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Title: The Blazed Trail

Author: Stewart Edward White

Release Date:  September, 2002  [Etext #3413]
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THE BLAZED TRAIL

by Stewart Edward White




TO MY FATHER-- From whose early pioneer life are drawn many
of Harry Thorpe's experiences.



TABLE OF 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 CharIey, 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 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 '8I 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,OOO feet; while Long Pine Jim and Rollway Charley had put in
but 1O,500 and 1O,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 Chariey.
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
hree 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 IV


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
trobbing with emotion.

"Oh!" she cried, stretching her arms out to them passionately, "Oh!
I love you; I love you all!"





End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Blazed Trail, by Stewart Edward White

