Blazed Trail Stories, and Stories of the Wild Life

  III

  THE SCALER

  Once Morrison & Daly, of Saginaw, but then lumbering at Beeson Lake,lent some money to a man named Crothers, taking in return a mortgage onwhat was known as the Crothers Tract of white pine. In due time, asCrothers did not liquidate, the firm became possessed of this tract.They hardly knew what to do with it.

  The timber was situated some fifty miles from the railroad in a countrythat threw all sorts of difficulties across the logger's path, and hadto be hauled from nine to fifteen miles to the river. Both Morrison andDaly groaned in spirit. Supplies would have to be toted in to last theentire winter, for when the snow came, communication over fifty miles offorest road would be as good as cut off. Whom could they trust among thelesser foremen of their woods force? Whom could they spare among thegreater?

  At this juncture they called to them Tim Shearer, their walking bossand the greatest riverman in the State.

  "You'll have to 'job' her," said Tim, promptly.

  "Who would be hired at any price to go up in that country on a ten-milehaul?" demanded Daly, sceptically.

  "Jest one man," replied Tim, "an' I know where to find him."

  He returned with an individual at the sight of whom the partners glancedtoward each other in doubt and dismay. But there seemed no help for it.A contract was drawn up in which the firm agreed to pay six dollars athousand, merchantable scale, for all saw-logs banked at a rollway to besituated a given number of miles from the forks of Cass Branch, while onhis side James Bourke, better known as the Rough Red, agreed to put inat least three and one-half million feet. After the latter had scrawledhis signature he lurched from the office, softly rubbing his hairyfreckled hand where the pen had touched it.

  "That means a crew of wild Irishmen," said Morrison.

  "And _that_ means they'll just slaughter the pine," added Daly. "They'llsaw high and crooked, they'll chuck the tops--who are we going to sendto scale for 'em?"

  Morrison sighed. "I hate to do it: there's only Fitz can make it go."

  So then they called to them another of their best men, namedFitzPatrick, and sent him away alone to protect the firm's interests inthe depths of the wilderness.

  The Rough Red was a big broad-faced man with eyes far apart and a bushyred beard. He wore a dingy mackinaw coat, a dingy black-and-whitechecked-flannel shirt, dingy blue trousers, tucked into high socks andlumberman's rubbers. The only spot of colour in his costume was theflaming red sash of the _voyageur_ which he passed twice around hiswaist. When at work his little wide eyes flickered with a baleful,wicked light, his huge voice bellowed through the woods in a torrent ofimprecations and commands, his splendid muscles swelled visibly evenunder his loose blanket-coat as he wrenched suddenly and savagely atsome man's stubborn cant-hook stock. A hint of reluctance or oppositionbrought his fist to the mark with irresistible impact. Then he wouldpluck his victim from the snow, and kick him to work with a savage jestthat raised a laugh from everybody--excepting the object of it.

  At night he stormed back through the forest at the head of his band,shrieking wild blasphemy at the silent night, irreverent, domineering,bold, with a certain tang of Irish good-nature that made him the belovedof Irishmen. And at the trail's end the unkempt, ribald crew swarmedtheir dark and dirty camp as a band of pirates a galleon.

  In the work was little system, but much efficacy. The men gambled,drank, fought, without a word of protest from their leader. With anordinary crew such performances would have meant slight accomplishment,but these wild Irishmen, with their bloodshot eyes, their ready jests,their equally ready fists, plunged into the business of banking logswith all the abandon of a carouse--and the work was done.

  Law in that wilderness was not, saving that which the Rough Red chose toadminister. Except in one instance, penalty more severe than a beatingthere was none, for the men could not equal their leader in breaking thegreater and lesser laws of morality. The one instance was that of youngBarney Mallan, who, while drunk, mishandled a horse so severely as tolame it. Him the Rough Red called to formal account.

  "Don't ye know that horses can't be had?" he demanded, singularlyenough without an oath. "Come here."

  The man approached. With a single powerful blow of a starting-bar theRough Red broke one of the bones of his tibia.

