Blazed Trail Stories, and Stories of the Wild Life Part 5

There, as he had expected, the men were waiting in ominous silence, their eyes red with debauch and hate. FitzPatrick paid them no heed, but set about his business.

Methodically, deliberately, he did the work. Then, when the last pencil-mark had been made, and the tablets had been closed with a snap of finality, the Rough Red stepped forward.

"Ye have finished with this skidway?" asked the foreman in soft cat-tones.

"I have," answered FitzPatrick, briefly.

"Yo' have forgot to scale one stick."

"No."

"There is a stick still not marked."

"I culled it."

"Why?"

"It was not sawed straight."

FitzPatrick threw his head back proudly, answering his man at ease, as an accomplished swordsman. The Rough Red s.h.i.+fted his feet, almost awed in spite of himself. One after another the men dropped their eyes and stood ill at ease. The scaler turned away; his heel caught a root; he stumbled; instantly the pack was on him, for the power of his eye was broken.

Mad with rage they kicked and beat and tore at FitzPatrick's huddled form long after consciousness had left it. Then an owl hooted from the shadow of the wood, or a puff of wind swept by, or a fox barked, or some other little thing happened, so that in blind unreasoning panic they fled. The place was deserted, save for the dark figure against the red-and-white snow.

FitzPatrick regained his wits in pain, and so knew he was still on earth. Every movement cost him a moan, and some agency outside himself inflicted added torture. After a long time he knew it was the cook, who was kindly kneading his limbs and knuckling his hair. The man proved to be in a maze of wonderment over his patient's tenacity of life.

"I watched ye," he murmured soothingly, "I did not dare interfere. But I kem to yo' 's soon as I could. See, here's a fire that I built for ye, and some tea. Take a little. And no bones broke! True for ye, ye're a hearty man, and strong with th' big muscles on ye fit to fight th' Rough Red man to man. Get th' use of yere legs, darlint, an' I'll tak' ye to camp, for its fair drunk they are by now. Sure an' I tole ye they'd kill ye!"

"But they didn't," muttered FitzPatrick with a gleam of humour.

"Sure 'twas not their fault--nor yer own!"

Hours later, as it seemed, they moved slowly in the direction of camp.

The cold had stiffened FitzPatrick's cuts and bruises. Every step shot a red wave of torture through his arteries to his brain. They came in sight of camp. It was silent. Both knew that the men had drunk themselves into a stupor.

"I'd like t' kill th' whole lay-out as she sleeps," snarled the cook, shaking his fist.

"So would I," replied FitzPatrick.

Then as they looked, a thin wreath of smoke curled from under the open doorway and spread lazily in the frosty air. Another followed; another; still another. The cabin was afire.

"They've kicked over th' stove again," said FitzPatrick, seating himself on a stump. His eyes blazed with wrath and bitterness.

"What yo' goin' to do?" asked the cook.

"Sit here," replied FitzPatrick, grimly.

The cook started forward.

"Stop!" shouted the scaler, fiercely; "if you move a step, I'll break your back!"

The cook stared at him through saucer eyes.

"But they'd be burnt alive!" he objected, wildly.

"They ought to be," snarled the scaler; "it ain't their fault I'm here to help them. 'Tis their own deed that I'm now lyin' beyant there in th'

forest, unable to help myself. Do you understand? I'm yet out there in th' woods!"

"Ah, wirra, wirra!" wailed the cook, wringing his hands. "Th' poor lads!" He began to weep.

FitzPatrick stared straight in front of him for a moment. Then he struck his forehead, and with wonderful agility, considering the injuries he had but just received, tore down the hill in the direction of the smouldering cabin. The cook followed him joyfully. Together they put out the fire. The men snored like beasts, undisturbed by all the tumult.

"'Tis th' soft heart ye have after all, Fitz," said the cook, delightedly, as the two washed their hands in preparation for a lunch.

"Ye could not bear t' see th' lads burn."

FitzPatrick glowered at him for an instant from beneath his square brows.

"They can go to h.e.l.l for all of me," he answered, finally, "but my people want these logs put in this winter, an' there's n.o.body else to put them in."

IV

THE RIVER-BOSS

"Obey orders if you break owners" is a good rule, but a really efficient river-boss knows a better. It runs, "Get the logs out. Get them out peaceably if you can, but _get them out_." He does not need a field-telephone to headquarters to teach him how to live up to the spirit of this rule. That might involve headquarters.

Jimmy was such a river-boss. Therefore when Mr. Daly, of the firm of Morrison & Daly, unexpectedly contracted to deliver five million feet of logs on a certain date, and the logs an impossible number of miles up river, he called in Jimmy.

Jimmy was a small man, changeless as the Egyptian sphinx. A number of years ago a French comic journal published a series of sketches supposed to represent the Shah of Persia influenced by various emotions. Under each was an appropriate caption, such as Surprise, Grief, Anger, or Astonishment. The portraits were identically alike, and uniformly impa.s.sive.

Well, that was Jimmy. He looked always the same. His hair, thick and black, grew low on his forehead; his beard, thick and black, mounted over the ridge of his cheek-bones; and his eyebrows, thick and black, extended in an uninterrupted straight line from one temple to the other.

Whatever his small, compact, muscular body might be doing, the mask of his black and white imperturbability remained always unchanged.

Generally he sat clasping one knee, staring directly in front of him, and puffing regularly on a "meerschaum" pipe he had earned by saving the tags of Spearhead tobacco. Whatever you said to him sank without splash into this almost primal calm and was lost to your view forever. Perhaps after a time he might do something about it, but always without explanation, calmly, with the lofty inevitability of fate. In fact, he never explained himself, even to his employers.

Daly swung his bulk back and forth in the office chair. Jimmy sat bolt upright, his black hat pendant between his knees.

"I want you to take charge of the driving crew, Jimmy," said the big man; "I want you to drive those logs down to our booms as fast as you can. I give you about twenty days. It ought to be done in that. Sanders will keep time for you, and Merrill will cook. You can get a pretty good crew from the East Branch, where the drive is just over."

When Daly had quite finished his remarks, Jimmy got up and went out without a word. Two days later he and sixty men were breaking rollways forty-five miles up-stream.

Jimmy knew as well as Daly that the latter had given him a hard task.

Twenty days was too brief a time. However, that was none of his business.

The logs, during the winter, had been piled in the bed of the stream.

They extended over three miles of rollways. Jimmy and his crew began at the down-stream end to tumble the big piles into the current. Sometimes only two or three logs would rattle down; at others the whole deck would bulge outward, hover for a moment, and roar into the stream like grain from an elevator. Shortly the narrows below the rollways jammed. Twelve men were detailed as the jam crew. Their business was to keep the stream free in order that the constantly increasing supply from the rollways might not fill up the river. It was not an easy business, nor a very safe. As the "jam" strung out over more and more of the river, the jam crew was constantly recruited from the men on the rollways. Thus some of the logs, a very few, the luckiest, drifted into the dam pond at Grand Rapids within a few days; the bulk jammed and broke and jammed again at a point a few miles below the rollways, while a large proportion stranded, plugged, caught, and tangled at the very rollways themselves.

Jimmy had permitted himself two days in which to "break out" the rollways. It was done in two. Then the "rear" was started. Men in the rear crew had to see that every last log got into the current. When a jam broke, the middle of it shot down-stream in a most spectacular fas.h.i.+on, but along the banks "winged out" most distressingly. Sometimes the heavy sticks of timber had been forced right out on the dry land.