King Spruce, A Novel Page 12

  CHAPTER XI

  IN THE BARONY OF "STUMPAGE JOHN"

  "Wilderness lord of the olden time, Stalwart and plumed pine; They have dragged thee down to the roaring town From the realms that once were thine. And he who reigns in thy stately stead Has never a time o' truce, For the axe and saw and the grinder's maw Have doomed thee, too, King Spruce."

  --Kin o' Ktaadn.

  At half-past four in the dark of the morning "Dirty-apron Harry's"nickel alarm-clock purred relentlessly, and he rolled out of his bunk,his eyelids sticking like a blind puppy's. At seventeen, youth relishesmorning naps. But, as cookee of Barnum Withee's camp on "Lazy Tom"operation, he was chosen to be the earliest bird to crow. His first dutyas chanticleer was to wake "Icicle Ike" and "Push Charlie," theteamsters, whose hungry charges were stamping impatient hoofs in thehovel. He dressed himself while stumbling across the dingle to the men'scamp, his eyes still shut. This feat was not as difficult as it sounds.The difference between Harry's night-gear and day raiment was merely aScotch cap and the canvas robe of office that gave him his title.

  The teamsters grunted when he shook them, and followed him out of thefrowsy, snore-fretted atmosphere of the big camp. They did their morningyawnings and stretching as they walked. When Duty calls "Time!" to awoodsman the body is on the dot, even if the soul lags unwillingly.

  The humorists of the woods have it that the cookee pries up the sun whenhe jacks the big pot out of the bean-hole. For such an importantoperation, "Dirty-apron Harry" went at it listlessly.

  The bean-hole was beyond the horse-hovel, sheltered in the angle of alittle palisade of poles whose protection would be needed when thewinter's snows drifted. Harry wearily dragged a hoe in that directionafter he had kindled a fire in the cook-house stove. He did not look upto the first pearly sheen of sunrise streaming through the yellow of thefrost-touched birches. The glory of the skies would wake him too soon.He gave up the final fuddle of slumber grudgingly, his dull mind stillpiecing the visions of the night, his soul full of loathing for theworkaday world of greasy pots and dirty tins. But when he turned thecorner of the bean-hole shelter he dropped out of dreams with thesuddenest jolt of his life. A black bear was trying to dig up thebean-pot, growling softly at the heat of the round stones she uncovered.Two cubs sat near by, watching operations with great interest, theirround ears up-cocked, their jaws drooling expectantly. The big bearwhirled promptly and cuffed the hoe out of Harry's limp grasp, leapedpast him before his trembling legs could move him, and scuffed away intothe woods, with her progeny crowding close to her sheltering bulk. Thecookee sped in the other direction towards the hovel with as greatalacrity.

  "Bears?" echoed "Push Charlie," appearing with his pitchfork at thehovel door. "Stop your squawkin'. I seen half a dozen yistiddy, and allof 'em streakin' north up this valley. Heard 'em whooffing and barkin'last night, travellin' past here on the hemlock benches." He pointed hisfork at the terraced sides of the valley above them.

  "It's only excursion parties bound for the Bears' Annooal Convention upat Telos Gorge," suggested "Icicle Ike," rapping the chaff out of a peckmeasure.

  The cookee, woods-camp traditional butt of jokes, stared from one to theother, trying to recover his composure.

  "And Marm Bear there wanted to take along that pot of beans for thepicnic dinner," added Charlie.

  "I think it's goin' to be a general mass-meetin' to discuss the gamelaws," said Ike. "The boys who were swampin' the twitch-roads yistiddytold me that deer kept traipsin' past all day and--well, there goesthree now."

  White "flags" flitted through the undergrowth at the edge of theclearing, and a startled "Whick-i-whick!" further up the valley-sidehinted at the retreat of still others. Their departure was probablyhastened by the cook's shrill "Who-e-e-e!" the general call for thecamp. He came out of the cook-house scrubbing his hands and bare armswith a towel.

