The Namakagon Timber Company cook shanty was usually crowded with hungry men when the Saturday night supper bell rang. Not tonight. More than half of the lumberjacks had gone into town, a rare chance to blow off a head of steam, so said the woods boss, Ingman Loken. He knew most of the jacks would be back by early Sunday morning with less money in their pockets and more tall tales to tell.
Those who chose to stay in camp that night did so for a variety of reasons. Mason Fitch was still laid up from the leg injury he suffered earlier in the week. Sourdough had sewed him up as best he could, but it would be a good while before he would walk. You can be sure twenty-year-old Mason would have preferred a night on the town to lying on his straw-filled bunk in camp.
Sourdough couldn’t go. He had to cook for the men and prepare more than one hundred pies, two roast pigs, three hundred biscuits, beans, and plenty of other fixin’s for the Sunday dinner. Guests were coming and the company boss wanted to make a good impression.
Sourdough had help from Zeke and Zach, his cookees. All three would be up most of the night stoking the big cast-iron ranges and baking rack after rack of pies, bread, and biscuits. They would also tend to the sides of pork roasting on a spit outside the kitchen door.
In spite of his strong desire to spend Saturday night with his men, Ingman remained behind. His brother had no choice. Wheelchair-bound, Olaf had not been out on the town on a Saturday night for more than two years. He wondered if he ever would again.
Other men stayed behind, too. Some had hired on hoping to earn enough money to keep their farms. They knew a Saturday night in town could leave them dead broke. Others stayed back to rest up and enjoy a taste of Olaf’s whisky, a rare treat in any dry camp.
Kelly Thompson and Whistlin’ Jim Engelbretson had a different reason. Ingman promised them an extra day’s pay to provide music that night. Kelly boasted he could play more than thirty songs on his banjo. Whistlin’ Jim, who deserved his nickname, also played the concertina.
Tor would stay behind tonight. He wanted to go but knew better than to ask his sheltering father for permission. Tor would sing along with the shanty boys, play some checkers, eat Sourdough’s supper, listen to the tall tales, and maybe have a sip of whisky if his pa approved.
“Play us a polka, Whistlin’ Jim,” shouted Sourdough as he placed a large platter of smoked venison and ham on one of the tables. “Let’s get this ballyhoo a-goin’!”
Whistlin’ Jim, a chain-haul man by day, stomped his foot four times and squeezed a series of notes from his concertina. Kelly joined right in on the banjo, and most of the forty men who stayed in camp that night clapped to the beat. Sourdough began dancing around the tables, waving a wooden spoon over his head.
“Ya-dah, ya-dah, ha-ha-ha. Ya-dah, ya-dah, ha-ha-ha,” he sang. As he rounded the kitchen worktable, he grabbed hold of both of his cookees and the three of them danced around the tables again. Zeke and Zach laughed so hard they could barely stay on their feet. Whistlin’ Jim played and whistled while Kelly strummed his banjo. Sourdough sang louder now.
“Ya-dah, ya-dah, ha-ha-ha.
Ya-dah, ya-dah, ha-ha-ha.
La la la.
La la la.
Loken’s lumber camp. Ya!”
The cook shanty door swung open as Ingman wheeled his brother into the room. He stepped back outside and quickly returned, carrying a wooden whisky crate. He set the box on Sourdough's chopping block and snapped the lid from the crate. Tin cups, half filled with the amber liquid, were soon being passed around the room.
As the cups were relayed down the deacon’s bench, Tex Ketchum, the oldest man in camp, took a small sip from each cup before passing it on.
“Hey, Tex!” came a shout from the end of the bench, “what the hell you doin’?”
“Just testin’, just testin’,” replied the old fellow as he took another sip. “Don’t want you boys to get no loco weed juice.”
The men laughed and sang. Two lumberjacks stepped up onto a table and danced around each other, clapping and stamping their feet. Whistlin’ Jim continued playing as he stepped up onto a bench, making up a verse for the lively tune.
“Grab your mop or grab your broom.
Dance around the gol dang room,
Sing a tune,
Shoot the moon,
At Loken’s lumber camp. Ya!
