Blazed Trail Stories, and Stories of the Wild Life
Stewart Edward White
Produced by Roger Frank and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
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BLAZED TRAIL STORIES
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OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Blazed Trail, The Silent Places, Conjuror's House TheWesterners, The Claim Jumpers The Magic Forest, The Forest TheMountains
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Thomas Fogarty "FOR A MOMENT HE POISED ERECT IN THEGREAT CALM OF THE PUBLIC PERFORMER." (Page 6)]
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BLAZED TRAIL STORIESANDSTORIES OF THE WILD LIFE
BYSTEWART EDWARD WHITE
NEW YORK McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.MCMIVCopyright 1904, by Stewart Edward WhitePublished September, 1904
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Copyright 1899, 1902, 1903, by The S. S. McClure Co. Copyright 1901, byThe Century Company. Copyright 1899, 1900, by J. B. Lippincott Company.Copyright 1902, by Perry Mason Company. Copyright 1901, by Truth Company.
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CONTENTS
PART IBLAZED TRAIL STORIES PAGE
The Riverman 3
The Foreman 22
The Scaler 39
The River-Boss 58
The Fifth Way 73
The Life of the Winds of Heaven 83
PART IISTORIES OF THE WILD LIFE
The Girl Who Got Rattled 111
Billy's Tenderfoot 132
The Two Cartridges 153
The Race 180
The Saving Grace 198
The Prospector 222
The Girl in Red 246
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BLAZED TRAIL STORIESANDSTORIES OF THE WILD LIFE
I
THE RIVERMAN
I first met him one Fourth of July afternoon in the middle eighties. Thesawdust streets and high board sidewalks of the lumber town were filledto the brim with people. The permanent population, dressed in thestiffness of its Sunday best, escorted gingham wives or sweethearts; adozen outsiders like myself tried not to be too conspicuous in a citysmartness; but the great multitude was composed of the men of the woods.I sat, chair-tilted by the hotel, watching them pass. Their heavywoollen shirts crossed by the broad suspenders, the red of their sashesor leather shine of their belts, their short kersey trousers "stagged"off to leave a gap between the knee and the heavily spiked "corkboots"--all these were distinctive enough of their class, but mostinteresting to me were the eyes that peered from beneath their littleround hats tilted rakishly askew. They were all subtly alike, thoseeyes. Some were black, some were brown, or gray, or blue, but all weresteady and unabashed, all looked straight at you with a strange humorousblending of aggression and respect for your own business, and allwithout exception wrinkled at the corners with a suggestion of dryhumor. In my half-conscious scrutiny I probably stared harder than Iknew, for all at once a laughing pair of the blue eyes suddenly met minefull, and an ironical voice drawled,
"Say, bub, you look as interested as a man killing snakes. Am I yourlong-lost friend?"
The tone of the voice matched accurately the attitude of the man, andthat was quite non-committal. He stood cheerfully ready to meet theemergency. If I sought trouble, it was here to my hand; or if I neededhelp he was willing to offer it.
"I guess you are," I replied, "if you can tell me what all this outfit'sheaded for."
He thrust back his hat and ran his hand through a mop of closely croppedlight curls.
"Birling match," he explained briefly. "Come on."
I joined him, and together we followed the crowd to the river, where weroosted like cormorants on adjacent piles overlooking a patch of clearwater among the filled booms.
"Drive's just over," my new friend informed me. "Rear come down lastnight. Fourther July celebration. This little town will scratch fer th'tall timber along about midnight when the boys goes in to take herapart."
A half-dozen men with peavies rolled a white-pine log of about a footand a half diameter into the clear water, where it lay rocking back andforth, three or four feet from the boom piles. Suddenly a man ran thelength of the boom, leaped easily into the air, and landed with bothfeet square on one end of the floating log. That end disappeared in anankle-deep swirl of white foam, the other rose suddenly, the wholetimber, projected forward by the shock, drove headlong to the middle ofthe little pond. And the man, his arms folded, his knees just bent inthe graceful nervous attitude of the circus-rider, stood upright like astatue of bronze.