  "Git that bean-pot here! What are you standin' round on one foot for?"he demanded, testily. When the cookee began to stutter explanations,brandishing freckled arms to point the route of the fugitives, the cookinterrupted, but now there was humor in his tones.

  "Thunderation, you gents is sartinly slow to understand what's beforeyour eyes! Don't you know why all these animiles is runnin' away fromdown there?" He jerked a red thumb over his shoulder towards the south."Ain't 'Stumpage John' Barrett down there with Withee, lookin' over thattract where we operated last season?"

  Sly grins of appreciation appeared on the faces of the teamsters.

  "Ain't you got any notion of what particular kind of language 'StumpageJohn' has been lettin' out of himself for the last twenty-four hours?"

  "Well, the idee is," said the cook, "he is down there cussin' to thatextent that he's cussed every animile off'n Square-hole township.Animiles is natcherally timid, delicate in the ears, and hates cussin'.The deer come first because they can run fastest. Bears left as soon asthey could, and is hurryin'. Rabbits will come next, and the quill-pigsare on the way. Then I reckon Barnum Withee will fetch up the rear. Oh,it must be somethin' awful down there!" He faced the south with gravemien. His listeners guffawed.

  But a moment later "Push Charlie" stepped clear of the hovel and sniffedwith canine eagerness. There was a subtle, elusive, acrid odor in theair. It seemed to billow up the valley, whose shoulders circumscribedtheir vision so narrowly.

  "I reckon," he stated, "that he's throwed so much brimstone around himreckless that he's set fire to the woods."

  "That's the way with some of these big timber-owners," remarked thecook, still in humorous mood. "They raise tophet with a sport because hethrows down a cigar-butt, and they themselves will go out right in a drytime and spit cuss words that's just so much blue flame. It's dretfulcareless!" he sighed.

  "But when you come to think of what he found there on that township,"said Charlie, "you have to make allowances. More'n a third of the boardmeasure left right there on the ground as slash, and slash that'spropped on the branches of the tops like powder-houses on stilts. Andthe whole township only devilled over at that! Barn only took the stuffthat would roll downhill into the water when it was joggled."

  "You ain't blamin' your own boss, be ye?" demanded the cook.

  "Not by a darned sight!" rejoined Charlie, stoutly. "If I was anoperator, doin' all the hard liftin', with a rich stumpage-owner with arasp file goin' at me on one end and a log-buyer whittlin' me at theother, I'd figger to save myself. But I've always lived and worked inthe old woods, gents. I ain't one of those dudes that never want to seean axe put in. The old woods need the axe to keep 'em healthy. We, here,need the money, and the folks outside need the lumber. But when I seeenough of the old woods wasted on every winter operation to make merich, and all because the men that are gettin' the most out of it arefightin' each other so as to hog profits, it makes me sorry for the oldwoods and sick of human nature."

  The morning bustle of the camp began in earnest now. Men crowded at thetin wash-basins on the long shelf outside the log wall. As fast as theyslicked their wet hair with the broken comb they hurried into the mealcamp. There they heaped their tin plates with beans steaming from thehole where they had simmered overnight, devoured huge chunks of brownbread deluged with molasses, and "sooped" hot coffee.

  The odor of warm food was good in the nostrils of old "Ladder" Lane, thefire warden of Jerusalem, as he strode down the valley wall towards thecamp. He hung his extinguished lantern on a nail outside the cook campand stooped and entered the low door. Among woodsmen the amenities of acamp are as scant as welcome is plentiful. Lane seized up a tin plate,loaded it with what he saw in sight, and began to eat hastily andvoraciously.

  "Fire?" inquired the cook.

  Lane jerked a nod of affirmation.

  "Where?"

  "Misery."

  "Big?"

  Another nod.

  "Talk about your bounty on wildcats and porky-pines," raged the cook,slamming on a stove-cover to emphasize his remarks, "the State
treasurerought to offer twenty-five dollars for the scalp and thumbs of everySkeet and Bushee brought in."