See that fella on your right,
How he smells is such a fright.
Chew your snoose,
Spit your juice,
At Loken’s lumber camp. Ya!”
Red Olsen, a big, burly Dane with a long, red beard, jumped onto the table next to Whistlin’ Jim, making up another verse.
“Sourdough is our camp cook.
Biscuits harder than a book.
Punkin’ pie,
In your eye,
At Loken’s lumber camp. Ya!”
Everyone laughed, clapped and stamped feet now. Sourdough stepped onto the table. It bent in the center under the weight of the short, fat man in the white apron. When the tune came around, the head cook added his own verse.
“If you don’t like my table goods,
I’ll pitch your dinner in the woods.
If you’re rude,
You’ll get no food,
At Loken’s lumber camp. Ya!”
The men howled with laughter. Sourdough stepped down onto the floor again and grabbed a whisky cup as Zeke and Zach each brought another tray to the men. Max Wiley jumped onto the table.
“Pinery boys who go to town
Lay their hard-earned dollars down.
Drink and smoke,
Come back broke
To Loken’s lumber camp. Ya!”
Before Max could finish the verse, Red Olsen was on another table to take the next. He looked toward Olaf and Ingman as he sang.
“Muldoon ain’t no friend of mine.
We’ll breach his dam and drive our pine.
If he fights,
We’ll douse his lights.
We’re Loken’s lumber camp. Ya!”
The entire room erupted with cheers, hats flying through the air. Tex Ketchum leapt onto the middle table, shaking his fist in the air while jumping up and down. One of the tossed hats landed on Olaf’s lap. He threw it back into the air with a grin. The music played on.
Ingman sat on the bench nearest his brother. Leaning toward him, he peered into Olaf’s deep blue eyes. With the men all cheering and laughing in the background, Ingman spoke. “There is no way you and I can let these boys down. If Phineas Muldoon gets his way, not one of these fellas here will get his winter’s wages. Olaf, these boys will fight tooth and nail for us and, gol dang it, we are going to fight for them! The water in this lake belongs to these men yust as much as anybody else. So do the pines. Muldoon might own the dam, but we have rights to the water and, by God above, we are going to use that water to drive our timber to the mills and that, my brother, is that!”
Olaf nodded. “I agree. This camp and that timber out there on the ice belong to our men as much as us. We owe it to them to get our timber to the mills in the spring, whatever the cost. And, some day I want to turn this outfit over to Tor. Can’t do that if Muldoon squeezes us dry. With a hundred Namakagon Timber Company men behind us we can overcome Muldoon. If that’s our only choice, then so be it.”
The musicians played one snappy tune after another while the men played cards, checkers, sang, and danced. Each time the musicians took a break, someone bounded onto a table and spun a yarn or told of an adventure. The case of whisky lasted well into the early morning hours.
Sourdough took the last of more than one hundred pumpkin, squash, mincemeat, and apple pies from the oven, and locked them in his pantry to cool. He knew the men coming back from their Saturday night on the town would be hungry. The pies would be safe tonight. Returning shanty boys would just have to wait for breakfast like everyone else.
Ingman, Olaf, and Tor crossed the yard to the lodge. Tor placed several logs on the fire and turned in.
 
; Tor stared out his window as he lay in bed, the stars sparkling in the clear December night sky.
“Rosie’s coming to camp tomorrow,” he said to himself. “Sweet Rosie.” Tor drifted into a sound sleep.
Junior Kavanaugh woke with a start, lying on the floor in total darkness and head spinning from all the beer he drank earlier that night. Hanging onto the wall, he slowly stood, then checked his pockets. He found nothing left but a few matchsticks. He couldn’t remember anything, other than having dinner with Mabel Durst and drinking beer after beer after beer. “Why did I drink so much?” he muttered.
Junior had no idea which building he was in, how he got there, or what had happened. All he knew was that his head was spinning, his money was gone, and he felt sick.
