The Blazed Trail ..................................................................................................................................................1

Stewart Edward White.............................................................................................................................1

PART I. THE FOREST........................................................................................................................................2

CHAPTER ONE......................................................................................................................................2

CHAPTER TWO.....................................................................................................................................3

CHAPTER THREE.................................................................................................................................8

CHAPTER FOUR ..................................................................................................................................14

CHAPTER FIVE...................................................................................................................................18

CHAPTER SIX ......................................................................................................................................22

CHAPTER SEVEN...............................................................................................................................24

CHAPTER EIGHT................................................................................................................................27

CHAPTER NINE ...................................................................................................................................31

CHAPTER TEN....................................................................................................................................35

CHAPTER ELEVEN .............................................................................................................................38

CHAPTER TWELVE ............................................................................................................................40

CHAPTER THIRTEEN .........................................................................................................................42

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.......................................................................................................................46

CHAPTER FIFTEEN............................................................................................................................50

PART II. THE LANDLOOKER .........................................................................................................................54

CHAPTER SIXTEEN ............................................................................................................................54

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.....................................................................................................................59

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN .........................................................................................................................63

CHAPTER NINETEEN .........................................................................................................................67

CHAPTER TWENTY ..........................................................................................................................71

CHAPTER TWENTYONE .................................................................................................................75

CHAPTER TWENTYTWO................................................................................................................76

CHAPTER TWENTYTHREE............................................................................................................77

CHAPTER TWENTYFOUR..............................................................................................................81

CHAPTER TWENTYFIVE................................................................................................................84

PART III. THE BLAZING OF THE TRAIL.....................................................................................................85

CHAPTER TWENTYSIX ...................................................................................................................85

CHAPTER TWENTYSEVEN............................................................................................................87

CHAPTER TWENTYEIGHT.............................................................................................................91

CHAPTER TWENTYNINE ................................................................................................................95

CHAPTER THIRTY ..............................................................................................................................98

CHAPTER THIRTYONE.................................................................................................................101

CHAPTER THIRTYTWO................................................................................................................106

CHAPTER THIRTYTHREE............................................................................................................109

CHAPTER THIRTYFOUR ...............................................................................................................114

CHAPTER THIRTYFIVE................................................................................................................116

CHAPTER THIRTYSIX ...................................................................................................................122

PART IV. THORPE'S DREAM GIRL .............................................................................................................125

CHAPTER THIRTYSEVEN............................................................................................................125

CHAPTER THIRTYEIGHT.............................................................................................................128

CHAPTER THIRTYNINE ................................................................................................................129

CHAPTER FORTY.............................................................................................................................132

CHAPTER FORTYONE ...................................................................................................................134

CHAPTER FORTYTWO ..................................................................................................................138

CHAPTER FORTYTHREE..............................................................................................................141

PART V. THE FOLLOWING OF THE TRAIL..............................................................................................143

CHAPTER FORTYFOUR................................................................................................................143

CHAPTER FORTYFIVE..................................................................................................................148

CHAPTER FORTYSIX....................................................................................................................151

CHAPTER FORTYSEVEN..............................................................................................................153

CHAPTER FORTYEIGHT ...............................................................................................................156

CHAPTER FORTYNINE.................................................................................................................159

CHAPTER FIFTY...............................................................................................................................161

CHAPTER FIFTYONE .....................................................................................................................164

CHAPTER FIFTYTWO ....................................................................................................................166

CHAPTER FIFTYTHREE................................................................................................................168

CHAPTER FIFTYFOUR..................................................................................................................174

CHAPTER FIFTYFIVE....................................................................................................................176

CHAPTER FIFTYSIX......................................................................................................................178

CHAPTER FIFTYSEVEN................................................................................................................182

CHAPTER FIFTYEIGHT .................................................................................................................186

CHAPTER FIFTYNINE...................................................................................................................188

CHAPTER SIXTY..............................................................................................................................190

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, selfreliant, 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 selfpoise.

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

wellbeing 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

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.

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

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

"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

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

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 potholes. 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.

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

"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

"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

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

"I'd need a camp of forty or fifty men then. I don't see how I can run such a camp without borrowing."

"That's all right. Now look here." Daly drew toward 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

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 roadclearing. 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

Radway's task was not merely to level out and ballast the six feet of a roadbed already constructed, but to

cut a way for five miles through the unbroken wilderness. The way had moreover to be not less than

twentyfive 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

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,

At intervals squares were cut out alongside. In them two long timbers, or skids, were laid andironwise for

the reception of the piles of logs which would be dragged from the fallen trees. They were called skidways.

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 "sawgangs," 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

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

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

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

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

"Timber!" hallooed Hank in a longdrawn melodious call that melted through the woods into the distance.

But the tree stood obstinately upright. So the saw leaped back and forth a few strokes more.

Hank coolly unhooked his saw handle, and Tom drew the blade through and out the other side.

The tree shivered, then leaned 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

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

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

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

The horse, huge, elephantine, her head down, nose close to her chest, intelligently spying her steps, moved.

Molly stepped twice directly sideways, planted her fore foot on a root she had seen, and pulled sharply. The

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

When Molly and Fabian had travoyed the log to the skidway, they drew it with a bump across the two parallel

Then Mike McGovern and Bob Stratton and Jim Gladys took charge of it. Mike and Bob were running the

canthooks, 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 swamphook with which the chain was armed. When all was made

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 canthooks, 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

"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.

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 everuseful swamphook. 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

Now came Dyer, the scaler, rapidly down the logging road, a small slender man with a little, turnedup

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

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.

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

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 electiontime, of course, a number of

And one evening, two days after electiontime, another and important character entered the North woods and

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 toward the Saginaw Valley. The whole affair was very crude. To the edge of the

rightofway 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 rightofway itself was

rough with upturned stumps, blackened by fire, and gouged by many and varied furrows. Across the snow

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 baggageroom 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

After a time the smoke became too dense. A short, thickset 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

"Guess I'll take up tickets," he remarked. "Perhaps it will quiet the boys down a little."

The conductor was a big man, rawboned and broad, with a hawk face. His every motion showed lean, quick,

"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.

Most of the men began to fumble about in their pockets, but the three singers and the one who had been

"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?"

"A' right," replied Jack, amiably, "take one myself." He tipped the bottle, emptied it, and hurled it through a

"You go to hell!" he snorted, and with the sole of his spiked boot delivered a mighty kick at the conductor's

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

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 some one 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

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,

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.

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

The interested spectators of the little drama included two men near the watercooler 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

leatherbrown 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 twentysix perhaps, with the cleancut, 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

The two seatmates 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 readymade. I like it; but after I have learned it all, I do not believe

the practice will appeal to me much. However, I can stand it well enough for a year or two or three, for I am

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 selfanalysis 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

He jingled the three dollars and sixty cents in his pocket, and smiled. That was the extent of his everlasting

"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

When Helen Thorpe read this, she cried. Things had gone wrong that morning, and an encouraging word

would have helped her. The sombre 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

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 never gave assent to, manifested approval of, or

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 any one 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

This unfortunate tendency, together with his reserve, lent him the false attitude of a rather cold, selfcentred

man, discouraging suggestions at first only to adopt them later in the most inexplicable fashion, and

conferring favors in a readymade 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

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, selfcontained, 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

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

"He knows how to hit, doesn't he!" he observed. "That fellow was knocked well off his feet."

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

"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

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 outofdoor 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 legbreaking debris when a curve in the road is reached. It is

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 roadmaking 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

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."

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 longdrawnout 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

"It's a bad thing," said the walkingboss, "I used to be at it myself, and I know. When I wanted whiskey, I

needed it worse than a scalded pup does a snowbank. 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

"You'll find th' boardin'house just across over the track," said the woodsman, holding out his hand, "so long.

The woodsman stepped forward past the carousers to the baggage compartment, where he disappeared. The

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 fencerail

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

Directly across the track from the railway station, a single building was pricked from the dark by a solitary

lamp in a lowerstory 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 boardinghouse, and prepared to

follow them. Shearer and the station agent an individual much muffled turned to the disposition of some

The five were met at the steps by the proprietor of the boardinghouse. This man was short and stout, with a

harelip and cleft palate, which at once gave him the wellknown slurring speech of persons so afflicted, and

imparted also to the timbre of his voice a peculiarly hollow, resonant, trumpetlike 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 pegleg through the

top and bottom of the whiskey jug that one of the new arrivals had set down near the door. The whiskey

promptly ran out. At this the cripple flirted the impaled jug from the wooden leg far out over the rail of the

"What'n hell's that for!" snarled one of the owners of the whiskey threateningly.

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

"Rules 'n regerlations, boys," replied the latter, without, however, a shade of compromising in his tones. "Had

On receiving a reply in the affirmative, he caught up the lamp, and, having resumed his artificial leg in one

THORPE was awakened a long time before daylight by the ringing of a noisy bell. He dressed, shivering, and

stumbled downstairs 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

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 meagre affair, built of lumber, mostly

unpainted, with always the dark, menacing fringe of the forest behind. The great sawmill, with its tall stacks

and its row of waterbarrels protection against fire on top, was the dominant note. Near the mill

crouched a little redpainted 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

In a few moments the door of the inner room opened, and Shearer came out. A man's head peered from

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, goodnatured, 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

He was now seated in a worn office chair before a littered desk. In the close air hung the smell of stale cigars

"I've been out," replied the lumberman. "Have you got anything for me, Mr. Daly?"

"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

"All right, we need canthook 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

"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!"

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

"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

Daly, being what is termed a selfmade 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 twentysix 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

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 him self 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

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,

"Go up and tackle Radway. He's jobbing for us on the Cass Branch. He needs men for roadin', I know,

"Ten miles from here. She's blazed, but you better wait for th' supply team, Friday. If you try to make her

"This boy wants a job till Friday. Then he's going up to Radway's with the supply team. Now quit your

"All right," snorted Marshall, "take that ax and split some dry wood that you'll find behind th' house."

FOR five days Thorpe cut wood, made fires, drew water, swept floors, and ran errands. Sometimes he would

look across the broad stumpdotted 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

And out of the forest came mystery. Hunters brought deer or sledges. Indians, observant and grave, swung

silently across the reaches on their snowshoes, and silently back again carrying their meagre 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 northwind in the sombre 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 talk about the great stove in the boardinghouse 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 airholes 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 outofdoor 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

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

doglike 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 woodscreatures

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 blackandwhite 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

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

tableshelf, with other shelves over it and numerous barrels underneath, all filled with cans, loaves of bread,

cookies, and pies. The centre was occupied by four long benchflanked tables, down whose middle straggled

utensils containing sugar, applebutter, condiments, and sauces, and whose edges were set with tin dishes for

about forty men. The cook, a rather thinfaced 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

"That stuff doesn't come here," objected the cookee, indicating a box of tobacco the newcomer was carrying.

