Workers - An Experiment in Reality: The East — Chapter 7 - Part I - In a Logging Camp (Concluded)

IN A LOGGING CAMP (_Concluded_) I slept soundly that night, and was awakened in the morning by the mad clatter of an alarm-clock.

It was about four o'clock.

I could hear Fitz-Adams getting up in the little chamber which serves him as a sleeping-room and an office.

He went below, and soon had the fires roaring fiercely in the kitchen and lobby; and I could hear him call to the women to get up and get breakfast.

Next he appeared in the loft, and aroused the teamsters.

In an incredibly short time they were dressed, and had lit their lanterns, and were gone to the stable to feed and tend their horses.

I got up with them, and was nearly dressed, when the boss reappeared in the loft.

He walked down between the rows of beds, laying heavy hands here and there upon sleeping figures, and raising his voice to the call: "Come, roll out of this, you damn ---- ---- ----!"

There was no ill-temper in his manner or tone; it was simply his habitual way of rousing the crew.

I was first at the run, first at the towels and comb, and was sitting in warm comfort behind the stove when the other men came shambling from the loft, their eyes blinking in the sudden light of the lobby.

We had beefsteak and potatoes and bread and coffee for breakfast.

As soon as he had finished his meal, I went up to the boss to remind him of my existence, for he had in no way noticed me since Saturday night.

"You'll help the teamsters load bark, Buddy.

Have you got any gloves?"

"No," I said.

"Then come this way."

We went together to the office, and he spread before me a number of new pairs of heavy skin gloves.

"I don't know which will be best suited to the work that you want me to do," I said.

"Won't you select a pair for me?"

"My advice to you, Buddy, is to wear them mits," and he pointed to a pair of white pigskin mittens.

"They'll cost you seventy-five cents, which I'll charge to your wages."

There was a cot in the office, and a writing-desk, and in one corner a small stock of woodsmen's furnishing goods: boots, hats, overalls, and blanket-jackets, besides the gloves.

The boss locked the door behind us, and told me to follow him.

He carried a lantern, and lit the way to the stables.

Outside it was white and still, almost like a clear, quiet night in the snows of midwinter; for a heavy frost covered everything, and in the thin, unmoving air you could almost hear the crackling formation of frost-crystals.

Into the darkness of the forest the stars shone with greater glory, and Orion was just sinking beyond the western mountain.

The four or five teamsters and Old Man Toler and I had gathered in front of the stable, where the bark-wagons stood in the open.

These were strong vehicles, each with four massive wheels, and they supported wide-spreading frames within which three or more cords of bark could be loaded.

We "greased" the wagons by lantern-light, and then "hooked up" the horses.

The wagon in the van was driven by "Black Bob."

Fitz-Adams ordered Old Man Toler and me to go with that teamster and help him get on a load of bark.

Black Bob, muffled to the eyes in a long ulster which was bound about his waist with a piece of rope, stood erect on the loose boards that formed the floor of his wagon, and gathered up the reins, and then started his horses with a ringing oath.

Old Man Toler and I followed after, on foot, up a rocky road that had been newly cut to a point on the mountain where strips of hemlock-bark lay piled like cord-wood.

Black Bob swayed to the jolting of the wagon, but kept his balance with the ease of long habit, and swore a running accompaniment to the tugging of his team.

He was the tallest man in the camp, almost a giant in height and in proportional development, and he owed his name to his blue-black hair and swarthy complexion.

He was a native-born American, and, although he seemed never to discriminate among the other men on grounds of nationality, I thought that some of them did not like him because of a certain domineering manner he had.

He drew up now beside a pile of bark, and Toler and I placed a large stone under each hind wheel to relieve the pull on the horses.

It had been growing light as we climbed the mountain, and now we could see the sunlight on the topmost trees across the ravine.

Toler took up a position facing the bark-pile, with his back to the wagon.

He began to pass swiftly the pieces of bark over his head and into the rigging, where Black Bob stood ready to load.

I followed Toler's example, imitating his movements as closely as I could, but was painfully aware of my awkwardness.

We had been but a few minutes at work when the boss came driving up behind us; as he turned out in order to pass, he called to me to come with him, and lend a hand at loading.

I had an uncomfortable premonition of the ordeal before me; why, I do not know, for the boss had treated me civilly so far; but I greatly wished to stay in the camp, and I much feared discharge.