  The fire warden ran his last bit of brown bread around his plate,stuffed it dripping into his mouth, and stood up after sixty secondsdevoted to his breakfast.

  "Where's Withee?" he asked the boss chopper, who had lounged to the campdoor and was stuffing tobacco into his pipe.

  "Off on Square-hole," replied the boss, with a sideways cant of his headto show direction.

  "Fire on Misery eating north towards the Notch," reported Lane, withlaconic sourness. "Withee ought to send twenty-five men." He was alreadystarting away.

  "He'll probably be back by night," said the boss chopper, "if 'StumpageJohn' Barrett gets through swearin' at him about that last season'soperation."

  Lane stopped and whirled suddenly, the lineman's climbers at his beltclanking dully.

  "John Barrett in this region!" he blurted.

  "For the first time in a lot o' years," returned the boss, with a grin."Suspected that Barn devilled Square-hole and wasted in the cuttin's asmuch as he landed in the yards. I reckon it ain't suspicion any more!He's been down there on the grounds two days. But he don't get any of mysympathy. A man who stole these lands at twenty cents an acre, buyingtax titles, and has squat on his haunches and made himself rich sellin'stumpage,[1] has got more'n he deserved, even if half the timber isrottin' in the tops on the ground."

  [Footnote 1: The right to cut trees on the seller's land. Payment isbased on the measurement of the logs as they are brought to the landingand piled ready for the drive.]

  The gaunt jaws of "Ladder" Lane set themselves out like elbows akimbo.He whirled and started away again as though he had fresh cause forhaste.

  "I don't want to take any responsibility for sending off any of thecrew," called the boss. "What particular word do you want to leave forWithee?"

  Lane settled into his woods lope and darted into the Attean trailwithout reply.

  "I'll be here with my own word," he muttered, talking aloud, after thehabit of the recluse.

  "And what do you make of that now?" asked the cook of the boss, scalingLane's discarded plate into the cookee's soapy water. "Why ain't he upon his Jerusalem fire station instead of rampagin' round here in thewoods?"

  "He was rigged out to climb a pole and had a telephone thingumajig withhim," suggested the boss.

  "He's strikin' acrost to tap the Attean telephone and send in an alarm,that's what he's doin'. Prob'ly his old lookin'-glass telegraft isbusted," he added, with slighting reference to the Jerusalem helio. Hefollowed his men, who were streaming up the tote road towards thecuttings. Far ahead trudged the horses, drawing jumpers. From thecross-bars the bind-chains dragged jangling over the roots and rocks.

  In five minutes only three men were in sight about the camps--the cook,making ready a baking of ginger-cakes; the cookee, rattling the tinsfrom the breakfast-table and whistling shrill accompaniment to theclatter; and the blacksmith, busy at his forge in the "dingle," theroofed space between the cook-house and the main camp.

  It was just before second "bean-time" when Lane came back along theAttean trail and staggered, rather than walked, into the "Lazy Tom"clearing. His face was gray with exertion, and sweat coursed in thewrinkles of his emaciated features.

  "Shouldn't wonder from your looks that you'd made time," suggested thecook, cheerfully, as the warden stumbled up to the door. "From here tothe Attean telephone-line and back before eleven is what I call humpin'.You've been to Attean, hey?"

  "Yes," snapped the old man. "I've reported that fire and done my duty."

  "In that case, you've prob'ly got a better appetite than you had thismornin'," remarked "Beans," hospitably. He started to ladle from thesteaming kettle of "smother" on the stove.

  "Nothing to eat for me!" broke in Lane, sullenly. "Are Withee and JohnBarrett back yet?"

  "Oh, they'll stay out till dark all right. Barrett will want to counttrees as long as he can see."

  "I'll wait, then!" Lane started towards the men's camp, but the cookstopped him.

  "If you're reck'nin' to lie down for a nap, warden, don't get into thembunks. Them Quedaws have brought in the usual assortment of 'travellers'this season, and I don't want to see a neat man like you accumulate amenagerie. Now you just go right across there into Withee's privatecamp. He'd say so if he was here. I'll do that much honors when he ain'there. You won't wake up scratchin'."