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

Thorpe entered a dim, overheated structure, lined on two sides by a double tier of large bunks partitioned

from one another like cabins of boats, and centred 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

"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

"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

"Old Jackson's still purty smart," said he. "I'm barnboss. 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

"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

Thorpe did not know he was getting valuable points on the camp bullies. The old man hitched nearer and

"They don't bluff you a bit," he said, "unless you likes them, and then they can back you way off the

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 selfconsciousness. 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 selfconsciousness asserted

At dark the old man lit two lamps, which served dimly to gloze the shadows, and thrust logs of wood into the

castiron 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 daylaborers, capable of

performing whatever task they were set to, and of finding the trail home again. There were active,

cleanbuilt, precise Frenchmen, with small hands and feet, and a peculiarly trim way of wearing their rough

garments; typical nativeborn American lumberjacks powerful in frame, rakish in air, reckless in manner;

big blonde Scandinavians and Swedes, strong men of 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

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 fire arms, 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 penciled on

three thin leaves of beechwood riveted together. In a chair by the stove lounged a bulkier figure, which

"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'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.

"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

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

"Please pass the beans," he said with the deliberate intonation of a man who does not expect that his request

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 goodnaturedly, 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

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

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 axe 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 axe 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

"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

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

fiftypound lardtins, half full of hot things to eat. Each man, as he approached, picked up a tin plate and cup

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

A dozen Canada jays, fluky, impatient, perched near by or made little short circles over and back. They

awaited the remains of the dinner. Bob Stratton and a devilmaycare 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

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

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

"That evening he picked out one of the best. As he was about to inquire the price, Radway drew the van book

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

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

goodnaturedly. 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

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 lumberjack's method of fighting anything to hurt the

other fellow. And in a genuine oldfashioned knockdownanddragout roughandtumble 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

Thorpe, at the first hostile movement, sprang back to the door, seized one of the threefoot billets of

"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 goodnatured bit of foolery,

a test of nerve, and there was no object in getting a broken head for that. The reptilian gentleman alone

"If you hanker for trouble so much," drawled the unexpected voice of old Jackson from the corner, "mebbe

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

A Frenchman took down his fiddle and began to squeak. In the course of the dance old Jackson and old Heath

"The young feller's all right," observed Heath; "he cuffed Ben up to a peak all right."

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

"Tomorrow. She's springy, but the books say five inches of ice will hold a team, and there's more than that.

"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

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

Your true lumberjack 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 easingup under stress of weather, are taken as so many indications of a

desire to conciliate. And conciliation means weakness every time. Your lumberjack 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

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

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 semiapologetic 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 haltingplace in which they took no pride, and from which they looked forward in

"Old Shearer, he's the bully boy," said Bob Stratton. "I remember when he was foreman for M. D. at Camp O.

Say, we did hustle them sawlogs 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,

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

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 lumberjack 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 tied; 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

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

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 catacornered from its bed, the chain was fastened around one end by

means of the everuseful steel swamphook, 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

The horses had broken through an airhole, about which the ice was strong. Fabian had already seized Molly

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

"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 swamphook; 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

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 overfilm the troubled look of pleading in Molly's

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.

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.

"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 damfool can't t'ink wit' hees haid sacre Dieu! eet is so easy, to

"I suppose it was a good deal my fault," commented Radway, doubtfully shaking his head, after Laveque had

"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

"Sacre bleu!" said he to old Jackson. "I no work wid dat damfool 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 canthook 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 cooperating 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

canthook man, was nevertheless sure and reliable. Radway placed him in Stratton's place. But now he must

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 roadmaking, for now a false stroke

marred a sawlog; 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 axeswing. 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 freshcomplexioned, cleareyed, quickmannered 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 sweetfaced young woman who looked

"She's waitin' down there for me, and it ain't so very long till spring," said Paul wistfully. "She's the best little

Thorpe, soulsick 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

Three days after the newcomer had started in at the swamping, Paul, during their early morning walk from

"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."

"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 waistdeep in the pitchy aromatic top of an old

bullsap, clipping away at the projecting branches. After a time he heard Paul's gay halloo.

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 axeclips 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

Two of the older woodsmen, kneeling, were conducting coolly a hasty examination. At the front every man is

With the skill of ghastly practice some of them wove a litter on which the body was placed. The pathetic little

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, everpresent. 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. Tallier let his fiddle hang. After supper Thorpe was approached

by Purdy, the reptilian redhead 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."

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 heartbroken 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,

selfcontained 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

As swamper he had more or less to do with a canthook in helping the teamsters roll the end of the log on the

little "dray." He soon caught the knack. Toward Christmas he had become a fairly efficient canthook 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.

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'seye 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

stillhunting, 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

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

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

He was getting just the experience and the knowledge he needed; but that was about all. His wages were

twentyfive 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

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

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 plowed 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 snowfall 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 springholes 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

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

When the lunchsleigh 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 onto the plain meant a mired horse. Three

times heavy snows obliterated the roads, so that they had to be plowed out before the men could go to work

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 snowfall of the early autumn to begin work. The cutting in the

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 lumberjack.

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

"I don't pose for no tough sonofagun," said he to Radway, "and I've got some respect for my ears and

feet. She'll warm up a little by tomorrow, and perhaps the wind'll die. I can catch up on you fellows by

This happened perhaps two days out of the week. Finally Dyer hung out a thermometer, which he used to

"She was stan' ten below," sputtered Baptiste Tallier, the Frenchman who played the fiddle. "He freeze t'rou

"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.

"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."

"Boss," said he bluntly, "she's too cold to work on them plains today. She's the coldest day we had."

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 ablebodied 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

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

"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."

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

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 choreboy 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 selfdefense 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 sleighhaul, 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

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

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 diningroom 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

On an inverted cracker box the cook sat reading an old copy of the Police Gazette. Various fiftypound 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.

Dyer was no weakling. The problem presenting, he rose to the emergency. Without another word he pushed

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 lumberjack is honest in giving his time when it is

"He mak' too tam cole for de marsh. Meester Radway he spik dat we kip off dat marsh w'en he mak' cole."

In the cook camp Dyer was saying to the cook, "Well, anyway, we'll have dinner early and get a good start

The cook again laid down his paper. "I'm tending to this job of cook," said he, "and I'm getting the meals on

Then he resumed his perusal of the adventures of ladies to whom the illustrations accorded magnificent

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 lumberjack'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

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

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 goodhumor

about his eyes had subtly changed to an expression of pathetic anxiety. He attached no blame to anybody, but

rose the next morning at hornblow, 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

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 ironwork on eight logsleighs 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, where 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 horsepower. 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

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 sullenyielding snow

thrown to either side, the shouts, warnings, and commands. To right and left grew white banks of snow.

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

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 tomcats, and had to he pulled apart entirely. In spots the

"corduroy" had spread, so that the horses thrust their hoofs far down into legbreaking holes. The

experienced animals were never caught, however. As soon as they felt the ground giving way beneath one

Still, that sort of thing was to be expected. A gang of men who followed the plow carried axes and

canthooks 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

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

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

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

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

That night it turned warmer. The change was heralded by a shift of wind. Then some bluejays appeared

from nowhere and began to scream at their more silent brothers, the whiskey jacks.

In the morning the icicles dripped from the roof, and although the snow did not appreciably melt, it shrank

"She's holdin' her own," said he, "but there ain't any use putting more water on her. She ain't freezing a mite.

So they finished the job, and plowed her out, leaving exposed the wet, marshy surface of the creekbottom,

on which at night a thin crust formed. Across the marsh the old tramped road held up the horses, and the plow

"She'll freeze a little tonight," 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

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

The sun came out. Nuthatches and woodpeckers ran gayly up the warming trunks of the trees. Bluejays

fluffed and perked and screamed in the hardwood 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

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

"I often heard this was a sort 'v summer resort," observed Tom Broadhead, "but danged if I knew it was a

The weather got to be the only topic of conversation. Each had his say, his prediction. It became maddening.

Toward evening the chill of melting snow would deceive many into the belief that a cold snap was beginning.

"Old man is as blue as a whetstone," commented Jackson Hines, "an' I don't blame him. This weather'd make

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

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

All night and all day the great flakes zigzagged 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

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

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 canthook 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 afterward 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 twentyfive 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.

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

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 kingbolt. 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 axe. 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

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 snowplow, 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 twentyfour, 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.

"You're a nice wan, now ain't ye?" he cried angrily at the unfortunate guardian of his soul. "Dam if Oi don't

"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, that's what ye awt to

Jackson Hines was righteously indignant, but with the shrewdness of the old man, put the blame partly where

"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

With this magnificent bit of invective, Jackson seized a lantern and stumped out to see that the teamsters fed

"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

canthook 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 canthook was jerked from his hands. He fell back, and the canthook, 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

canthook 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

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

"He would have made a good boss," said the old fellow. "He's a hard man to nick."

THORPE never knew how carefully he was carried to camp, nor how tenderly the tote teamster drove his

haycouched 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,

He watched them idly for a time; then turned on his pillow. At once he perceived a long, double row of clean

whitepainted iron beds, on which lay or sat figures of men. Other figures, of women, glided here and there

noiselessly. They wore long, spreading dovegray clothes, with a starched white kerchief drawn over the

shoulders and across the breast. Their heads were quaintly whitegarbed 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,

Time was when the lumberjack 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 boardinghouses 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

halfcured. 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 lumberjack was often left broken in mind and body from causes which a little

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 commonsense selfsupporting rational basis, the woods hospitals are under the Roman Catholic

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 redcheeked, blueeyed, homely little Irish girl, brimming with motherly goodhumor.

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 faroff 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

"Listen to 'im!" exclaimed the Sister delightedly. "Early is it! Sure th' freshet co't thim all. Look, darlint, ye

At the end of the week Thorpe said goodby 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

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 farther 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

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

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

"Hullo, young man," he shouted at Thorpe's mudsplashed figure, "come back to view the remains? All well

He strode down to grip the young fellow heartily by the hand. It was impossible not to be charmed by the

"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

"I ought by rights to take the lumber of the roofs and floors," observed Radway thoughtfully, "but I guess she

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

"Not much like old times, is she?" laughed Radway. "Can't you just shut your eyes and hear Baptiste say, '

Jackson Hines looked whimsically down the bare board. "More room than God made for geese in Ireland,"

After supper they even sat outside for a little time to smoke their pipes, chairtilted against the logs of the

cabins, but soon the chill of melting snow drove them indoors. The four teamsters played sevenup 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 l 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 daylaborer!" she cried. "Why doesn't he try for a clerkship or something in the city

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

"Helen!" called a voice from below, "if you're through up there, I wish you'd come down and help me carry

"So do I!" she cried defiantly, "so do I love outofdoors! I like the woods and the fields and the trees just as

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

After finishing the letter which gave occasion to this train of thought, Thorpe lit his pipe and strolled out into

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

"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

"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

"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 breakup attendant on spring

shall flood the stream to a freshet. The rollways are then broken, and the saw logs floated down the river to

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

The exceptionally early breakup 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

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

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

"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 womanfolks, 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

"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."