The boss drove on for some distance, then branched off on a side-road, and having passed a number of bark-piles, finally turned around with great difficulty, and drew up, as Black Bob had done, beside a cord of bark.

I hastened to place a stone under a hind wheel, and then threw off my coat, and, getting in between the wagon and the pile, I began to pass the bark over my head, as I had learned to do from Toler.

The boss stood on the bottom of the rig, accepting listlessly the bark as I passed it, and tossing it carelessly into place.

His whole manner was meant to convey to me the idea of my own inefficiency, as though he was ready to work, even anxious to get warmed up in the frosty air, but my part was so slowly done that his own was reduced to child's play.

The storm brewed for a time in grim silence, but soon it broke into angry shouts of "Faster, faster, damn you!"

and then the entire gamut of insults and excommunications.

I had been cursed at West Point, though in terms less hard to bear; and in expectation of the worst, I thought that I had schooled myself to take it philosophically when it came.

But I had an awful moment now, for philosophy was clean gone, and in its place was a swift, mad desire to kill; and as the hot blood rushed to my brain, and tingled in my finger-tips, all that I could see for the instant were the handy stones under my feet, and the close range of Fitz-Adams's head.

I do not know what it was that saved me, unless it was the sight of Fitz-Adams flushed with the anger into which he lashed himself, and becoming the more ludicrously impotent in his rage, as I restrained my temper, and showed no sign of fear.

Why he did not discharge me on the spot I do not know.

With awful imprecations he kept urging me to faster and yet faster work.

I quickened my clumsy pace to the swiftest that I could maintain with efficiency, and held it there, careless of his curses; and, exhausted as I was, I yet had the satisfaction at the last of noting that our load was on as quickly as was Black Bob's. And Fitz-Adams, too, found a curious balm for his troubled feelings.

We were at the last cord, and he was cursing hard, while I panted and sweated in my straining efforts to pass the bark aboard.

The strips were large and heavy, some of them, and they all lay rough side up;

and as you lifted them over your head there fell upon you from each a shower of dust and dirt that had gathered in the crumbling outer bark.

This filled your ears and hair, and found its way far down your back.

I

had blocked the wheel, but we were on a sharp descent, and the load was growing heavy.

Evidently Fitz-Adams feared our breaking loose, and so he stopped me suddenly with an order to "make fast the lock-break."

Now "the lock-break" conveyed the dimmest notion to my mind, and the boss would give no hint as to what it really was nor how it was to be "made fast;" instead, he stood and watched me, while, with awkward guesses as to its purpose, I succeeded in unhooking one end of a heavy chain that hung under the wagon, and having passed it between two spokes of a hind wheel, I clumsily made fast the hook in a link of the chain drawn taut.

Fitz-Adams stood, meanwhile, in speechless anger, enraged beyond relief from oaths; and then the tension broke, with comical effect, in a sentence which seemed to come to him as a happy inspiration: "I'm damned, Buddy, if you ain't greener than a green Irishman;

_greener than a green Irishman_."

He repeated the phrase as though it exactly met the case, and brought him satisfaction far beyond the power of profanity; and then he shouted through the forest: "Hey, Bob!"

"Hello!"

"This Buddy, he's greener than a green Irishman!"

and he laughed aloud, and there came an answering laugh from Bob; and the boss started down the mountain with his load, the locked wheel bounding and crunching among the stones, while he swore to steady the horses.

That was all of the loading for the morning, so Toler and I joined company.

Toler had in charge the cutting of roads to the bark-piles, and I was to serve with him.

The piles were, some of them, in most inaccessible places.

The hemlock-trees on that side of the mountain had first been felled, then the bark was cut round on the trunks at intervals of four feet.

Next the bark was peeled off and carefully heaped near by, while the trees themselves were trimmed and then sawed into logs of desired lengths, and these were "skidded" into piles.

From the piles, in the spring, when the streams are high, the logs are sent by "skid ways" into the run, and, once in the water, the lumbermen use their finest skill in floating them to the market at Williamsport.

In the meanwhile the bark must be got out and carted to the tannery, and Toler and I had our work laid out in cutting ways for the wagons.

Supplied each with an axe, a cant-hook, and a grabbing-hoe, we began the work of cutting through the brushwood and clearing away the stumps, and laying rough bridges over the small streams.

I was delighted at my good fortune in being set to work under Toler.

My respect for him grew steadily.

An experience of nearly forty years as a woodsman had developed his natural gifts to the point of highest skill, and he had a marvellous instinct for directing a course through the maze of tangled undergrowth and logs and stumps which marked the ruins of the forest.