  Without a word Lane turned and strode across to the office camp, wentin, and slammed the door shut after him.

  "He's about as sour and crabbed an old cuss to do a favor for as Iever see," remarked the cook, fiddling a smutty finger under his nose."But a man never ought to git discouraged in this world about bein'polite." He caught sight of the advance-guard of returning choppers upthe road, and whirled on the cookee. "You freckle-faced, hump-backed,dead-and-alive son of a clam fritter, here come them empty nail-kags!Get to goin', now, or I'll pour a dish of hot water down your back."

  "Is that what you call bein' polite?" growled the cookee.

  The cook kicked at him as he fled into the meal camp with a pan ofbiscuits.

  "They don't use politeness on cookees any more than they put bay-windersonto pig-pens!" he shouted.

  There were two bunks in the little office camp, one above the other."Ladder" Lane curled his long legs and tucked himself into the gloom ofthe lower bunk. His eyes, red-rimmed and glowing with strange fire undertheir knots of gray brow, noted a rifle lying on wooden braces against alog of the camp wall. He rose, clutched it eagerly, and "broke it down."Its magazine was full. He jacked in a cartridge, laid the rifle on thebunk between himself and the wall, and lay down again.

  Most men, after the vigil of a night and bitter struggle of the day,would have slept. Lane lay with eyes wide-propped. His mind seemed tobe wrestling with a mighty problem. Once in awhile he groaned. At othertimes his teeth ground together. Twice he put the rifle back on thewall, shuddering as though it were some fearsome object. Twice he got upand retook it, and the last time muttered as though his resolution wereclinched.

  After the resolution had been formed he may have dozed. At any rate, thefirst he heard of Barrett and Withee they had sat down on the steps ofthe office camp, and the loud, brusque, and authoritative voice of oneof them went on in some harangue that had evidently been progressing fora long time previously.

  "Damme, Withee, I tell you again that you've robbed me right and left!You left tops in the woods to rot that had a pulp log scale in 'em. Youdevilled the township without sense or system. You cut out the standsnear the waterways without leaving a tree for new seed. You left stripsstanding that will go down like a row of bricks in the first big galewe have. But what's the use in going over all that again? You know youhaven't used me right. The sum and substance is, you pay me a lump sumand square me for damages to that township or I'll cancel this season'sstumpage contract. I'm using you just as I propose to use the rest ofthe thieves up here."

  There was silence for a little time. The voice of the other man wassubdued, even disheartened.

  "I've said about all I can say, Mr. Barrett," he ventured. "Of course,you're rich and I'm poor, and if you cancel the contract I can't affordto go to law. But I've borrowed ten thousand dollars to put into thisseason's operation, and I've got it tied up in supplies and outfit. I'vejust got located and my camps finished. The way things have worked forme, I ain't made any money for three years, and I've put my shoulder tothe wheel and my own hands to the axe. The operator can't make money,Mr. Barrett, the way he's ground between the owners of stumpage and themen down-river who buy his logs in the boom. You talk of closing yourcontract with me! Do you know of a man who can afford to do any betterby you than I have--just as long as things are the way they are now?"

  "Oh, I reckon you're about all alike," returned the lumber baron,ungraciously. "I've been a fool to believe anything stumpage buyers havetold me. I ought to have come up here every year and looked after myproperty. But that would be prow
ling around in these woods that aren'tfit for a human being to live in, and neglecting my other business tokeep you fellows from stealing. Not for me! I've got something better todo. Clod-hoppers that don't want to stay in their fields all day with agun kill one crow and hang it on a stake for the live ones to see. I'msorry for you, Withee, but I'm going to make a special example of you."

  "It don't seem hardly fair to pick me out of all the rest, Mr. Barrett."

  "Well, it's business!" snapped the other. "And business in these daysisn't conducted on the lines of a Sunday-school picnic."