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."

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.

"No. Didn't earn nothing. I left a lot of their saw log hung up in the woods, where they'll deteriorate from rot

"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. Do! I'm going to be a free man by the G. jumping Moses!"

THORPE dedicated a musing instant to the incongruity of rejoicing over a freedom gained by ceasing to be

"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.

"But don't be too sure you'll earn day wages doing it," warned the other. "I saw Daly when I was down here

"My time's not valuable," replied Thorpe. "Now when we get to town I want your power of attorney and a

The next day the young man called for the second time at the little redpainted office under the shadow of the

mill, and for the second time stood before the bulky power of the junior member of the firm.

"I have been informed," said Thorpe without preliminary, "that you intend to pay John Radway nothing for

Daly studied his antagonist meditatively. "If it is true, what is it to you?" he asked at length.

"I see," said Daly slowly. Then suddenly, with an intensity of energy that startled Thorpe, he cried: "Now you

The younger man recognized the compelling and autocratic boss addressing a member of the crew.

The millowner 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.

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 flintblue eyes unswervingly on Thorpe's face. Evidently his scrutiny

"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

"In return we were to pay him, merchantable scale, four dollars a thousand. If, however, he failed to put in the

"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

"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

"It is exceedingly annoying," conceded Thorpe, "and it is a good deal of Radway's fault, I am willing to

"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

"I don't care what you call it," answered Daly, who had recovered his goodhumor in contemplation of the

"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."

"You come out at the end of the season with three million and a half of saw logs, which with the four 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 fourtwenty in that country," replied Thorpe, "as any

"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

"We could have done it for four," insisted Daly stubbornly, "but get on. What are you driving at? My time's

"That makes your saw logs worth over twenty thousand dollars. Of this value Radway added thirteen

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."

"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

"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

"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

Daly laughed. "'You are a shrewd figurer, and your remarks are interesting," said he.

"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

"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

"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

This statement had its effect, for it forced an immediate settlement before the pine on the skids should

"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

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 tomorrow morning at ten with

"Well, Mr. Thorpe," said the lumberman with cold anger, "if at any time there is anything within my power

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

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

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 hatrack 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 mantelpiece, 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 oldfashioned 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 spindlelegged table or two upholding glass cases

garnished with stuffed birds and wax flowers. The ceiling was so low that the heavy window hangings

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 superimposed itself silently over this stuffy bourgeois

respectability, like the shadow of a dream. He heard plainly enough the commonplace drawl of the woman

"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 today and won't be back to tea. Dew set and tell me about what you've been adoin'

"No, thank you, Mrs. Renwick," he replied, "I'll come back later. How is Helen?"

But Mrs. Renwick did not know. So Thorpe wandered about the mapleshaded 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 fibre. 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

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

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

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

Helen had developed from the school child to the woman. She was a handsome girl, possessed of a slender,

wellrounded form, deep hazel eyes with the level gaze of her brother, a cleancut patrician face, and a

thoroughbred 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,

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

"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

After a time, "Thank you very much, Harry dear." Then after another interval, "I think I'll go get ready for

"Oh, why didn't he say what he was about?" she cried to herself. "Why didn't he! Why didn't he!"

"Harry, dear," said she, "I have a little scheme, and I want to see if it is not feasible. How much will the girl

"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."

"Because I'm tired of it!" she cried; "sick to the soul of the stuffiness, and the glass cases, and the the

Thorpe remembered his vision of the wild, windtossed 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

"I'm afraid you would not find the girls' boardingclub scheme a good one, Helen," said he. "You'd find it

"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 classroom 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

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 heartbreaks and tears this cost her, only those who in their youth have

"I've fixed it, Helen," said he. "You can attend the High School and the classes, if you please. I have put the

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

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

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

Helen's eyes lit up with a fire of delight. "How nice! May I go with you?" she cried.

"I'm afraid not, little girl. It's going to be a hard trip a long ways from anywhere. You couldn't stand it."

"No," replied Thorpe. "I know you couldn't. We'll be sleeping on the ground and going on foot through much

"I wish you'd take me somewhere," pursued Helen. "I can't get away this summer unless you do. Why don't

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

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

Three days later Thorpe left for the north. He was reluctant to go. When the time came, he attempted to kiss

Helen goodby. 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

Both felt themselves to be in the right. Each realized this fact in the other. Each recognized the impossibility

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

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. Blas� porcupines trundled

superbly from his path. Once a motherpartridge 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

panicstricken 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

The young man's equipment was simple in the extreme. Attached to a heavy leather belt of cartridges hung a

twopound axe and a sheath knife. In his pocket reposed a compass, an airtight 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

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 sectionboundaries. At this time the blazes were so

weatherbeaten 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

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

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

Thorpe, however, with the farsightedness 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 farther south he resolved to anticipate it, and by acquiring his holdings before

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

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 any one 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

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 fortyacres! Another logged nearly fifty million feet from an eighty! In the

State today 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

"What you want today, old man?" inquired a wholesale lumber dealer of an individual whose name now

"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?"

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 oldtime 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

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

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

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 welldefined and recently used trail

leading up the river. Thorpe camped one night at the bend, and then set out to follow the trail.

It led him for upward 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

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 cloudsweeping altitude, without underbrush. Most of it

was good bullsap, which is known by the fineness of the bark, though often in the hollows it shaded

gradually into the roughskinned 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 upward 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,

Then the spirit of the pioneer stirred within his soul. The wilderness sent forth its oldtime 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 oldworld hothouses 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 stumpfences about

the most fertile farms of the north alone break the expanse of prairie and of trim "woodlots."

Thorpe knew little of this, and cared less. These feathered trees, standing closeranked 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 lightheartedly.

At the tenmile point he came upon a dam. It was a crude dam built of logs whose face consisted of

strong buttresses slanted upstream, 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,

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

handtomouthtimberthief, 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 swampholes 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 centre 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 bluejays 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.

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 farther 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

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

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 foothold, 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 threemile 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,

"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 upriver 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 incountry 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. Some one 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

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 goodsense 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 axe, 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

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 lilypads growing. After a time a doe and a spotted fawn came and stood ankledeep in the

water, and ate of the lilypads. Thorpe lurked motionless behind his screen of leaves; and as he had taken the

precaution so to station himself that his hidingplace lay downwind, the beautiful animals were unaware of

By and by a prongbuck joined them. He was a twoyearold young, tender, with the velvet just off his

antlers. Thorpe aimed at his shoulder, six inches above the bellyline, 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

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

It slid more easily than one would imagine, along the grain; but not as easily as by some other methods with

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

Next day he spread the buck's hide out on the ground and drenched it liberally with the product of

deerbrains. Later the hide was soaked in the river, after which, by means of a rough twohandled 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 rawhide, 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

"I don't know whether it's all necessary," he said to himself doubtfully, "but if you're going to assume a

In the meantime, he had bound together with his rawhide thongs several of the oddly shaped pine timbers to

form a species of deadfall trap. It was slow work, for Thorpe's knowledge of such things was theoretical. He

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.

Toward 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

The man was an Indian, silent, solemn, with the straight, unwinking gaze of his race.

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

"What you do?" he inquired after a long silence, punctuated by the puffs of tobacco.

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 oldfashioned smoothbore

muzzleloader; 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

"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 sewingthread known.

The Indian appeared to intend making the birchknoll 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.

The white had not begun as yet his explorations. He did not dare until the return of the logging crew or the

passing of some one in authority at the upriver camp, for he wished first to establish in their minds the

"You good man in woods," replied Injin Charley sententiously, "I tell by way you look at him pine."

"Yes, I'm a lumberman," he confessed, "and I'm looking for pine. But, Charley, the men up the river must not

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

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 beechwood oval. Later it was to become a birchbark canoe, and the

So idly intent was Thorpe on this piece of construction that he did not notice the approach of two men from

the downstream side. They were short, alert men, plodding along with the kneebent persistency of the

woodswalker, 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

"Hullo Charley," said one of them, "what you doing here? Ain't seen you since th' Sturgeon district."

"Beaver, muskrat, mink, otter." "Trapping, eh?" The man gazed keenly at Thorpe's recumbent figure. "Who's

"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

"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 heavylidded 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.

"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

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,

"Old Injin Charley you remember, the old boy that tanned that buck for you down on Cedar Creek."

The man laughed. "Couldn't be nothin' else," he asserted with confidence. "Regular old backwoods

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

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'seye

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,

Next he ascertained the geographical location of the different clumps and forests, entering the sections, the

quartersections, even the separate forties in his notebook; taking in only the "descriptions" containing the

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 notebook with the class of statistics

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 reenact

the comedy of this summer. Thorpe hoped, however, to avoid the necessity. It would be too dangerous. He set

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 daytime 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 canoemaking late in the afternoon.

One evening just at sunset Thorpe was helping the Indian shape his craft. The loose sac of birchbark 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 bowshape 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

birchbark sac, distended it tightly. The cut of the sac and the length of the cedar strips gave to the canoe its

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 fireplaces 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 neverending roar and turmoil. Through its shouting one perceived, as

A young fellow, hardly more than a boy, exclaimed with keen delight of the picturesque as his canoe shot

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 brightfaced, eagereyed,

curlyhaired 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

"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

"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?"

"I like fishing, too," went on the boy; "are there any here? In the pool? John," he called to his guide, "bring

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

"It takes practice," replied the boy. "See that riffle?" He whipped the fly lightly within six inches of a little

The others had been little fellows and easily handled. At the end of fifteen minutes the newcomer landed a

"That must be fun," commented Thorpe. "I never happened to get in with flyfishing. I'd like to try it

The other Indian had by now finished the erection of a tent, and had begun to cook supper over a little

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

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"

"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

"I thought any leather would wet through in the snow!" he cried. "I wish I could get a pair somewhere!" he

The manyvoiced 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 openheartedness of a child. "I'd

"My name is Wallace Carpenter," said the boy with a sudden unmistakable air of goodbreeding.

"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."

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 whippoorwills 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 whitethroat the nightingale of the North. Injin Charley knocked the last ashes from

THE young fellow stayed three weeks, and was a constant joy to Thorpe. His enthusiasms were so

wholesouled; 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

"Do you mean to say you have lived here six weeks and only brought in what you could carry on your

"Harry, you're wonderful! I've got a whole canoe load, and imagined I was travelling light and roughing it.

"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 fouryearold'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

"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

Injin Charley merely grunted. To make a buckskin shirt requires the hides of three deer. Charley had supplied

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

This double point of view brought the men very close together. Thorpe liked the boy because he was

openhearted, 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, openair life, the adventurous quality, the quiet hidden power, the

resourcefulness and selfsufficiency 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

After a while, observing the absolute ingenuousness of the boy, Thorpe used to take him from time to time an

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

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 ironbound 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

Little by little the eager questionings of the youth extracted a full statement of the situation. He learned of the

timberthieves 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

"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 upriver 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

"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

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

"Harry," he said suddenly with a crisp decision new to his voice, "will you take a little walk with me down by

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

today 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

The young fellow 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, steadyeyed power

"I left college at nineteen because my father died," said he. "I am now just twentyone. A large estate

descended to me, and I have had to care for its investments all alone. I have one sister that is all."

