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The Blazed Trail, a fiction by Stewart Edward White |
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Part 3. The Blazing Of The Trail - Chapter 28 |
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_ PART III. THE BLAZING OF THE TRAIL CHAPTER XXVIII The boarding-house proved to be of the typical lumber-jack class, a narrow "stoop," a hall-way and stairs in the center, and an office and bar on either side. Shearer and a half dozen other men about his own age sat, their chairs on two legs and their "cork" boots on the rounds of the chairs, smoking placidly in the tepid evening air. The light came from inside the building, so that while Thorpe was in plain view, he could not make out which of the dark figures on the piazza was the man he wanted. He approached, and attempted an identifying scrutiny. The men, with the taciturnity of their class in the presence of a stranger, said nothing. "Well, bub," finally drawled a voice from the corner, "blowed that stake you made out of Radway, yet?" "That you, Shearer?" inquired Thorpe advancing. "You're the man I'm looking for." "You've found me," replied the old man dryly. Thorpe was requested elaborately to "shake hands" with the owners of six names. Then he had a chance to intimate quietly to Shearer that he wanted a word with him alone. The riverman rose silently and led the way up the straight, uncarpeted stairs, along a narrow, uncarpeted hall, to a square, uncarpeted bedroom. The walls and ceiling of this apartment were of unpainted planed pine. It contained a cheap bureau, one chair, and a bed and washstand to match the bureau. Shearer lit the lamp and sat on the bed. "What is it?" he asked. "I have a little pine up in the northern peninsula within walking distance of Marquette," said Thorpe, "and I want to get a crew of about twenty men. It occurred to me that you might be willing to help me." The riverman frowned steadily at his interlocutor from under his bushy brows. "How much pine you got?" he asked finally. "About three hundred millions," replied Thorpe quietly. The old man's blue eyes fixed themselves with unwavering steadiness on Thorpe's face. "You're jobbing some of it, eh?" he submitted finally as the only probable conclusion. "Do you think you know enough about it? Who does it belong to?" "It belongs to a man named Carpenter and myself." The riverman pondered this slowly for an appreciable interval, and then shot out another question. "How'd you get it?" Thorpe told him simply, omitting nothing except the name of the firm up-river. When he had finished, Shearer evinced no astonishment nor approval. "You done well," he commented finally. Then after another interval: "Have you found out who was the men stealin' the pine?" "Yes," replied Thorpe quietly, "it was Morrison & Daly." The old man flickered not an eyelid. He slowly filled his pipe and lit it. "I'll get you a crew of men," said he, "if you'll take me as foreman." "But it's a little job at first," protested Thorpe. "I only want a camp of twenty. It wouldn't be worth your while." "That's my look-out. I'll take th' job," replied the logger grimly. "You got three hundred million there, ain't you? And you're goin' to cut it? It ain't such a small job." Thorpe could hardly believe his good-fortune in having gained so important a recruit. With a practical man as foreman, his mind would be relieved of a great deal of worry over unfamiliar detail. He saw at once that he would himself be able to perform all the duties of scaler, keep in touch with the needs of the camp, and supervise the campaign. Nevertheless he answered the older man's glance with one as keen, and said: "Look here, Shearer, if you take this job, we may as well understand each other at the start. This is going to be my camp, and I'm going to be boss. I don't know much about logging, and I shall want you to take charge of all that, but I shall want to know just why you do each thing, and if my judgment advises otherwise, my judgment goes. If I want to discharge a man, he WALKS without any question. I know about what I shall expect of each man; and I intend to get it out of him. And in questions of policy mine is the say-so every trip. Now I know you're a good man, one of the best there is, and I presume I shall find your judgment the best, but I don't want any mistakes to start with. If you want to be my foreman on those terms, just say so, and I'll be tickled to death to have you." For the first time the lumberman's face lost, during a single instant, its mask of immobility. His steel-blue eyes flashed, his mouth twitched with some strong emotion. For the first time, too, he spoke without his contemplative pause of preparation. "That's th' way to talk!" he cried. "Go with you? Well I should rise to remark! You're the boss; and I always said it. I'll get you a gang of bully boys that will roll logs till there's skating in hell!" Thorpe left, after making an appointment at his own hotel for the following day, more than pleased with his luck. Although he had by now fairly good and practical ideas in regard to the logging of a bunch of pine, he felt himself to be very deficient in the details. In fact, he anticipated his next step with shaky confidence. He would now be called upon to buy four or five teams of horses, and enough feed to last them the entire winter; he would have to arrange for provisions in abundance and variety for his men; he would have to figure on blankets, harness, cook-camp utensils, stoves, blacksmith tools, iron, axes, chains, cant-hooks, van-goods, pails, lamps, oil, matches, all sorts of hardware,--in short, all the thousand and one things, from needles to court-plaster, of which a self-sufficing community might come in need. And he would have to figure out his requirements for the entire