A roar approved this feat.
"That's Dickey Darrell," said my informant, "Roaring Dick. He's hell_and_ repeat. Watch him."
The man on the log was small, with clean beautiful haunches andshoulders, but with hanging baboon arms. Perhaps his most strikingfeature was a mop of reddish-brown hair that overshadowed a littletriangular white face accented by two reddish-brown quadrilaterals thatserved as eyebrows and a pair of inscrutable chipmunk eyes.
For a moment he poised erect in the great calm of the public performer.Then slowly he began to revolve the log under his feet. The lofty gaze,the folded arms, the straight supple waist budged not by a hair'sbreadth; only the feet stepped forward, at first deliberately, thenfaster and faster, until the rolling log threw a blue spray a foot intothe air. Then suddenly _slap! slap!_ the heavy caulks stamped areversal. The log came instantaneously to rest, quivering exactly likesome animal that had been spurred through its paces.
"Magnificent!" I cried.
"Hell, that's nothing!" my companion repressed me, "anybody can birl alog. Watch this."
Roaring Dick for the first time unfolded his arms. With some appearanceof caution he balanced his unstable footing into absolute immobility.Then he turned a somersault.
This was the real thing. My friend uttered a wild yell of applause whichwas lost in a general roar.
A long pike-pole shot out, bit the end of the timber, and towed it tothe boom pile. Another man stepped on the log with Darrell. They stoodfacing each other, bent-kneed, alert. Suddenly with one accord theycommenced to birl the log from left to right. The pace grew hot. Likesquirrels treading a cage their feet twinkled. Then it became apparentthat Darrell's opponent was gradually being forced from the top of thelog. He could not keep up. Little by little, still moving desperately,he dropped back to the slant, then at last to the edge, and so off intothe river with a mighty splash.
"Clean birled!" commented my friend.
One after another a half-dozen rivermen tackled the imperturbable Dick,but none of them possessed the agility to stay on top in the pace he setthem. One boy of eighteen seemed for a moment to hold his own, andmanaged at least to keep out of the water even when Darrell hadapparently reached his maximum speed. But that expert merely threw
hisentire weight into two reversing stamps of his feet, and the youngfellow dove forward as abruptly as though he had been shied over ahorse's head.
The crowd was by now getting uproarious and impatient of volunteereffort to humble Darrell's challenge. It wanted the best, and at once.It began, with increasing insistence, to shout a name.
"Jimmy Powers!" it vociferated, "Jimmy Powers."
And then by shamefaced bashfulness, by profane protest, by muttered andcomprehensive curses I knew that my companion on the other pile wasindicated.
A dozen men near at hand began to shout. "Here he is!" they cried. "Comeon, Jimmy." "Don't be a high banker." "Hang his hide on the fence."
Jimmy, still red and swearing, suffered himself to be pulled from hiselevation and disappeared in the throng. A moment later I caught hishead and shoulders pushing toward the boom piles, and so in a moment hestepped warily aboard to face his antagonist.
This was evidently no question to be determined by the simplicity offorce or the simplicity of a child's trick. The two men stoodhalf-crouched, face to face, watching each other narrowly, but making nomove. To me they seemed like two wrestlers sparring for an opening.Slowly the log revolved one way; then slowly the other. It was a merecourtesy of salute. All at once Dick birled three rapid strokes fromleft to right as though about to roll the log, leaped into the air andlanded square with both feet on the other slant of the timber. JimmyPowers felt the jar, and acknowledged it by the spasmodic jerk withwhich he counterbalanced Darrell's weight. But he was not thrown.
As though this daring and hazardous manoeuvre had opened the combat,both men sprang to life. Sometimes the log rolled one way, sometimes theother, sometimes it jerked from side to side like a crazy thing, butalways with the rapidity of light, always in a smother of spray andfoam. The decided _spat, spat, spat_ of the reversing blows from thecaulked boots sounded like picket firing. I could not make out thedifferent leads, feints, parries, and counters of this strange method ofboxing, nor could I distinguish to whose initiative the variousevolutions of that log could be described. But I retain still a vividmental picture of two men nearly motionless above the waist, nearlyvibrant below it, dominating the insane gyrations of a stick of pine.