"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."

"Now, Harry, I have a proposal to make to you. It is this; you need thirty thousand dollars to buy your land.

"Oh please!" cried the boy, "I do want to get in something real! It will be the making of me!"

"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

"There remains," went on Wallace without attention to Thorpe's remark, "only the question of"

"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 firebreathing statue to that great

"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

"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

"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

"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.

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 goodwill, and his lips parted in a cheery halloo of farewell.

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 hardtack these, in the

woods, represented wealth. Wallace's rifle chambered the .38 Winchester cartridge, which was unfortunate,

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 any one directly from the city, but they were sufficiently annoying.

Thorpe's old tin pail was pressed into service as a smudgekettle. 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. Toward the close of July, however, the

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

The two men, of course, did not bother themselves with the timber to be travoyed, but gave their entire

attention to that lying farther 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

But one day he heard him. The two upriver men were following carefully but noisily the bed of a little

creek. Thorpe happened to be on the sidehill, 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. "Hooo! Dyer!"

Thorpe recognized the voice instantly as that of Radway's scaler. His hand crisped in a gesture of disgust. The

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

He was about to withdraw carefully lest he be discovered, when he was startled by a touch on his elbow. It

"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

"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 notebooks 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."

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.

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

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 a strip

of dried meat, and fell asleep. Thorpe imitated his example. Three hours later the Indian roused his

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

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 toward each other abridged the necessary wallowing. Twice they swam

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.

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

"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

When the halt was called, Thorpe fell into his blanket too weary even to eat. Next morning sharp, shooting

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.

"Boat come by today," 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 upriver 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

"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.

"Oh, Charley!" shouted Thorpe in surprise. "Come on and get a square meal, anyway."

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

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.

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 to him. And besides, from the engine room the signals would be given.

"Weel," replied the engineer with fearful deliberation, "I canna say. But I hae received na orders to that

"Here!" he cried. "See that boulder over there? I want to ship that to Mackinaw City by freight on this boat."

"See here," replied Thorpe, "I've just got to get that boat. It's worth twenty dollars to me, and I'll square it

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

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

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 toward 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

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

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

"Wire thirty thousand my order care Land Office, Detroit, before nine o'clock tomorrow morning. Do it if

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

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 upriver 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 goodwill remained unimpaired,

would he be able, at such short notice, to raise so large a sum? Would he realize from Thorpe's telegram the

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

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 all 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

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 every one 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 weathersoiled

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.

Thorpe whirled sharp on his heel and returned at once to a boardinghouse off Fort Street, where he had

"outfitted" three months before. There he reclaimed his valise, shaved, clothed himself in linen and cheviot

AT nine o'clock neither of the partners had appeared. Thorpe entered the office and approached the desk.

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:

At the same instant steps were heard in the corridor, the door opened, and Mr. Morrison appeared on the sill.

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

"Good morning, Mr. Smithers," it said with the deliberation of the consciously great man. "I have a few

"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

"Take a seat, Mr. Morrison. This gentleman is looking over these townships, and will have finished in a few

"I am somewhat busy this morning," he objected with a shade of command in his voice.

"My deal is a big one," he snapped. "I can probably arrange with this gentleman to let him have his farm."

"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 award basis for a lawsuit. Thorpe saw the trap,

"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

"You will have to await your turn, Mr. Morrison," said the clerk, virtuous before so many witnesses.

"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

"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

"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

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

Thorpe's descriptions were contained in the battered little notebook he had carried with him in the woods.

For each piece of land first there came the township described by latitude and eastandwest 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 quartersection. Thus SW NW 49 17 8, meant the southwest forty of the northwest

The clerk marked across each square of his map as Thorpe read them, the date and the purchaser's name.

In his notebook 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 north west quarter; and southeast of northwest

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,

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,

Thorpe's face lighted up as he rose to greet his partner. The boy had not forgotten their compact after all.

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

"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?"

"Well, go do it. And get a move on you. You have precisely until that boy there finishes clicking that

"Wallace," said Thorpe, "do you see that whitewhiskered 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 broadarmed 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

Carpenter had yet to find the proper official, to identify himself, to certify the check, and to return. It was

Then he saw the boy lay the two typed lists before his principal, and dimly he perceived that the youth,

"Wh what is it?" he stammered, drawing his hand back as though from a redhot 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."

"A fellow came here early and left it for you while I was sweeping out," explained the boy. "Said he had to

He took the envelope and walked uncertainly to the tall window. He looked out at the chimneys. After a

"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!"

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 fibres 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 bedroom. 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,

"Wake up, wake up! you Indian! You've been asleep all day, and I've been waiting here all that time. I want

Thorpe rolled to a sitting posture on the edge of the bed, and smiled uncertainly. Then as the sleep drained

"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

While Thorpe washed and shaved and leisurely freshened himself, he detailed his experiences of the last

"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

"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.

"Suppose you hadn't stumbled on their camp; suppose Injin Charley hadn't seen them go upriver; 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 horseshoe nail hadn't been

"We did!" cried the boy, his enthusiasm rekindling, "and tonight we'll celebrate with the best dinner we can

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

"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 afterdinner coffee."

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 centre 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 fibres 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

"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

"A rich red Burgundy," he decided, "for all the dinner. If your cellar contains a very good smooth Beaune,

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

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 smokingroom, where they sank into the depths of leather chairs, and blew

the gray clouds of smoke toward 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

"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

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

"No," replied Thorpe, stretching his arms over his head, "a woman would have talked. It takes a friend and a

"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 tomorrow."

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

Mr. Morrison was a smart little man with an ingratiating manner and a fishy eye. He greeted Thorpe with

"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

"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?"

"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

"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.

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

"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

"In other words, you force us to stay there and run a little twobyfour Improvement Company for your

"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

"Crush ahead," replied Thorpe with great good humor. "Goodday, 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?

"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

"I'll start for Bay City tonight," submitted Thorpe. "There ought to be a good lot of lumberjacks 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."

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

The saloons are full, the gambling houses overflow, all the places of amusement or crime run full blast. A

chip rests lightly on every one'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 riproaring, 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

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 lumberjack, 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 door ways 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."

Or if Jack resisted temptation and walked resolutely on, one of the girls would remark audibly to another:

"He ain't no lumberjack! You can see that easy 'nuff! He's jest off th' haytrail!"

Ten to one that brought him, for the woodsman is above all things proud and jealous of his craft.

In the centre 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,

The Catacombs was a threestory building. In the basement were vile, illsmelling, illlighted 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 trapdoor 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 purelooking 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

The third story contained a dance hall and a theatre. The character of both would better be left to the

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,

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 "blownin," the

last bitter dregs of his pleasure gulped down, the shanty boy would again start for the woods.

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,

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 mustache; 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

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 batteringram; 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 icewater, 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 cowboy, he usually is when he gets into town. A history could be written of the feuds, the

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 axe, or anything else that happened to be handy, but that

was an expedient called out by necessity. Knives or sixshooters implied a certain premeditation which was

On the other hand, the code of fair fighting obtained hardly at all. The long spikes of riverboots made an

admirable weapon in the straight kick. I have seen men whose faces were punctured as thickly as though by

smallpox, where the steel points had penetrated. In a freeforall knockdownanddragout, 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 wildcats, 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

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 singlehanded, 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 butchershop, seized the big carving knife, and

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,

Dan commandered two bottles of whiskey, and, gory and wounded as he was, took up the sixmile tramp

Next morning, weak from the combined effects of war and whiskey, he reported to headquarters.

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

And so the life of alternate work and pleasure, both full of personal danger, develops in time a class of men

whose like is to 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 cooperation will produce

quasiautomatically 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 firstclass 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 boardinghouses 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

With this object in view he set out from his hotel about halfpast seven on the day of his arrival, to cruise

about in the lumberjack 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 onesided 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 hardwood bar with footrest 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 whiskeys and brandies. The

barkeeper 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 centre 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

"Damn you!" cried the old man, qualifying the oath, "let me get at you, you great big sockstealer, I'll make

you hop high! I'll snatch you baldheaded so quick that you'll think you never had any hair!"

"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."

"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 stallfed knittin'

"I've been landlooking in the upper peninsula," explained Thorpe, "on the Ossawinamakee, up in the

"It's a fine country," went on Thorpe so every one could hear, "with a great cutting of white pine. It runs as

On a sudden inspiration Thorpe resolved to ask the old man's advice as to crew and horses. It might not be

"Why don't you see Tim Shearer? He ain't doin' nothin' since the jam came down," was his comment.

"'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' tanbark. 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

"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 lumberjacks. 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

barkeep with a lead quarter, which ain't usual for Tim. He's been filin' his teeth for M. D. right along.

Jackson gave the name of a small boardinghouse. Shortly after, Thorpe left him to amuse the others with his

THE boardinghouse proved to be of the typical lumberjack class a narrow "stoop," a hallway and stairs

in the centre, 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."

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.

"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 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

The riverman pondered this slowly for an appreciable interval, and then shot out another question.

Thorpe told him simply, omitting nothing except the name of the firm upriver. When he had finished,

"But it's a little job at first," protested Thorpe. "I only want a camp of twenty. It wouldn't be worth your

"That's my lookout. I'll take th' job," replied the logger grimly. "You got three hundred million there, ain't

Thorpe could hardly believe his goodfortune 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 sayso 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

For the first time the lumberman's face lost, during a single instant, its mask of immobility. His steelblue

eyes flashed, his mouth twitched with some strong emotion. For the first time, too, he spoke without his

"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, cookcamp utensils, stoves, blacksmith tools, iron, axes, chains, canthooks, vangoods,

pails, lamps, oil, matches, all sorts of hardware in short, all the thousand and one things, from needles to

courtplaster, of which a selfsufficing 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

Deep in these thoughts, he wandered on at random. He suddenly came to himself in the toughest quarter of

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

Thorpe became aware of a figure crouched in the doorway 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 highlights 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,

The creature made no reply, but drew his arm closer about his instrument, and blinked his wolf eyes.

Moved by some strange, halftolerant whim of compassion, Thorpe made a sign to the unknown to rise.

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, shortlegged, hunchbacked, longarmed,

pigeonbreasted. The large head sat strangely topheavy between even the broad shoulders. It confirmed the

At the hotel Thorpe, examining the cut, found it more serious in appearance than in reality. With a few pieces

"Bring me half a dozen beef sandwiches and a glass of milk, and be quick about it."

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?"

"You would have to work. You would have to be choreboy in a lumber camp, and play fiddle for the men

"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."

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 ecstasy

of hunger. When he had finished, he looked again at Thorpe, and this time there were tears in his eyes.

"I wish you'd give this boy a good cheap room and charge his keep to me," said he. "He's going north with

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 wan and vicious

associates had he led in this terrible town? What treatment could have lit that wolfgleam 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 bedroom door

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 doorsill of the man who had befriended him.