  "Try th' lameness yerself," said the Rough Red, grimly. He glared aboutthrough the dimness at his silent men, then stalked through the doorinto the cook-camp. Had he killed Barney Mallan outright, it would havebeen the same. No one in the towns would have been a word the wiser.

  On Thanksgiving Day the entire place went on a prolonged drunk. TheRough Red distinguished himself by rolling the round stove through thedoor into the snow. He was badly burned in accomplishing this delicatejest, but minded the smart no more then he did the admiring cheers ofhis maudlin but emulative mates. FitzPatrick extinguished a dozen littlefires that the coals had started, shifted the intoxicated Mallan's legout of the danger of someone's falling on it, and departed from thatroaring hell-hole to the fringe of the solemn forest. And this brings usto FitzPatrick.

  FitzPatrick was a tall, slow man, with a face built square. The lines ofhis brows, his mouth, and his jaw ran straight across; those of histemples, cheeks, and nose straight up and down. His eye was very quietand his speech rare. When he did talk, it was with deliberation. Fordays, sometimes, he would ejaculate nothing but monosyllables, lookingsteadily on the things about him.

  He had walked in ahead of the tote-team late one evening in the autumn,after the Rough Red and his devils had been at work a fortnight. Thecamp consisted quite simply of three buildings, which might have beenidentified as a cook-camp, a sleeping-camp, and a stable. FitzPatrickentered the sleeping-camp, stood his slender scaling-rule in the corner,and peered about him through the dusk of a single lamp.

  He saw a round stove in the centre, a littered and dirty floor, bunksfilled with horrible straw and worse blankets jumbled here and there,old and dirty clothes drying fetidly. He saw an unkempt row ofhard-faced men along the deacon-seat, reckless in bearing, with thelight of the dare-devil in their eyes.

  "Where is the boss?" asked FitzPatrick, steadily.

  The Rough Red lurched his huge form toward the intruder.

  "I am your scaler," explained the latter. "Where is the office?"

  "You can have the bunk beyand," indicated the Rough Red, surlily.

  "You have no office then?"

  "What's good enough fer th' men is good enough for a boss; and what'sgood enough fer th' boss is good enough fer any blank blanked scaler."

  "It is not good enough for this one," replied FitzPatrick, calmly. "Ihave no notion of sleepin' and workin' in no such noise an' dirt. I needan office to keep me books and th' van. Not a log do I scale for ye,Jimmy Bourke, till you give me a fit place to tally in."

  And so it came about, though the struggle lasted three days. The RoughRed stormed restlessly between the woods and the camp, deliveringtremendous broadsides of oaths and threats. FitzPatrick sat absolutelyimperturbable on the deacon-seat, looking straight in front of him, hislegs stretched comfortably aslant, one hand supporting the elbow of theother, which in turn held his short brier pipe.

  "Good-mornin' to ye, Jimmy Bourke," said he each morning, and after thatuttered no word until the evening, when it was, "Good-night to ye,Jimmy Bourke," with a final _rap, rap, rap_ of his pipe.

  The cook, a thin-faced, sly man, with a penchant for the _PoliceGazette_, secretly admired him.

  "Luk' out for th' Rough Red; he'll do ye!" he would whisper hoarselywhen he passed the silent scaler.

  But in the three days the Rough Red put his men to work on a littlecabin. FitzPatrick at once took his scaling-rule from the corner and setout into the forest.

  His business was, by measuring the diameter of each log, to ascertainand tabulate the number of board feet put in by the contractor. On thebasis of his single report James Bourke would be paid for the season'swork. Inevitably he at once became James Bourke's natural enemy, and so
of every man in the crew with the possible exception of the cook.

  Suppose you log a knoll which your eye tells you must grow at least ahalf-million; suppose you work conscientiously for twelve days; supposeyour average has always been between forty and fifty thousand a day. Andthen suppose the scaler's sheets credit you with only a little over thefour hundred thousand! What would you think of it? Would you not beinclined to suspect that the scaler had cheated you in favour of hismaster? that you had been compelled by false figures to work a day or sofor nothing?

