Blazed Trail — 10 - Part 3, Chapters 29, 30, 31
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.
