of a boot in violent contact with one's head is not a devotion-fostering emotion, and it was a distinct relief to find no least objection offered to a course of conduct however out of keeping with the customs of the place.

There was another surprise in the comfort and the wholesome cleanliness of my bed, notwithstanding its roughness.

But in spite of physical ease, I lay awake until after midnight, and when I slept at last, troubled dreams pursued me; I awoke unrested, feeling sick at heart, and little inclined to further acquaintance with a lumber camp.

But the morning brought a glorious day, clear and much warmer than Saturday; and after a late breakfast (seven o'clock) I took a book into the forest, found a comfortable seat, and read until nightfall, with time enough for dinner taken out.

The men scattered widely soon after breakfast.

Many visited neighboring camps, or went shooting; some walked to English Centre; but it was a perfectly sober crew that reassembled at the supper-table, and a much cleaner-looking set than on the night before; for after breakfast, for two hours or more, Fred the Barber had thriftily plied his trade.

We all went early to bed.

The men hailed the day's end as bringing welcome relief in release from intolerable restraint.

When it grew too dark to read, and I had returned to the cabin, I found in the lobby several of the men who had loafed about the camp all day.

They were in vicious humor.

They fretted like children long shut in by the rain.

They could not sit still in comfort, and their restlessness grew upon them as they waited for supper, and the movement of time was slow torture; and so they swore at one another and at the other men who were returning to the camp, and who seemed in but little better humor than themselves.

CHAPTER VII