The crowd was appreciative and partisan--for Jimmy Powers. It howledwildly, and rose thereby to ever higher excitement. Then it forgot itsmanners utterly and groaned when it made out that a sudden splashrepresented its favourite, while the indomitable Darrell still trod thequarter-deck as champion birler for the year.
I must confess I was as sorry as anybody. I climbed down from mycormorant roost, and picked my way between the alleys of aromatic piledlumber in order to avoid the press, and cursed the little gods heartilyfor undue partiality in the wrong direction. In this manner I happenedon Jimmy Powers himself seated dripping on a board and examining hisbared foot.
"I'm sorry," said I behind him. "How did he do it?"
He whirled, and I could see that his laughing boyish face had becomesuddenly grim and stern, and that his eyes were shot with blood.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" he growled disparagingly. "Well, that's how hedid it."
He held out his foot. Across the instep and at the base of the toes rantwo rows of tiny round punctures from which the blood was oozing. Ilooked very inquiring.
"He corked me!" Jimmy Powers explained. "Jammed his spikes into me!Stepped on my foot and tripped me, the----" Jimmy Powers certainly couldswear.
"Why didn't you make a kick?" I cried.
"That ain't how I do it," he muttered, pulling on his heavy woollensock.
"But no," I insisted, my indignation mounting. "It's an outrage! Thatcrowd was with you. All you had to do was to _say_ something----"
He cut me short. "And give myself away as a damn fool--sure Mike. Iought to know Dickey Darrell by this time, and I ought to be big enoughto take care of myself." He stamped his foot into his driver's shoe andtook me by the arm, his good humour apparently restored. "No, don't youlose any hair, bub; I'll get even with Roaring Dick."
That night, having by the advice of the proprietor moved my bureau andtrunk against the bedroom door, I lay wide awake listening to the takingof the town apart. At each especially vicious crash I wondered if thatmight be Jimmy Powers getting even with Roaring Dick.
The following year, but earlier in the season, I again visited my littlelumber town. In striking contrast to the life of that other midsummerday were the deserted streets. The landlord knew me, and after I hadwashed and eaten approached me with a suggestion.
"You got all day in front of you," said he; "why don't you take a horseand buggy and make a visit to the big jam? Everybody's up there more orless."
In response to my inquiry, he replied:
"They've jammed at the upper bend, jammed bad. The crew's been pickingat her for near a week now, and last night Darrell was down to see aboutsome more dynamite. It's worth seein'. The breast of her is near thirtyfoot high, and lots of water in the river."
"Darrell?" said I, catching at the name.
"Yes. He's rear boss this year. Do you think you'd like to take a lookat her?"
"I think I should," I assented.
The horse and I jogged slowly along a deep sand road, through wastes ofpine stumps and belts of hardwood beautiful with the early spring, untilfinally we arrived at a clearing in which stood two huge tents, amammoth kettle slung over a fire of logs, and drying racks about thetimbers of another fire. A fat cook in the inevitable battered derbyhat, two bare-armed cookees, and a chore "boy" of seventy-odd summerswere the only human beings in sight. One of the cookees agreed to keepan eye on my horse. I picked my way down a well-worn trail toward theregular _clank, clank, click_ of the peavies.
I emerged finally to a plateau elevated some fifty or sixty feet abovethe river. A half-dozen spectators were already gathered. Among them Icould not but notice a tall, spare, broad-shouldered young fellowdressed in a quiet business suit, somewhat wrinkled, whose square,strong, clean-cut face and muscular hands were tanned by the weather toa dark umber-brown. In another moment I looked down on the jam.
The breast, as my landlord had told me, rose sheer from the water to theheight of at least twenty-five feet, bristling and formidable. Back ofit pressed the volume of logs packed closely in an apparentlyinextricable tangle as far as the eye could reach. A man near informedme that the tail was a good three miles up stream. From beneath thiswonderful _chevaux de frise_ foamed the current of the river,irresistible to any force less mighty than the statics of such a mass.