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

enclosing a draft sufficient for current expenses. Tim Shearer had helped make out the list of necessaries. In

time everything was loaded, the gangplank hauled in, and the little band of Argonauts set their faces toward

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

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 stocks 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 barnboss which

"No," said he, "she's too far north. I'm gettin' old, and the rheumatics ain't what you might call abandonin' of

So Shearer had picked out a barnboss 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 canthook men,

"The blacksmith is also a good woodbutcher (carpenter)," explained Shearer. "Four teams is all we ought to

keep going at a clip. If we need a few axemen, we can pick 'em up at Marquette. I think this gang'll stick. I

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

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, halfcontemptuous

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 lumberjack. 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 soft reminiscence to the end of his days concerning "that winter in '81

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

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 retold 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 maneuvring to inspire them with the idea that it would be a great thing to take

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 illdefined 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

Thorpe had given orders that no whiskey was to be brought aboard, as he intended to tolerate no highsea

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, goodnaturedly, 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

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 Ponemah, 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 deckhouse, where he intended to lean on the rail in silent contemplation of the moonpath.

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

But the cripple, repeating the words of a chance preacher, could explain himself no further. In a dim way the

readymade 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

"Your Song," said the cripple timidly, "some day I will hear it. Not yet. That night in Bay City, when you

"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

"Queer little Phil!" cried Thorpe laughing whimsically. "Who tells you these things?"

"Nobody," said the cripple dreamily, "they come when it is like tonight. In Bay City they do not come."

"Oh, it's you, Mr. Thorpe," said the captain of the vessel. "Thought it was some of them lumberjacks, and I

"It is that," answered Thorpe, again the cold, unresponsive man of reticence. "When do you expect to get in,

"About tomorrow 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

NEXT morning continued the traditions of its calm predecessors. Therefore by daybreak every man was at

work. The hatches were opened, and soon betweendecks was cumbered with boxes, packing cases, barrels,

and crates. In their improvised stalls, the patient horses seemed to catch a hint of shoregoing and whinnied.

By ten o'clock there loomed against the strange coast line of the Pictured Rocks, a shallow bay and what

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 sayso. 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 deepwater 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 toward 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

"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.

"Captain Morse!" cried Dyer, stepping forward. "My orders are that you are to land here nothing but M. D.

"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

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 toward the dock. Thorpe ran

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 inblow 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

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

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

Bryan Moloney, a strapping IrishAmerican of the bigboned, redcheeked 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.

"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 lumberjack demands in his boss a certain fundamental

So Dyer and his men picked themselves out of the trouble sullenly and departed. The exscaler had nothing

to say as long as he was within reach, but when he had gained the shore, he turned.

Scotty turned back to his task, which was to help the blacksmith put together the wagon, the component parts

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 axemen 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

In Marquette, Thorpe arranged for the cashing of his time checks and orders; bought lumber at the mills;

talked contract with old Harvey, the millowner and prospective buyer of the young man's cut; and engaged

When he returned to the bay he found the warehouse complete except for the roofs and gables. These, with

their reinforcement of tarpaper, were nailed on in short order. Shearer and Andrews, the surveyor, were

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 rivertrail. Late that evening, tired, but still inclined to mischief, they came to

"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 birchbark canoes. Later he

would paddle the whole string to Marquette, where he would sell them to a hardware dealer for two dollars

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 northcountry stream; the yellow glow over the hill opposite. Yet he had gone a

That was all; for strong men never talk freely of what is in their hearts. There is no need; they understand.

TWO months passed away. Winter set in. The camp was built and inhabited. Routine had established itself,

The first move of the M. D. Company had been one of conciliation. Thorpe was approached by the

walkingboss of the camps upriver. 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

To this Thorpe agreed. Baker, the walkingboss, tried to get him to sign a contract to that effect. Thorpe

"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

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 snowfall 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

"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,

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 everfresh 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

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

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

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 wolflike 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

The performer seemed to grind out his fearful stuff with a fierce delight, in which appeared little of the

"Poor Phil," he said to himself. "He has the musical soul without even the musical ear!"

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

canthook 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 centre

of the skids, one of the workers thrust the shoe of his canthook 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

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 twostory 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

Thorpe's men, however, were all oldtimers, 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

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 goodhumored 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 lumberjack'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 noncommittally; 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

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 wellconducted camp, but the lumberjack is a great

The two entered the little office. Thorpe looked through the ledger and van book, and finally handed the man

"You get out of here!" cried Thorpe with a concentrated blaze of energetic passion that made the fellow step

"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

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

Without a word he sprang across the shack, seized a twobladed axe 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

Then in a moment he returned to the office and sat down overcome with contrition.

Thorpe had instinctively seized the only method by which these strong men could be impressed. A

toughandtumble 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

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

Red Jacket, the teamster of the sorrels, one day was credited with 11,000 feet; while Long Pine Jim and

Rollway Charley had put in but 10,500 and 10,250 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

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.

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

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 buckhorn

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

Wallace made one visit before the big snows came, and was charmed. He ate with gusto of the "salthorse,"

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 Charley. 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

When he departed, he left behind him four little longeared, shortlegged 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 belltones 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

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 waterpail afresh. By the time this task

Later Phil drew water for the other shanties, swept out all three, split wood and carried it in to the cook and to

the livingcamps, filled and trimmed the lamps, perhaps helped the cook. About half the remainder of the day

he wielded an axe, 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 marblewhite face and the expressive changing eyes something

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

patapatpatting on his broad hairy paws, a lynx would steal by. Except Injin Charley, Phil was the only man

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

As Christmas drew near, the weather increased in severity. Blinding snowsqualls 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

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

And the little beagles were disconsolate, for their quarry had fled. In place of the fanshaped triangular trail

for which they sought, they came upon doglike prints. These they sniffed at curiously, and then departed

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 cripples 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

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 closepacked. 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,

This is exactly what happened. In a moment, as though by magic, the loose wooden carpet ground together. A

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

"You ain't got no right to close off more'n enough to leave us th' nat'ral flow unless by agreement," he

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

This time Thorpe went back with Shearer. No one was at the dam, but the gates were closed. The two opened

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 prearranged by the upriver firm for the purpose of blocking off Thorpe's drive. After

Thorpe called his foreman. The latter read the injunction attentively through a pair of steelbowed spectacles.

"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

"It'll be the middle of summer before we get a hearing in court," said he. "Oh, they're a cute layout! They

"Tim," said he, "is there a man in the crew who's afraid of nothing and will obey orders?"

"Scotty," said Thorpe, "I want you to understand that I stand responsible for whatever I order you to do."

"In the morning," said Thorpe, "you take two men and build some sort of a shack right over the sluicegate 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 upriver try to go out on the dam, you warn them off. If they persist, you shoot near them. If they

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

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

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

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

Such is a brief but true account of the coupdeforce 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

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

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

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;

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 silkshaded

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 wellbred ease on its soft

surface. The gleam of white summer dresses, of variegated outing clothes, the rustle of frocks, the tinkle of

low, wellbred laughter confused Thorpe, so that, as he approached the light from a tall lamp just inside the

"O Harry! What a surprise!" she cried, and flung her arms about his neck to kiss him.

This was the meeting he had anticipated so long. The presence of others brought out in him, irresistibly, the

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

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

So he sat there silent in the semidarkness. 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 broadleaved

Helen was an affectionate, warmhearted 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

"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 pentup 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?"

"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

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

"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

"No!" cried Thorpe suddenly excited. "Never! If he was my brother, I'd help him, even if he'd committed

"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

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

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

moosehide. 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

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

"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 afterward.

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

"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

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 yours 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.

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

"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 threedollar boardinghouse, 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 geegaws 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

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

"It's a little hard," said Thorpe, passing his hand wearily before his eyes, "to work hard this way for years, and

"Helen," said Thorpe with new energy, "I forbid you to have anything to do with Amos Thorpe. I think he is a

"None," he confessed, "that is, nothing definite. But I know men; and I know his type. Some day I shall be

"We have talked this over a great many times," he warned, "and you've always agreed with me. Remember,

"Most of the family seem to owe something," she replied with a flippant laugh. "I'm sure I didn't choose the

The flippancy was only a weapon which she used unconsciously, blindly, in her struggle. The man could not

"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

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

WITH Thorpe there could be no halfway measure. He saw that the rupture with his sister was final, and the

thrust attained him in one of his 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

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, carefree 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

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 mpring. And before a reconciliation, many such rehearsals must take

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

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 surfacethoughts 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

Under the unwonted stress of the psychological condition just described, he thought at white heat. His ideas

After his sister left the Renwicks, Thorpe himself went to Detroit, where he interviewed at once Northrop, the

"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

"I don't expect that they will be able to procure a very heavy judgment," replied Northrop. "The facts I shall

"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

"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 afterward bought by another party. Has the latter

any claim for damage against the trespasser? Understand me, the purchaser bought after the trespass was

"Certainly," answered Northrop without hesitation. "Provided suit is brought within six years of the time the

"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 any one

knows they've been stealing. How would it do, if I were to buy that section at the Land Office, and threaten to

The lawyer's eyes glimmered behind the lenses of his pincenez; but, with the caution of the professional

"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,

"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

"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 wholesouled 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

Only now he possessed no interests outside of those in the new country; no affections save the

halfprotecting, goodnatured comradeship with Wallace, the mutual selfreliant respect that subsisted

between Tim Shearer and himself, and the dumb, unreasoning dogliking 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

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 twentyfive men, with ten horses and

a short haul of half a mile, the concern had increased to six large, wellequipped 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 twentytwo 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. Afterward 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

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

"They're altogether too confounded anxious to help us on that freight, Wallace," said Thorpe wrinkling his

"No," laughed Wallace, "neither is it natural for a dog to draw a sledge. But he does it when he has to.

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

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 then 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

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

"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

"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

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 some one 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 boxlike 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 centre 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

The lumberjack 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 halfdozen simple and comfortable chairs. In the centre 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 twentyfive 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

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 today 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

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 axeman or a sawyer, or a loader, or teamster, as the case might be.

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

The procedure was very simple. Thorpe never explained his reasons even to Shearer.

"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

For while new recruits were never accepted at Camp One, neither was a man ever discharged there. He was

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 choreboy 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

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, hattilted, they

surged swearing and shouting down to Denny Hogan's saloon. Denny had to buy new fixtures when they

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 hellhole 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 a pair of bays, though often, when the snow became deep, he was forced

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

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 foreordained

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,

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

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 of

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

They filled pipes and smoked. At rare intervals one of them made a remark, tersely.

Yet somehow the men came to know each other better and better; and each felt that in an emergency he could

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 wolfglare 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 goodnatured 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,

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

"It's a shame, so it is, doggies!" he laughed at the tried pack. "We'll get one tomorrow."