I was soon lost, but he turned hither and thither, with the ready familiarity of a gamin to whom there are no intricacies in the East End.

He had the inspiring air of knowing what he was about, and the less common possession of actual knowledge, and he did his work in a masterly manner.

"A workman that needeth not to be ashamed" constantly recurred to me as a phrase which aptly fitted him.

And besides being a clever woodsman, Toler was clean of speech, that is, comparatively clean of speech--he swore, but his oaths were conventional and not usually of the blood-congealing kind of some of the other men.

That was a long morning's work, from earliest dawn until noon, and the ultimate advent of the dinner-hour was hugely welcome.

Toler and I knocked off work at the sound of the noon whistle at the tannery four or five miles away.

Only a few of us gathered at the camp.

Fitz-Adams, with the other teamsters, and "Sam the Book-keeper," who is also the camp carpenter, and Toler and I made up the number.

The rest of the crew were too far in the mountains to return at midday, and "Tim the Blacksmith" drove off in the buckboard with a hot dinner for them.

The first work of the afternoon was to help the teamsters get on a second load of bark.

Again the boss forced me to his aid, and cursed me as he had done before, only I thought that he had been drinking, and there was certainly an added viciousness in his oaths, and in the threats of sudden death.

But I had the consolation now of knowing that, as soon as the load was on, I should work with Toler for the rest of the day.

Toler did not curse me, although it was impossible for him to wholly conceal the slender regard in which he held a man who never before had seen a grubbing-hoe, nor a cant-hook, and who handled an axe about as effectively as a girl throws a stone, and to whom the woods were a hopeless labyrinth.

But Toler had the instincts of a gentleman;

for all his want of respect for a man so ignorant as I, it was clear that there was not a little patient compassion in the feeling which he bore me, and he was at pains to teach me, and he eagerly encouraged any sign of improvement on my part.

But this time I was not done with Fitz-Adams when the afternoon's load was on.

Toler and I soon needed a crowbar, and he sent me to fetch one from the blacksmith's shop.

Near the shop there is a depression in the road, and there the soil is somewhat soft.

Much noise was coming from that quarter; and as I neared it I could see that Black Bob's wheels were fast in the mud, and that the boss's load was drawn close up behind and blocked.

Black Bob was on the ground beside his team, his reins in hand, and with frantic oaths he was urging his horses to their utmost strength.

Fitz-Adams stood by and watched; but at sight of the weakening brutes, he quickly unbolted his own whiffle-trees, and driving his team ahead, made fast to the tongue of Black Bob's wagon.

Then both together they started up their horses, lashing them with the far-reaching leather thongs that swung from the short stocks which they carried, and joining in a chorus of furious curses.

Slowly the great wheels began to rise from the deep grooves in which they had settled; but in another minute, as the strength of the horses failed, the wheels sunk surely back again.

Fitz-Adams was beside himself with rage, and at that moment he caught sight of me.

"What are you doing here?"

he shouted with an oath.

"Toler sent me for a crowbar."

"He did, did he?

Then I'll send you to hell!"

and with that he seized an axe which lay near, and swinging it above his head, he rushed at me.

It was a menacing figure that he made, with the axe held aloft by his giant arms, his eyes flashing, and his nostrils dilating with the childish passion which mastered him; but he was as harmless as a child at any show of fearlessness, and there was the oddest anticlimax in his mild command to "get that damn crowbar and hurry back to Toler," which I was glad enough to do; for my part was a mere pretence of courage;

in reality I felt scared out of a year's growth, and my legs were trembling violently.

Through the following days there was little variation for Toler and me in the programme of work.

We loaded bark until the teamsters were off, and then cut ways to the piles.

There is, however, an incident of Tuesday morning which will linger in my memory.

It was the fulfilment of Dick the Kid's prophecy.

I heard a man swear.

The boss anticipated the usual time of the morning cursing, and gave me an initial one that day in the dark in front of the stables, while the teamsters stood by with their lanterns in hand, and listened critically with sober faces, as though they were determining, with a nice sense of the possible, whether Fitz-Adams was doing himself justice.

At the last he turned to them: "Will I kill him now, or let him live one day more?"

"Let the damn dog live," came from Black Bob.

"Then you'll take him," said the boss, "and dray out that bar."

So Black Bob and I set off in company.