winter. After navigation closed, he could import nothing more. How could he know what to buy,--how many barrels of flour, how much coffee, raisins, baking powder, soda, pork, beans, dried apples, sugar, nutmeg, pepper, salt, crackers, molasses, ginger, lard, tea, corned beef, catsup, mustard,--to last twenty men five or six months? How could he be expected to think of each item of a list of two hundred, the lack of which meant measureless bother, and the desirability of which suggested itself only when the necessity arose? It is easy, when the mind is occupied with multitudinous detail, to forget simple things, like brooms or iron shovels. With Tim Shearer to help his inexperience, he felt easy. He knew he could attend to advantageous buying, and to making arrangements with the steamship line to Marquette for the landing of his goods at the mouth of the Ossawinamakee. Deep in these thoughts, he wandered on at random. He suddenly came to himself in the toughest quarter of Bay City. Through the summer night shrilled the sound of cachinations painted to the colors of mirth. A cheap piano rattled and thumped through an open window. Men's and women's voices mingled in rising and falling gradations of harshness. Lights streamed irregularly across the dark. Thorpe became aware of a figure crouched in the door-way almost at his feet. The sill lay in shadow so the bulk was lost, but the flickering rays of a distant street lamp threw into relief the high-lights of a violin, and a head. The face upturned to him was thin and white and wolfish under a broad white brow. Dark eyes gleamed at him with the expression of a fierce animal. Across the forehead ran a long but shallow cut from which blood dripped. The creature clasped both arms around a violin. He crouched there and stared up at Thorpe, who stared down at him. "What's the matter?" asked the latter finally. The creature made no reply, but drew his arms closer about his instrument, and blinked his wolf eyes. Moved by some strange, half-tolerant whim of compassion, Thorpe made a sign to the unknown to rise. "Come with me," said he, "and I'll have your forehead attended to." The wolf eyes gleamed into his with a sudden savage concentration. Then their owner obediently arose. Thorpe now saw that the body before him was of a cripple, short-legged, hunch-backed, long-armed, pigeon-breasted. The large head sat strangely top-heavy between even the broad shoulders. It confirmed the hopeless but sullen despair that brooded on the white countenance. At the hotel Thorpe, examining the cut, found it more serious in appearance than in reality. With a few pieces of sticking plaster he drew its edges together. Then he attempted to interrogate his find. "What is your name?" he asked. "Phil." "Phil what?" Silence. "How did you get hurt?" No reply. "Were you playing your fiddle in one of those houses?" The cripple nodded slowly. "Are you hungry?" asked Thorpe, with a sudden thoughtfulness. "Yes," replied the cripple, with a lightning gleam in his wolf eyes. Thorpe rang the bell. To the boy who answered it he said: "Bring me half a dozen beef sandwiches and a glass of milk, and be quick about it." "Do you play the fiddle much?" continued Thorpe. The cripple nodded again. "Let's hear what you can do." "They cut my strings!" cried Phil with a passionate wail. The cry came from the heart, and Thorpe was touched by it. The price of strings was evidently a big sum. "I'll get you more in the morning," said he. "Would you like to leave Bay City?" "Yes" cried the boy with passion. "You would have to work. You would have to be chore-boy in a lumber camp, and play fiddle for the men when they wanted you to." "I'll do it," said the cripple. "Are you sure you could? You will have to split all the wood for the men, the cook, and the office; you will have to draw the water, and fill the lamps, and keep the camps clean. You will be paid for it, but it is quite a job. And you would have to do it well. If you did not do it well, I would discharge you." "I will do it!" repeated the cripple with a shade more earnestness. "All right, then I'll take you," replied Thorpe. The cripple said nothing, nor moved a muscle of his face, but the gleam of the wolf faded to give place to the soft, affectionate glow seen in the eyes of a setter dog. Thorpe was startled at the change. A knock announced the sandwiches and milk. The cripple fell upon them with both hands in a sudden ecstacy of hunger. When he had finished, he looked again at Thorpe, and this time there were tears in his eyes. A little later Thorpe interviewed the proprietor of the hotel. "I wish you'd give this boy a good cheap room and charge his keep to me," said he. "He's going north with me." Phil was led away by the irreverent porter, hugging tightly his unstrung violin to his bosom. Thorpe lay awake for some time after retiring. Phil claimed a share of his thoughts. Thorpe's winter in the woods had impressed upon him that a good cook and a fiddler will do more to keep men contented than high wages and easy work. So his protection of the cripple was not entirely disinterested. But his imagination persisted in occupying itself with the boy. What terrible life of want and vicious associates had he led in this terrible town? What treatment could have lit that wolf-gleam in his eyes? What hell had he inhabited that he was so eager to get away? In an hour or so he dozed. He dreamed that the cripple had grown to enormous proportions and was overshadowing his life. A slight noise outside his bed-room door brought him to his feet. He opened the door and found that in the stillness of the night the poor deformed creature had taken the blankets from his bed and had spread them across the door-sill of the man who had befriended him. _ |
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