So he took his shotgun to the swamp, and after a halfhour's wait, succeeded in killing the hare. From that

moment he was the hero of those ecstasized 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

FINANCIALLY the Company was rated high, and yet was heavily in debt. This condition of affairs by no

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

Thorpe knew that he could play safely, cutting a few millions a year, expanding cautiously. By this method

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

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 highefficiency mill, he had constructed a harbor

breakwater and the necessary booms, he had bought a tug, built a boardinghouse. All this costs money. He

wished now to construct a logging railroad. Then he promised himself and Wallace that they would be ready

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 wellgraded rightofway 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 oldfashioned, picturesque iceroad sleighhaul will last as long as

northwoods 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 milloffice one day about the middle of July. Herrick, the engineer, had just been in. He

"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

"But I had hard luck, sir," he expostulated. "She'll go all right now, I think."

"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

"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

Thorpe was thus explicit because he rather liked Herrick. It was hard for him to discharge the man

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 shelflike 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

twentytwo 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

"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?"

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.

"At first I bought only dividendpaying stocks outright. Then I bought for a rise, but still out right. 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

"And the name of Carpenter is so oldestablished, 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."

"Harry," cried Wallace suddenly, "couldn't this firm go on my note for thirty thousand more? Its credit is

"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. "O Harry!" cried the

"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

"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

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 toward 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

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 on 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

These were details to which Thorpe applied his mind. As he pushed through the sunflecked 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 cicadalike note of the pine creeper. Through his halfclosed lashes

the tangled sunbeams made softtinted 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

"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

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

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

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

ablebodied 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

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, mossgrown, 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 northcountry brookbed. 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 wolflike 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 nightwind 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

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

alumbering 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

"The music of our burnished axe 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 alumbering 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

"I am a jolly shanty boy, As you will soon discover; To all the dodges I am fly, A hustling pinewoods rover.

A peaveyhook it is my pride, An axe 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

"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 bestday girl, And her front name

"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 bestday 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

"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

"Bung yer eye! bung yer eye!" Thorpe found himself at the edge of the woods facing a little glade into which

THERE he stood and looked silently, not understanding, not caring to inquire. Across the way a whitethroat

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. Her 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

And yet these words mean nothing. A painter might have caught her charm, but he must needs be a poet as

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 ghostlike 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 lighttouched twigs and bushes and grass blades were etched like frost against a black

window pane. There was something, too, of the frostwork'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 whitethroat lifted his clear, spiritual note across the brightness,

slow, trembling with ecstasy. 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

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 whitethroat 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

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, halfparted 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 passionracked. Ah, sweet God, the beauty of it! the beauty of it! the vision!

He trembled and sobbed with his desire to seize it, with his impotence to express it, with his failure even to

He dared not look. At length he turned and stumbled back through the moonlit forest crying on his old gods

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

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.

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

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

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

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";

For when the snows are deep and snowshoes not the property of every man who cares to journey, the

oldfashioned "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

tightrope 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 onerail fence

Thorpe reached the fringe of bushes, and was about to dodge under the fence, when he saw her. So he

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

The great sweet feeling clutched the young man's throat again. But while the other the vision of the

frostwork glade and the spiritlike 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 halfpathetic downward

droop of the corners of her mouth her red mouth in dazzling, bewitching contrast to the milkwhiteness 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 cornsilk 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

awestricken 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 cornsilk 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 bloodspot 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 bullmoose trampled down

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

And next day he saw her again, and the next, because the need of his heart demanded it, and because, simply

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

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

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 downdrooping mouth parted a little more, and the breath quickened through it. But her eyes, her

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 spikemarked 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

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 cornsilk 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

Now she stood before him, her head turned half away, a faint flush still tingeing the chalkwhite of her skin,

"Ah, moon of my soul! light of my life!" he cried, but he cried it within him, though it almost escaped his

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.

"I am a friend of Elizabeth Carpenter, who is Wallace Carpenter's sister, who I believe is Mr. Harry Thorpe's

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

"We wrote Mr. Harry Thorpe that we were about to descend on his district with wagons and tents and Indians

"Ah, heart o' mine, what clear, pure eyes she has! How they look at a man to drown his soul!"

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

"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."

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

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

Then suddenly they were among the pines, and the air was cool, the vista dim, and the birdsongs

The girl walked directly to the foot of a pine three feet through and soaring up an inconceivable distance

"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."

"I thought one in a woods was quite sufficient," she replied with the least little air of impertinence.

"I'll tell you. It's because they are so big and grand themselves, that it did not seem to me they needed

highsounding names. What do you think?" she begged with an appearance of the utmost anxiety.

Thorpe expressed himself as in agreement. As the halfquizzical 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

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

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 proudspirited 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

And so the lastspoken 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

"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 bravelooking; how honest! He is different from the other men.

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 twentytwo or thereabouts; her husband, a youth of three years older, cleanshaven,

lighthaired, quietmannered; Miss Elizabeth Carpenter, who resembled her brother in the characteristics of

goodlooks, 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 three

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 wellmannered, as well as picturesque,

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 woodscamping. The largest walltent contained three folding cots for the women, over

which, in the daytime, were flung brightcolored Navajo blankets. Another was spread on the ground.

Thorpe later, however, sent over two bearskins, 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 Atent order, served respectively as sleepingrooms for Ginger and the Indians, and as a

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 rainstorm might not cause a flood, and ordered Ginger to excavate a square hole some

Then he gave Morton and Cary hints as to the deer they wished to capture, pointed out the best troutpools,

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 campfire 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,

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

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

or 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

"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

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

"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 lumberjack in question.

The man objected, refused, pleaded, and finally obeyed what amounted to a command. Thorpe reentered the

"This is Archie Harris," he announced heartily. "He's our best singer just now. Take a chair, Archie."

"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 brickred. An embarrassed silence of expectation

"I ain't much in practice no how," objected the man in a little voice, without moving.

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

musichall 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

The audience listened politely. When the song was finished it murmured faint thanks.

But the woodsman rose, nodded his head awkwardly, and made his escape. He entered the men's camp

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

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

The others laughed. "There's sincerity for you, Miss Hilda," said young Mr. Morton.

"Our choreboy," answered Thorpe with great brevity, for he was thinking of something much more

After the rest of the party had gone ahead, leaving them sauntering more slowly down the trail, he gave it

"I want to see you there. I want to talk with you. I can't talk with all that crowd around."

"I'll come tomorrow," she said then with a little mischievous laugh, "if that'll make you talk."

She was looking at him very tenderly, if he had only known it, but he did not, for his face was set in

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

"Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart!" it breathed over and over again. After a while he said it gently in a half

"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 softeyed tenderness as a woman might look at a child. "You must not. It is not

Then he kissed the fingers very gently before they were withdrawn, and she said nothing at all in rebuke, but

The voices of evening began to raise their jubilant notes. From a tree near by the olive thrush sang like

clockwork; over beyond carolled eagerly a blackthroat, 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 bellnote, 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.

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

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

"By the way, you might shine up to Hilda Farrand and join the rest of the fortunehunters. 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

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 goodbreeding. 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.

"Certainly," replied Thorpe in a practical tone of voice, "what do you want me to talk about?"

"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

The girl did not understand. She was hurt. As surely as the sun tangled in the distant pine frond, she had seen

A forced silence fell upon him. Hilda seemed gradually to lose herself in reverie. After a time she said softly:

"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

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

A red squirrel poised thirty feet above them, leaped, and clung swaying to a saplingtop 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, blackthroats, myrtle and magnolia warblers, oven birds,

peewits, bluejays, 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

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 birdsong 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 woodsimagery 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

With the first sigh of the wondermusic the girl had started and caught her breath in the exquisite pleasure of

The bird suddenly hushed, and at once the strain abandoned the woodsnote and took another motif. At first

it played softly in the higher notes, a tinkling lightsome little melody that stirred a kindly surfacesmile over

a full heart. Then suddenly, without transition, it dropped to the lower register, and began to sob and wail in

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 fullbreathed 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 grandbreathed chords,

so that at last all the fames and ambitions and passions of the world came, in their apotheosis, to be only parts

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

At last the poignant ecstasy 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.

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 lightspot in the gathering

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 far most in all the world, his friend.

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

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

This absolute lack of selfconsciousness was most potent in overcoming Thorpe'sural 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 woodslife, 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 battlecourage, 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

selfconscious 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

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 moneygetting would have to be allied with some great and poetic

That is the only sort of aristocracy, in the popular sense of the word, which is real; the only scorn of money

There are some faces which symbolize to the beholder many subtleties of soulbeauty 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 mirrorlike it will take on a hundred delicate shades of ethical

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

The bed of French Creek was cleared. Three of the roads were finished, and the last begun. So much for the

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 birchbark canoe, picked fifteen quarts of berries, and

gained six pounds in weight. All the party together accomplished five picnics, four explorations, and thirty

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 coarsefibred 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

"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 weatherbeaten old hat and a weatherbeaten old coat and weatherbeaten 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

"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

"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

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

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.

A faint call echoed. Then without warning, nearer at hand the sharp ring of an axe sounded through the forest.

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

"No," answered Thorpe, "we do not cut saw logs at this time of year. They are clearing out a road."

"Well, nowhere in particular. That is, it is a logging road that starts at the river and wanders up through the

"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."

"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.

"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

"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

She shook her head in a faint negation that only half understood what he was saying, her whole heart in her

"Sit there," she breathed very softly, pointing to the dried needles on which her feet rested, but without

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 selfexpression had faded, leaving not the smallest debris of

"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

"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."

"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."

"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

meetingplace 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

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

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

"Hilda," he broke in abruptly at last, "the men you hear are clearing a road to this very timber."

She had not a suspicion of the true state of affairs. "Isn't it lucky I spoke of it!" she exclaimed. "How could

She sprang up impulsively and stood waiting for him. He arose more slowly. Even before he spoke her eyes

"Because I have not time to cut a road through to another bunch of pine. It is this or nothing."

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 selfesteem 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

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.

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.

They stared at each other in the silence of the situations that had so suddenly developed. It had come into

"Indeed it does," she replied, every nerve of her fine organization strung to excitement. "I should be more to

"Sometimes it is necessary to look after the bread and butter," Thorpe reminded her gently, although he knew

"If your firm can't supply it, I can," she answered. "It seems strange that you won't grant my first request of

"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,

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

moneymaking 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

"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

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

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.

"You sell me for ten thousand dollars! I cannot believe it! Harry! Harry! Must I put it to you as a choice?

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

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

"I have seen a vision," said she simply, and lowered her head to conceal her eyes. Then she looked at him

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

He had burned his ships, and stood now on an unfriendly shore. The first sacrifice to his jealous god had been

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 breakup. It was really quite extraordinary how much was accomplished under the

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 choreboy 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

everwatchful 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 whitehot

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

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

halfcrazed brain was revolving over and over again the words of the sentence he had heard from Hilda's

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

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 grimfaced, cleareyed steadiness of veterans going into battle; with

the same confidence, the same sure patience that disposes electively 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 snowdrift, succeeded by the momentary

acceleration as the plunge carried it through. In the main, and by large, the machine moved steadily and

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

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 watercourses of

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 thirtythree million. About

ten million of this was on French Creek; the remainder on the main banks of the Ossawinamakee. Besides

this the firm upriver, Sadler Smith, had put up some twelve million more. The drive promised to be quite an

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 centre the ice looked worn and soggy. Some one saw a flock of

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

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 canthook 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

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

"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

The men heard it and their eyes brightened with the lust of battle. They cheered.