Junior struck a match. In the corner, next to his shoe-pacs, lay his new, derby hat, crushed. Holding the match high above his head, he tried to shape the hat with his free hand, then plopped it on his head. He pulled on his shoe-pacs before opening the door. Dim light flickered from the kerosene lantern hanging over the staircase. The match burned his fingers, He tossed it onto the floor and stepped on it.
His attention turned to the window. Looking out, he realized he was in a third-floor room. He gazed at the quiet, moonlit street below. From his vantage point he could see well beyond the Merrill Hotel and the general store. He stared for a few seconds before it struck him. The Loken sleighs were gone.
The shock of the absent sleighs shook sense into the boy’s foggy brain. He dashed out the door and down the two flights of stairs to the bar below. He burst into the barroom, seeing Mabel Durst at the far table with a tall, thin, redheaded lumberjack.
“Gotta go, Mabel,” he yelled across the half-filled room, turning every head. “Hope I didn’t spoil ya for the other fellas!”
Derby-topped and wearing his new, now-wrinkled suit and old shoe-pacs, Junior sprinted down the street past a small group of men standing near the hotel. “How long since the Namakagon Timber Company boys pulled out?” he yelled as he ran by.
“Ten, fifteen minutes, I’d say,” called back one of the men.
“Thanks, pal,” he shouted as he disappeared around the corner and down the moonlit street. He knew Blackie wouldn’t be in a rush to return to camp. The two, four-horse teams would be taking it easy. He might be able to catch them at the river bridge, about three miles to the east. The beer was wearing off. Although his head pounded, he kept up his pace.
About two miles out, Junior saw something cross the narrow road ahead. When he neared the spot, he found the tracks from the animal that had crossed those of the sleighs. He studied them in the moonlight until he was sure, then sprinted down the trail again.
Picking up his pace, the boy shouted into the dark forest, “You dang wolves better not be lookin’ at me for your next feast.” He ran faster. “I ain’t your Sunday dinner!” The woods were silent. “Go find some other bones to chew on, varmints. You don’t want me,” he shouted at the top of his lungs.
On down the snow-filled road he ran, shouting at the wolves, hoping to keep them at a distance. His imagination and the shadows caused by the bright moon inspired him to run faster and faster. As he rounded a bend in the road, he saw something on the trail ahead. Something large and dark. He kept running.
A shout came from ahead. “Who’s on the trail?”
“It’s me! Junior. Junior Kavanaugh. Hold your horses, fellas!”
Junior sprinted up to the back of the sleigh, reached up, and grabbed a large wool-mittened hand that swung him up and onto the sleigh into the straw, right on top of a whisky-spent lumberjack.
“Well, if it ain’t the barn boy in the derby hat,” yelled Charlie Martin. “We figured with all our money to spend that you’d be livin’ the high life in town all winter. So how was your first Saturday night in Cable, Sprout?”
“I tell ya, fellas, it-was-somethin’. First I bought me this here Sunday suit. Then I treated my best gal to a fancy hotel supper and beer, plenty of beer.”
“That’s the lot of it? A suit and a supper and some beer?”
“Well, fellas, let me put it to you like this: I had plenty of money when Mabel and me left for supper. Five hours later I got me a big grin on my face, and I’m plum broke. Now, fellas, you figure it out!”
Blackie let go a belly laugh that echoed through the woods. “Junior Kavanaugh, you are some bullshitter, you are.”
“Well, that is for me to know and for you fellas to ponder,” said Junior with a grin. Then, “Blackie, there was a wolf on my trail back there!”
“It’s your imagination, boy. No sensible timberwolf wants a skinny little runt like you.”
“No, really, I saw him. I saw his track, too!”
“I am tellin’ you,” said Blackie from his nail keg seat, “it was just your imagination. Bein’ alone in the winter woods at night will do that to a fella. Happens all the time.”
“Ya, I s'pose maybe you’re right, Blackie. Maybe it weren’t no wolf after all.”
Eight Namakagon Timber Company horses plodded down the snowy trail in the bitter December air. They pulled two sleighs of contented lumberjacks back toward their camp. The snow squeaked and squealed under the ironclad wooden runners, masking the lonely, eerie howling of six hungry wolves in the nearby pines.