A crew of forty or fifty men were at work. They clamped their peavies tothe reluctant timbers, heaved, pushed, slid, and rolled them one by oneinto the current, where they were caught and borne away. They had beendoing this for a week. As yet their efforts had made but slightimpression on the bulk of the jam, but some time, with patience, theywould reach the key-logs. Then the tangle would melt like sugar in thefreshet, and these imperturbable workers would have to escape suddenlyover the plunging logs to shore.
My eye ranged over the men, and finally rested on Dickey Darrell. He wasstanding on the slanting end of an upheaved log dominating the scene.His little triangular face with the accents of the quadrilateraleyebrows was pale with the blaze of his energy, and his chipmunk eyesseemed to flame with a dynamic vehemence that caused those on whom theirglance fell to jump as though they had been touched with a hot poker. Ihad heard more of Dickey Darrell since my last visit, and was glad ofthe chance to observe Morrison & Daly's best "driver" at work.
The jam seemed on the very edge of breaking. After half an hour'sstrained expectation it seemed still on the very edge of breaking. So Isat down on a stump. Then for the first time I noticed anotheracquaintance, handling his peavie near the very person of the rear boss.
"Hullo," said I to myself, "that's funny. I wonder if Jimmy Powers goteven; and if so, why he is working so amicably and so near RoaringDick."
At noon the men came ashore for dinner. I paid a quarter into the cook'sprivate exchequer
and so was fed. After the meal I approached myacquaintance of the year before.
"Hello, Powers," I greeted him, "I suppose you don't remember me?"
"Sure," he responded heartily. "Ain't you a little early this year?"
"No," I disclaimed, "this is a better sight than a birling match."
I offered him a cigar, which he immediately substituted for his corn-cobpipe. We sat at the root of a tree.
"It'll be a great sight when that jam pulls," said I.
"You bet," he replied, "but she's a teaser. Even old Tim Shearer wouldhave a picnic to make out just where the key-logs are. We've started herthree times, but she's plugged tight every trip. Likely to pull almostany time."
We discussed various topics. Finally I ventured:
"I see your old friend Darrell is rear boss."
"Yes," said Jimmy Powers, dryly.
"By the way, did you fellows ever square up on that birling match?"
"No," said Jimmy Powers; then after an instant, "Not yet."
I glanced at him to recognise the square set to the jaw that hadimpressed me so formidably the year before. And again his face relaxedalmost quizzically as he caught sight of mine.
"Bub," said he, getting to his feet, "those little marks are on my footyet. And just you tie into one idea: Dickey Darrell's got it coming."His face darkened with a swift anger. "God damn his soul!" he said,deliberately. It was no mere profanity. It was an imprecation, and inits very deliberation I glimpsed the flare of an undying hate.
About three o'clock that afternoon Jimmy's prediction was fulfilled.Without the slightest warning the jam "pulled." Usually certainpremonitory _cracks_, certain sinkings down, groanings forward,grumblings, shruggings, and sullen, reluctant shiftings of the logs giveopportunity for the men to assure their safety. This jam, afterinexplicably hanging fire for a week, as inexplicably started like asprinter almost into its full gait. The first few tiers toppled smashinto the current, raising a waterspout like that made by a dynamiteexplosion; the mass behind plunged forward blindly, rising and fallingas the integral logs were up-ended, turned over, thrust to one side, orforced bodily into the air by the mighty power playing jack-straws withthem.
The rivermen, though caught unaware, reached either bank. They heldtheir peavies across their bodies as balancing-poles, and zig-zaggedashore with a calmness and lack of haste that were in reality only anindication of the keenness with which they fore-estimated each chance.Long experience with the ways of saw-logs brought them out. They knewthe correlation of these many forces just as the expert billiard-playerknows instinctively the various angles of incident and reflectionbetween his cue-ball and its mark. Consequently they avoided the centresof eruption, paused on the spots steadied for the moment, dodged movinglogs, trod those not yet under way, and so arrived on solid ground. Thejam itself started with every indication of meaning business, gainedmomentum for a hundred feet, and then plugged to a standstill. The"break" was abortive.