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 upriver firm; and above them tumbled over a fortyfive 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

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 halfway 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!"

"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

Bryan Moloney turned on his heel and began to pick his way downstream 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 ropedancer'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

"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 downstream as fast as you are needed. Scotty, you will have the rear. Tim and I will

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 choreboy bent attentively over the ratchetpin, 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 sluiceways 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 toward 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 jam creaked and groaned in response to the pressure. From its face a hundred jets of water spurted into

the lower stream. Logs upended 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

The crew were working desperately. Down in the heap somewhere, two logs were crossed in such a manner

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 practised rivermen, after a glance,

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 centre 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

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

releaped 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 endon through the water. The two men, maintaining marvellously their

In the meantime a barely perceptible motion was communicating itself from one particle to another through

the centre 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 upended. The jam crew were forced continually to

alter their positions, riding the changing timbers bentkneed, as a circus rider treads his four galloping

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 centre melted

inward and forward and downward until it caught the fierce rush of the freshet and shot out from under the

jam. Far upstream, 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

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

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

After a moment the constant acceleration in speed checked, then commenced perceptibly to slacken. At once

the rest of the crew began to ride downstream. 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

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

icewet garments over a tall framework constructed around a monster fire, and turned in on hemlock

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

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.

When the men had all withdrawn, he walked confidently under the front of the rollway, glancing with

practised eye at the perpendicular wall of logs over him. Then, as a man pries jackstraws, 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

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 cookstove, 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

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 stream side 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

coldpurpled 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

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 icewater 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 "whitewater 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 travelled back and

forth the length of the drive, riding the logs downstream, 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 forward, backward

and sideways, through all kinds of water. They carried in racks a great supply of pikepoles, peaveys, axes,

rope and dynamite, for use in various emergencies. Intense rivalry existed as to which crew "sacked" the

farthest downstream in the course of the day. There was no need to urge the men. Some stood upon the logs,

pushing mightily with the long pikepoles. 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, downriver to

see about it. Then they broke the jam, standing surely on the edge of the great darkness, while the ice water

Behind the rear Big Junko poled his bateau backward and forward 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 eyebrows, 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

When night came the men rode downstream 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 oldtimers believed implicitly that "in the full of the moon logs will

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

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 backward and forward 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

Thus through the wide gate nearly threequarters 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

THE rear had been tenting at the dam for two days, and was about ready to break camp, when Jimmy Powers

Ten miles along the river bed the stream dropped over a little halffalls into a narrow, rocky gorge. It was

always an anxious spot for the river drivers. In fact, the plunging of the logs headon 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 centre 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

The rear at once took the trail down the river. Thorpe and Shearer and Scotty Parsons looked over the ground.

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 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

So all the gates of the dam were raised, and the torrent tried its hand. It had no effect. Evidently the affair was

Day after day the clank, clank, clinkof the peaveys sounded with the regularity of machinery. The only

practicable method was to pick away the flank logs, leaving a long tongue pointing downstream from the

centre 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

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 amphitheatre 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

"We've been monkeying long enough," said he. "Next time we'll leave a centre that will go out. We'll shut the

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

This was even harder work than the other, for they had not the floating power of water to help them in the

Jimmy Powers, curlyhaired, laughingfaced, 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 wholesouled goodnature fade into serious sympathy, Jimmy Powers's poor little jokes were very

"Did 'je see th' Swede at the circus las' summer?" he would howl to Red Jacket on the top tier.

It was a poor enough jest, yet if you had been there, you would have found that somehow the log had in the

Thorpe approved thoroughly of Jimmy Powers; he thought him a good influence. He told Wallace so,

"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,"

Everybody laughed, of course. It was a fine spring day, cleareyed 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

"You boys," he remarked politely, "think you are boring with a mighty big auger."

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 toward safety. The

men below, at first bewildered and not comprehending, finally understood, and ran toward the face of the jam

with the intention of clambering up it. There could be no escape in the narrow canon below, the walls of

Then the flood hit square. It was the impact of irresistible 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 upward, as an apple seed is shot from

Scotty Parsons, Jack Hyland, Red Jacket, and the forty or fifty topmen had reached the shore. By the

wriggling activity which is a riverman's alone, they succeeded in pulling themselves beyond the snap of

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 toward 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 outward 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

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 afterward, 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

"So long, boys," they heard Jimmy Powers's voice. Then the rope Thorpe had thrown fell across a caldron of

DURING perhaps ten seconds the survivors watched the end of Thorpe's rope trailing in the flood. Then the

"What was that man's name?" asked the Chicago journalist with the eager instinct of his profession.

"This is terrible, terrible, terrible!" a whitehaired physician from Marquette kept repeating over and over.

A half dozen ran toward the point of the cliff to peer downstream, as though they could hope to distinguish

"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."

"You can head a hunt down the river," answered Thorpe. "I think it is useless until the water goes down. Poor

The horror of the scene was at last beginning to filter through numbness into Wallace Carpenter's

"No, no!" he cried vehemently. "There is something criminal about it to me! I'd rather lose every log in the

Thorpe looked at him curiously. "It is one of the chances of war," said he, unable to refrain from the utterance

"I'd better divide the crew and take in both banks of the river," suggested Wallace in his constitutional

"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

"O Harry!" cried Carpenter, shocked. "You can't be going to work again today after that horrible sight,

"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

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.

"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, of grim necessity, went hand in hand.

In reality the foreman had had a close call for his life. A toughlyrooted basswood alone had saved him.

"We'd better go up and take a look," he suggested. "Th' boys has things going here all right."

"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

The foreman and his boss bent eagerly over the morsel. Then they stared with solemnity into each other's

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'

"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

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

"You ought to know. How was that 'shot' exploded? How did they get in here without you seeing them?

"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'

"Were you hired to watch this dam, or weren't you?" demanded the tense voice of Thorpe. "Answer me, you

"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

"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

He threw his shoulder into a heavy blow that reached the damwatcher'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

"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.

He thrashed about here and there, and so came across Ellis blindfolded and tied. When released, the dam

"They came up behind me while I was cooking," he said. "One of 'em grabbed me and the other one kivered

Thorpe listened in silence. Shearer asked a few questions. After the lowvoiced conversation Thorpe arose

But the young man did not reply. He swung, with the same long, nervous stride, into the downriver 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 bareheaded, his broad white brow gleaming in the moonlight. Shearer noted the fire in his eyes, and

"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

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 lowvoiced 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

They shrugged their indifference and arose. This was an affair of caste brotherhood; and the blood of their

"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 dryeyed, 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

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, goodnatured, everyday voice fell through the tense situation, clarifying it, restoring it to

"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 drypickin' that jam. They sent some

lowlived whelp down there to hang our drive, and by smoke it looks like they was going to succeed, thanks

"'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 clam how many men of theirs you lick? What they want is to hang our drive. If they hang our

The speaker paused and grinned goodhumoredly 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

The crew stirred uneasily, looking at each other for approval of the conversion each had experienced.

"Better turn in, boys, and get some sleep," he said. "We've got a hard day tomorrow." 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

Thorpe had listened noncommittally 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

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 clearcut, imitative English, a

"I find trail three men," said he. "Both dam, three men. One man go down river. Those men have corkboot.

The Indian suddenly threw his chin out, his head back, half closed his eyes in a cynical squint. As by a flash

Charley arose and walked, after Dyer's springy fashion, illustrating his point in the soft wood ashes of the

Thorpe looked doubtful. "I believe you are right, Charley," said he. "But it is mighty little to go on. You can't

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

From that moment began the wonderful struggle against circumstances which has become a byword among

rivermen everywhere. A fortyday 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 upriver 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

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

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 comrades'

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

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

worshipper. He was throwing the fibres 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 arrowwound 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

subconsciousness, below his recognition, the other influence was growing like a weed. Perhaps the vision, not

the waking, had been right. Perhaps that faroff 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 lovingkindness 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

"We'll do it!" he whispered to them and to himself. "We'll do it! We can't be wrong. God would not have

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

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 downward 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

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

thunderheads. Occasionally athwart the heat shot a streak of cold air. Toward evening the thunderheads

Hamilton's papers began to tell of disturbances in the South and West. A washout in Arkansas derailed a

train; a cloudburst 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

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 boardinghouse, 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

He looked around at the hard, fatigueworn 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

halfhumorous purpose of the pioneer. When they caught his glance they grinned goodhumoredly.

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

Calmly, with matteroffact 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.

"Might as well be six hundred cents," commented Thorpe, "it'd make you just as drunk."

Thorpe, his attention struck at last, stared at his companion. He noted the man's little twinkling animal eyes,

his high cheekbones, his flat nose, his thick and slobbery lips, his straggling, fierce mustache and eyebrows,

his grotesque longtailed cutaway coat. So to him, too, this primitive man reaching dully from primordial

Thorpe dimly remembered the woman now an overweighted creature with a certain attraction of elfishly

The two walked on in reestablished silence. Finally the giant, unable to contain himself longer, broke out

"I do like that woman," said he with a quaintly deliberate seriousness. "That's the finest woman in this

Thorpe felt the quick moisture rush to his eyes. There was something inexpressibly touching in those simple

"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

"Suppose," suggested Thorpe, irresistibly impelled toward the attempt, "suppose I should offer you two

"Two hundred dollars is big wages," persisted Thorpe. "It's twice what I give Radway."

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

"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.

"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

His momentary interest had left him. Again the reactionary weariness dragged at his feet. Suddenly the

WALLACE CARPENTER and Hamilton, the journalist, seated against the sunwarmed bench of Mrs.

Hathaway's boardinghouse, commented on the band as it stumbled into the washroom.

"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

"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

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

"It's all there," explained the journalist, " the jam and the break, and all this magnificent struggle afterward.

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

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

"I've got something here to show you, Harry," cried Wallace Carpenter, waving one of the papers. "It was a

"All right, Wallace, by and by," replied Thorpe dully. "I'm dead. I'm going to turn in for a while. I need sleep

He passed through the little passage into the "parlor bedroom," 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 diningroom the rivermen consumed a belated dinner. They had no comments to make. It was

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 freshsawed pine perfumed the air. Not a hundred yards away the river slipped

silently to the distant blue Superior, escaping between the slanting stonefilled cribs which held back the

logs. Down the south and west the huge thunderheads gathered and flashed and grumbled, as they had done

"Queer thing," commented Hamilton finally, "these cold streaks in the air. They are just as distinct as though

Excepting always for the mill, the little settlement appeared asleep. The main booms were quite deserted. Not

a single figure, armed with its picturesque pikepole, loomed athwart the distance. After a while Hamilton

"Look here, Carpenter," said he, "what's happening out there? Have some of your confounded logs sunk, or

"No, it isn't that," proffered Carpenter after a moment's scrutiny, "there are just as many logs, but they are

"She's rising just the same. I'll tell you how I know; you see that spile over there near the lefthand 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."