I was not a little perplexed by the puerility of Fitz-Adams's rage.

It seemed singularly out of keeping with the sturdy manliness of the fellow.

If he wished to get rid of me, why did he not discharge me?

I

began to suspect that the cause lay in tenderness of heart, of which he was secretly ashamed.

To him I was _avis rara_ in a lumber-camp.

No doubt he thought me some hitherto unknown species of immigrant; and being too tender-hearted to assume the responsibility of turning me adrift, he hoped to frighten me away.

Black Bob soon puzzled me almost as much.

He was driving the dray, which is a rude, low sledge, used to draw out bark from points that are inaccessible to the wagons.

We were walking together at the side of the road, and neither of us spoke.

Presently Bob stopped his horses to give them breath, and then he turned to me.

His speech was halting, and there was an uncomfortable, apologetic quality in his voice, but the feeling was evidently sincere.

To my surprise he was bidding me, with utmost kindness, not to mind Fitz-Adams's curses, and he added that the boss meant nothing by them, that he really knew no better.

It seemed to me an act of truest friendliness on Black Bob's part, involving charity and moral courage of high order, and I was far more grateful than my acknowledgment implied.

It produced a comfortable elation, which lasted while we got on a towering load of bark in silence in the earliest dawn, and started for the road.

We had almost reached it, and the horses were pulling hard, when, with the suddenness of a pistol-shot, the dray came sharply against the stump of a stubborn sapling that rose unseen in the way, and in an instant the horses were plunging forward in broken harness, and half the load was sliding gently to the ground.

Black Bob brought the horses to a stand, and then stood still himself.

I was filled with admiration for his self-control, for I dreamt that he was making a successful effort to restrain himself.

In reality he was summoning all his powers; and in another moment, with face uplifted to the pale stars, he broke forth in blasphemies so hellish, that for the next full minute I might have been listening to the outcries of a tormented fiend, held tight in the grip of remorseless agony.

Thursday morning brought the crisis in the history of my stay in camp.

In the course of the midday cursing of the day before, Fitz-Adams told me that he was giving me my last chance.

I tried hard to show my fitness for the place, and our load was the first to start for the tannery; but to all appearances Fitz-Adams was not placated.

I thought that the last hour of my stay in camp was surely come, and with a heavy heart I began to plan the next move.

But for some reason nothing further was said to me about leaving, and Thursday morning found me again helping the boss.

His mood had strangely changed; it was very early, and the skies were overcast, and in the clouded twilight we could scarcely see to do our work.

Fitz-Adams seemed to be in no hurry; he was silent, and moved nervously.

I wondered what this might portend, and braced myself for finality.

It was very hard.

I was learning to know the men; they ignored me still, but I was sure that I understood them better, and my liking for them grew each day, and earnestly I wished to stay, in the hope of winning a footing in the camp, and some terms of fellowship with the men.

Fitz-Adams had stopped working now, and he stood leaning on the rigging as he spoke to me.

There was a mildness in his tone and a tentative expectancy, as though an uncomfortable suspicion had dawned upon him, and he feared to verify it.

"Say, Buddy, have you ever been to school?"

"Yes," I said.

There was silence for a minute, and the tone in which Fitz-Adams broke it was awestruck.

"Say, Buddy, have you got a education?"

"I've had good advantages."

And then eagerly from him: "Major, can you figure?"

It was my inning now, and I liked it, and I was guilty of saying that, within narrow limits, I could.

"Will you do my accounts for me, Major?"

"I will, with pleasure."

Fitz-Adams drew a deep breath, and his voice fell to a lower tone.

"Well, that'll be a good thing for me.

I never had no schooling, and Sam the Book-keeper, he don't seem to know much more'n me.

I guess I lost pretty nigh on to two thousand dollars on my contracts last year, on account of not knowing how to figure.

Say, Major, this is pretty hard work for you; you suit yourself about this work, and help me with the accounts.

Of course, I--I--I--didn't know----" "Oh, drop it, Fitz-Adams!"

I said.

"We understand each other.

I'll be glad to look after the accounts as long as I stay; but it's growing light now, and let's get on this load."

And so I won a place in the camp, and got myself on human terms with the boss.

Fitz-Adams never referred to the matter again, but treated me in a perfectly manly, straightforward way, taking patiently my clumsy work as a woodsman, and accepting, as a matter of course, my help with the accounts, and even consulting me, at times, in certain details of the work.

It was one of these consultations which brought a rare opportunity.