Now we all had leisure to notice two things. First, the movement had notbeen of the whole jam, as we had at first supposed, but only of a blockor section of it twenty rods or so in extent. Thus between the part thathad moved and the greater bulk that had not stirred lay a hundred feetof open water in which floated a number of loose logs. The second factwas, that Dickey Darrell had fallen into that open stretch of water andwas in the act of swimming toward one of the floating logs. That much wewere given just time to appreciate thoroughly. Then the other section ofthe jam rumbled and began to break. Roaring Dick was caught between twogigantic millstones moving to crush him out of sight.
An active figure darted down the tail of the first section, out over thefloating logs, seized Darrell by the coat-collar, and so burdened begandesperately to scale the very face of the breaking jam.
Never was a more magnificent rescue. The logs were rolling, falling,diving against the laden man. He climbed as over a treadmill, atreadmill whose speed was constantly increasing. And when he finallygained the top, it was as the gap closed splintering beneath him and theman he had saved.
It is not in the woodsman to be demonstrative at any time, but here waswork demanding attention. Without a pause for breath or congratulationthey turned to the necessity of the moment. The jam, the whole jam, wasmoving at last. Jimmy Powers ran ashore for his peavie. Roaring Dick,like a demon incarnate, threw himself into the work. Forty men attackedthe jam at a dozen places, encouraging the movement, twisting aside thetimbers that threatened to lock anew, directing pigmy-like the titanicforces into the channel of their efficiency. Roaring like wild cattlethe logs swept by, at first slowly, then with the railroad rush of thecurbed freshet. Men were everywhere, taking chances, like cowboys beforethe stampeded herd. And so, out of sight around the lower bend swept thefront of the jam in a swirl of glory, the rivermen riding the great boomback of the creature they subdued, until at last, with the slackeningcurrent, the logs floated by free, cannoning with hollow sound oneagainst the other. A half-dozen watchers, leaning statuesquely on theshafts of their peavies, watched the ordered ranks pass by.
One by one the spectators departed. At last only myself and thebrown-faced young man remained. He sat on a stump, staring withsightless eyes into vacancy. I did not disturb his thoughts.
The sun dipped. A cool breeze of evening sucked up the river. Over nearthe cook-camp a big fire commenced to crackle by the drying frames. Atdusk the rivermen straggled in from the down-river trail.
The brown-faced young man arose and went to meet them. I saw him returnin close conversation with Jimmy Powers. Before they reached us he hadturned away with a gesture of farewell.
Jimmy Powers stood looking after him long after his form haddisappeared, and indeed even after the sound of his wheels had diedtoward town. As I approached, the riverman turned to me a face fromwhich the reckless, contained self-reliance of the woods-worker hadfaded. It was wide-eyed with an almost awe-stricken wonder andadoration.
"Do you know who that is?" he asked me in a hushed voice. "That'sThorpe, Harry Thorpe. And do you know what he said to me just now, _me_?He told me he wanted me to work in Camp One next winter, Thorpe's One.And he told me I was the first man he ever hired straight into One."
His breath caught with something like a sob.
I had heard of the man and of his methods. I knew he had made it apractice of recruiting for his prize camp only from the employees of hisother camps, that, as Jimmy said, he never "hired straight into One." Ihad heard, too, of his reputation among his own and other woodsmen. Butthis was the first time I had ever come into personal contact with hisinfluence. It impressed me the more in that I had come to know JimmyPowers and his kind.
"You deserve it, every bit," said I. "I'm not going to call you a hero,because that would make you tired. What you did this afternoon showednerve. It was a brave act. But it was a better act because you rescuedyour enemy, because you forgot everything but your common humanity whendanger----"
I broke off. Jimmy was again looking at me with his ironically quizzicalgrin.
"Bub," said he, "if you're going to hang any stars of Bethlehem on myChristmas tree, just call a halt right here. I didn't rescue thatscalawag because I had any Christian sentiments, nary bit. I was justnaturally savin' him for the birling match next Fourther July."