"I should think that might make the boys hot," commented Hamilton. "If they'd known this was coming, they

"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

"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

"I hate to bother Harry or any of the rivermen. I'll just step down to the mill. Mason he's our mill

"Jumpin' fishhooks!" 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

"I got to strengthen the booms," explained the mill foreman. "We'll drive some piles across between the

"Oh, no, the river would have to rise a good deal higher than she is now to make current enough to hurt.

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 thunderheads 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

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 northcountry tug captain, short and broad, with a brown, clear face, and the steadiest and calmest of

steelblue eyes. "When she begins to feel th' pressure behind," he went on, "there's goin' to be trouble."

Toward 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

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 whitecaps.

Between the roaring of the wind, the dash of rain, and the rush of the stream, men had to shout to make

"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 boardinghouse 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

They felt blindly through the rain in the direction of the lights on the tug and piledriver. Shearer, the water

"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

The three picked their way over the creaking, swaying timber. But when they reached the piledriver, they

found trouble afoot. The crew had mutinied, and refused longer to drive piles under the face of the jam.

"By God, you get off this driver," shouted Solly. "Go over and lie down in a tenacre lot, and see if you feel

He drove them ashore with a storm of profanity and a multitude of kicks, his steelblue 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

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

"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."

"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

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

"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

"There are twelve million feet of logs up river in Sadler Smith's drive. Don't you see what they'll do?"

"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

"Think of it! You don't know them. They've thought of everything. You don't know that man Daly. Ask Tim,

"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

"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

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

"I wouldn't want to tackle it," panted Thorpe. "If it wasn't for that cursed tote road between Sadler's and

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 restingplace, shot into the air, and

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 sawdust 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

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

Near the bank of the river they encountered a man, visible only as an uncertain black outline against the glow

"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

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 defences. Wallace

Carpenter, Shorty, the choreboy, and Anderson, the barnboss, picked a dangerous passage back and forth

carrying pails of redhot 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

However, they persisted, as the oldtime 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 defences,

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,

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 halflight, 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 wellknit

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

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 boardinghouse 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

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

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.

Wallace made one step forward and so became aware that at last firearms were taking a part in this desperate

"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."

"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

Dyer's black eyes gleamed at him suspiciously, but the movement appeared wholly natural in view of the

"Nothing," he replied. "I didn't like your gang particularly, but that's nothing."

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

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

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 boardinghouse 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

"WHAT is it?" "What's the matter?" "What the hell's up?" "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 centre piers. They're just ready to go. I got away by diving. Hurry and put in a new

"He's a goneer now," interjected Solly grimly. "Charley is on his trail and he is hit."

"Injin Charley, where'd he come from? I sent him up Sadler's Smith's. It's twenty miles, even through the

As though by way of colossal answer the whole surface of the jam moved inward and upward, thrusting the

"She's going to break!" shouted Thorpe, starting on a run toward the river. "A chain, quick!"

The men followed, strung high with excitement. Hamilton, the journalist, paused long enough to glance

upstream. 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

At the boom the great jam was already atremble with eagerness to spring. Indeed a miracle alone seemed to

Tim Shearer stepped forward coolly, ready as always to assume the perilous duty. He was thrust back by

Thorpe, who seized the chain, coldshut and hammer which Scotty Parsons brought, and ran lightly out over

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 coldshut through on either side of

the weakened link, and prepared to close it with his hammer. He intended further to strengthen the connection

"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

"You damned fool," cried Thorpe exasperated, then held the hammer to him, "strike while I keep the chain

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

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

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.

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 drew 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

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

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

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

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 spectres of thousands of

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

After a time the stream of logs through the gap slackened. In a moment more, save for the inevitably stranded

"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

"It was just plain damn foolishness; but it was great!" said Shearer. "That noaccount jackass of a Big

Then they noticed a group of men gathering about the office steps, and on it some one talking. Collins, the

Collins was a little hatchetfaced man, with straight, lank hair, nearsighted eyes, a timid, orderloving

disposition, and a great suitability for his profession. He was accurate, unemotional, and valuable. All his

actions were as dry as the sawdust 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

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 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

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

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

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

"That's what we ought to get," cried Collins, almost weeping, "and now we've gone and bust, just because

that infernal riverhog 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 pantherlike 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

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 heartbreaking 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 rightofway which led to

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 halfway through the swamp, RedJacket

stopped, removed his coat, ripped the lining from it, and began to fashion a rude mask.

It was true. Except for the women and children, who were not yet about, the entire village had assembled.

Even old Vanderhoof, the firewatcher 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,

Shingleville consisted of a big mill; the yards, now nearly empty of lumber; the large frame boardinghouse;

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 rightofway 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 millyard, it found the boss and the

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

The men grouped swiftly and silently on the other side of the sawdust line. The pause did not mean that

Daly's defence was good. I have known of a crew of striking mill men being so bluffed down, but not such

"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

"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 toward 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 halfhundred

concealed watchers. Daly and his subordinate were very much alone, and very much in danger. Their last

With the recognition of the fact, they immediately raised their weapons in the resolve to do as much damage

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

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

"There, damn you!" said Rollway Charley, jerking the mill man to his feet. "How do you like too much

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

offshore 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

Daly and his man were slapped and cuffed hither and thither at the men's will. Their faces bled, their bodies

"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 rightofway.

"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

At the boardinghouse 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.

"I'd rather not hear," interrupted Wallace. "There's quite a fire over east. I suppose you haven't noticed it."

"Hamilton," he began, "write all you know about the drive, and the break, and the rescue, but as to the

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 any one 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

"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

"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

"All right," rejoined the contractor. "We're all going to need our money this summer."

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

It was then about six o'clock in the morning. Thorpe passed the boardinghouse, 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 eastbound train from Duluth. At six thirtytwo, 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

"How're things going up your way?" inquired the conductor by way of conversation while he made out the

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

The carferry finally landed them on the southern peninsula. Thorpe descended at Mackinaw City to find that

the noon train had gone. He ate a 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 waitingroom, there to

remain until the ninetwenty that night. When the cars were backed down from the siding, he boarded the

"Yo'll fin' the smokin' cah up fo'wu'd, suh," said the latter, firmly barring the way.

"Yessah!" acquiesced the darkey, giving way, but still in doubt. He followed Thorpe curiously, peering into

the smokingroom on him from time to time. A little after twelve his patience gave out. The stolid gloomy

Thorpe arose obediently, walked to lower six, and, without undressing, threw himself on the bed. Afterward

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

Thorpe descended at Twelfth Street in Chicago without any very clear notion of where he was going. For a

moment he faced the long parklike 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.

Boardinghouses 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, bettergloved.

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 deepcarved lettering in a

His mind took the letters in one after the other, perceiving them plainly before it accorded them recognition.

Finally he had completed the word Farrand. He whirled sharp on his heel, mounted the broad white stone

It was answered almost immediately by a cleanshaven, portly and dignified man with the most impassive

"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.

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

Then the butler pounced on Thorpe from behind with the intent to do great bodily harm.

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

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

"What are you going to do now?" she catechised, facing him in the middle of the room. A long tendril of her

beautiful cornsilk hair fell across her eyes; her red lips parted in a faint wistful smile; beneath the draperies

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 halfsmiling, halfwistful, starry gaze with which she watched

"O 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

And still she stood there before him, saying nothing, leaning slightly toward him, her red lips half parted, her

"Go away!" he whispered hoarsely at last. The voice was not his own. "Go away! Go away!"

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

"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

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

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 souldeep gratitude the soft girlish curves of Hilda's body, the poise of

her flower head, the piquant, halfwistful, halfchildish set of her red lips, the clear starlike glimmer of her

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.

"I have been reading a story lately," said she, "that has interested me very much. It was about a man who

"Then he renounced all his most valuable possessions because a poor common man needed the sacrifice."

"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

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."

"I have known about you," she went on. "It has all come out in the Telegram. It has been very exciting. Poor

He straightened himself suddenly. "I have forgotten actually forgotten," he cried a little bitterly. "Why, 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?"

"Yes," he agreed after a struggle, "you are right. But now I must begin all over again. It will be a long time

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 bulldog, 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.

"Why no, stupid! He's engaged to Elizabeth Carpenter, Wallace's sister. Now where did you get that silly

"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

"O Harry! I'd forgotten utterly!" she cried in laughing consternation. "I have a luncheon here at halfpast one!

It's almost that now. I must run and dress. Just look at me; just look! You did that!"

"Oh, no, you won't," replied Hilda decidedly. "You are going down town right now and get something to put

"Heavens and earth!" he exclaimed, "I should think so! How am I to get out without ruining the floor?"

"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.

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

"You must," she insisted. "I will not take the position of rich wife to a poor man; it is humiliating to both. I

"Well, then, are you going to be so selfish as to keep me waiting while you make an entirely new start, when

"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

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

Thorpe took the book, staring at it with sightless eyes. Hilda, perched on the arm of his chair, watched his

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

"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 has not fulfilled his reason for being. But, Harry, are you quite sure

The dusk fell through the little room. Out in the hallway a tall clock ticked solemnly. A noiseless servant

"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

"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

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 commonsense

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 reopening 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,

THE train of the South Shore Railroad shot its way across the broad reaches of the northern peninsula. On

either side of the rightofway 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

Thorpe welcomed the smell of the northland. He became almost eager, explaining, indicating to the girl at his

"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

"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 boardinghouse 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

"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.

"You are ridiculous, Harry," protested Helen Thorpe laughingly. "I never saw you so. You are a regular boy!"

The air brakes began to make themselves felt, and shortly the train came to a grinding stop.

"I thought so. Wallace, when did their mill burn, anyway? I haven't heard about it."

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

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 passageway near the door, for the train barely paused.

Thorpe ran down to help the ladies. He was nearly taken from his feet by a wildcat 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 firearms exploded. Even the locomotive

engineer, in the spirit of the occasion, leaned down heartily on his whistle rope. The sawdust street was filled

with screaming, jostling men. The homes of the town were brilliantly draped with cheesecloth, flags and

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

choreboy; 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, whitewater daredevils 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

flaxwhite mustache, his eyes glimmering under his flaxwhite 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

Big Junko and Anderson deposited their burden on the raised platform of the office steps. Thorpe turned and

At once pandemonium broke loose, as though the previous performance had been nothing but a lowvoiced

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

"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 halfway up the steps.

"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

"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 illtimed 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 the Company's booms, three million feet of logs, rescued by their grit and hard

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," "Damnfool

"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

"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

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

"Now, boys, we have done it," said he, "and so will go back to work. From now on you are my comrades in

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

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