  FitzPatrick scaled honestly, for he was a just man, but exactitude andoptimism of estimate never have approximated, and they did not in thiscase. The Rough Red grumbled, accused, swore, threatened. FitzPatricksmoked "Peerless," and said nothing. Still it was not pleasant for him,alone there in the dark wilderness fifty miles from the nearestsettlement, without a human being with whom to exchange a friendly word.

  The two men early came to a clash over the methods of cutting. The RoughRed and his crew cut anywhere, everywhere, anyhow. The easiest way wastheirs. Small timber they skipped, large timber they sawed high, topsthey left rather than trim them into logs. FitzPatrick would not havethe pine "slaughtered."

  "Ye'll bend your backs a little, Jimmy Bourke," said he, "and cut th'stumps lower to th' ground. There's a bunch of shingles at least inevery stump ye've left. And you must saw straighter. And th' contractcalls for eight inches and over; mind ye that. Don't go to skippin' th'little ones because they won't scale ye high. 'Tis in the contract so.And I won't have th' tops left. There's many a good log in them, an' yetrim them fair and clean."

  "Go to hell, you--" shouted the Rough Red. "Where th' blazes did yelearn so much of loggin'? I log th' way me father logged, an' I'm not tobe taught by a high-banker from th' Muskegon!"

  Never would he acknowledge the wrong nor promise the improvement, butboth were there, and both he and FitzPatrick knew it. The Rough Redchafed frightfully, but in a way his hands were tied. He could donothing without the report; and it was too far out to send for anotherscaler, even if Daly would have given him one.

  Finally in looking over a skidway he noticed that one log had not beenblue-pencilled across the end. That meant that it had not been scaled;and that in turn meant that he, the Rough Red, would not be paid for hislabour in cutting and banking it. At once he began to bellow through thewoods.

  "Hey! FitzPatrick! Come here, you blank-blanked-blank of a blank! Comehere!"

  The sealer swung leisurely down the travoy trail and fronted the otherwith level eyes.

  "Well?" said he.

  "Why ain't that log marked?"

  "I culled it."

  "Ain't it sound and good? Is there a mark on it? A streak of punk orrot? Ain't it good timber? What the hell's th' matter with it? You triedto do me out of that, you damn skunk."

  A log is culled, or thrown out, when, for any reason, it will not makegood timber.

  "I'll tell you, Jimmy Bourke," replied FitzPatrick, calmly, "th' stickis sound and good, or was before your murderin' crew got hold of it, butif ye'll take a squint at the butt of it ye'll see that your gang hassawed her on a six-inch slant. They've wasted a good foot of th' log. Ispoke of that afore; an' now I give ye warnin' that I cull every log,big or little, punk or sound, that ain't sawed square and true acrossth' butt."

  "Th' log is sound and good, an' ye'll scale it, or I'll know th' reasonwhy!"

  "I will not," replied FitzPatrick.

  The following day he culled a log in another and distant skidway whosebutt showed a slant of a good six inches. The day following he culledanother of the same sort on still another skidway. He examined itclosely, then sought the Rough Red.

  "It is useless, Jimmy Bourke," said he, "to be hauling of the same poorlog from skidway to skidway. You can shift her to every travoy trail inth' Crother tract, but it will do ye little good. I'll cull it whereverI find it, and never will ye get th' scale of that log."

  The Rough Red raised his hand, then dropped it again; whirled away witha curse; whirled back with another, and spat out:

  "By God, FitzPatrick, ye go too far! Ye've hounded me and harried methrough th' woods all th' year! By God, 'tis a good stick, an' ye shallscale it!"

  "Yo' and yore Old Fellows is robbers alike!" cried one of the men.

  FitzPatrick turned on his heel and resumed his work. The men ceasedtheirs and began to talk.

  That night was Christmas Eve. After supper the Rough Red went directlyfrom the cook-camp to the men's camp. FitzPatrick, sitting lonely in thelittle office, heard the sounds of debauch rising steadily likemysterious storm winds in distant pines. He shrugged his shoulders, andtallied his day's scaling, and turned into his bunk wearily, for ofholidays there are none in the woods, save Sunday. About midnightsomeone came in. FitzPatrick, roused from his sleep by aimlessblunderings, struck a light, and saw the cook looking uncertainly towardhim through blood-clotted lashes. The man was partly drunk, partly hurt,but more frightened.

  "They's too big fer me, too big fer me!" he repeated, thickly.

  FitzPatrick kicked aside the blankets and set foot on the floor.

  "Le' me stay," pleaded the cook, "I won't bother you; I won't even makea noise. I'm skeered!"

  "Course you can stay," replied the scaler. "Come here."

  He washed the man's forehead, and bound up the cut with surgeon'splaster from the van. The man fell silent, looking at him in wondermentfor such kindness.

  Four hours later, dimly, through the mist of his broken sleep,FitzPatrick heard the crew depart for the woods in the early dawn. Onthe crest of some higher waves of consciousness were borne to himdrunken shouts, maudlin blasphemies. After a time he arose and demandedbreakfast.

  The cook, pale and nervous, served him. The man was excited, irresolute,eager to speak. Finally he dropped down on the bench oppositeFitzPatrick, and began.

  "Fitz," said he, "don't go in th' woods to-day. The men is fair wild width' drink, and th' Rough Red is beside hi'self. Las' night I heerd them.They are goin' to skid the butt log again, and they swear that if youcull it again, they will kill you. They mean it. That's all why theywint to th' woods this day."

  FitzPatrick swallowed his coffee in silence. In silence he arose andslipped on his mackinaw blanket coat. In silence he thrust his beechwoodtablets into his pocket, and picked his pliable scaler's rule from thecorner.

  "Where are ye goin'?" asked the cook, anxiously.

  "I'm goin' to do th' work they pay me to do," answered FitzPatrick.

  He took his way down the trail, his face set straight before him, thesmoke of his breath streaming behind. The first skidway he scaled withcare, laying his rule flat across the face of each log, entering thefigures on his many-leaved tablets of beech, marking the timbers swiftlywith his blue crayon.

  The woods were empty. No ring of the axe, no shout of the driver, nofall of the tree broke the silence. FitzPatrick comprehended. He knewthat at the next skidway the men were gathered, waiting to see what hewould do; gathered openly at last in that final hostility which had beenmaturing all winter. He knew, besides, that most of them were partlydrunk and wholly reckless, and that he was alone. Nevertheless, afterfinishing conscientiously skidway number one, he moved on to skidwaynumber two.

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

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

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

  "I have," answered FitzPatrick, briefly.

  "Yo' have forgot to scale one stick."

  "No."

  "There is a stick still not marked."

  "I culled it."

  "Why?"

  "It was not sawed straight."

  FitzPatrick threw his head back proudly, answering his m
an at ease, asan accomplished swordsman. The Rough Red shifted his feet, almost awedin spite of himself. One after another the men dropped their eyes andstood ill at ease. The scaler turned away; his heel caught a root; hestumbled; instantly the pack was on him, for the power of his eye wasbroken.

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

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

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

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

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

  Hours later, as it seemed, they moved slowly in the direction of camp.The cold had stiffened FitzPatrick's cuts and bruises. Every step shot ared wave of torture through his arteries to his brain. They came insight of camp. It was silent. Both knew that the men had drunkthemselves into a stupor.

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

  "So would I," replied FitzPatrick.

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

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

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

  "Sit here," replied FitzPatrick, grimly.

  The cook started forward.

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

  The cook stared at him through saucer eyes.

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

  "They ought to be," snarled the scaler; "it ain't their fault I'm hereto help them. 'Tis their own deed that I'm now lyin' beyant there in th'forest, unable to help myself. Do you understand? I'm yet out there inth' woods!"

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

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

  "'Tis th' soft heart ye have after all, Fitz," said the cook,delightedly, as the two washed their hands in preparation for a lunch."Ye could not bear t' see th' lads burn."

  FitzPatrick glowered at him for an instant from beneath his squarebrows.

  "They can go to hell for all of me," he answered, finally, "but mypeople want these logs put in this winter, an' there's nobody else toput them in."