  "Ladder" Lane, who had been staring straight up at the poles of the bunkabove his head, had not moved or glanced to right or left since thebrusque, tyrannical voice outside had begun to declaim. Now he swung hisfeet off the bunk and sat on its edge. He fumbled behind him for therifle and dragged it across his knees.

  The night had fallen. The one window of the office camp admitted asallow light. From the main camp came the drone of an accordion and themumble of many voices. Lane realized that supper had been eaten.

  "You're right about business, Mr. Barrett," Withee went on, a touch ofresentment in his voice. "Your Bangor scale is 'business.' You talkabout wasting tops! If an operator leaves the taper of the top on a log,he's hauling a third more weight to the landing, and then your Bangorscale gives him a third less measure than on the short log."

  "The legislature established the scale; I didn't," retorted Barrett.

  "Yes, but you rich folks can tell the legislature what to do, and itdoes it! We fellows that wear larrigans haven't anything to say aboutit." In his grief and despair he allowed himself to taunt his tyrant."Your legislature has peddled away all the rights on the river to menwith power enough to grab 'em. Look here, Mr. Barrett, while you toastedyour shins last winter we worked here like niggers, in the cold and thesnow, the frost and the wet--and the first man to get his drag out ofour work was you. You got your stumpage-money. And when my logs were inthe water, first the Driving Association that you're a director in, withits legislative charter all right and tight, took its toll. Then theRiver Dam and Improvement Company took its toll, and you're a directorin that. Then the Lumbering Association, owned by your bunch, had itsboomage tolls. Then the little private inside clique had its pay for'taking care of logs,' as they call it. Then on top of all the rest, thegang had its tolls for running and shoring logs in the round-up boom,and finally the man who bought 'em scaled down the landing-measure onwhich you drew stumpage. I couldn't help myself. None of us fellows thatoperate can help ourselves. It's all tied up. We had to take what wasgiven. Your tolls for this, that, and the other figured up about as muchas stumpage. And when the last and final drag was made out of my littleprofits--there were no profits! I came out in debt, Mr. Barrett. That'sall there was to show for a winter's hard work away from my home andfamily, in these woods that you say ain't fit for a human bein' to livein. That's what you're doin' to us--and you're all standin' togetheragainst us poor fellows to do it."

  "Same old whine of the old crowd of operators," drawled Mr. Barrett. "Ifyou old-fashioned chaps can't keep up with the modern businessconditions you'd better get into something else and give the youngfellows a chance."

  "Get into the poor-house, perhaps," Withee replied, bitterly. "My fatherlumbered this river. I worked with him, before the big fellows had tohave both crusts and the middle of the pie. I don't know how to doanything else. Every cent I've got in the world is tied up in my outfit.For God's sake, Mr. Barrett, be fair with me!"

  It was the pitiful appeal of the toil of the woods at its last stand.But "Stumpage John" Barrett resolutely reflected the autocracy of giantKing Spruce.

  "This whole matter was gone over at our last directors' meeting, Withee.We have decided, one and all, that we won't have our timber landsbutchered and gashed and devilled to make profit for you fellows. Ourcharters give us our rights, and business is business. We've got tostand stiff, and we're going to stand stiff until we show you what'swhat. I told my associates I would come up here and make an example, andI'm going to do it. Now, that's all, Withee! It's no good to argue. Thetimber interests can't afford to do any more fooling."

  "Gents," broke in the voice of "Dirty-apron Harry," "cook sent me to saythat your supper is ready."

  "Tell cook I'm ready, too," snapped Barrett, grunting off the step. "Ithought your cattle were never going to get out of that meal camp,Withee. You feed 'em too much! That's where your profits are going to."

  Lane heard him snuffing.

  "This smoke seems to be getting thicker, Withee. It must be somethingmore than a bonfire, wherever it is."

  "Cook is waiting to tell you," said Harry. "He didn't want to break inon your business talk, seein' that you was both so much took up with it.Warden from Jerusalem was through here this morning to give alarm andcall for fighters. He's takin' a nap in the office camp, waitin' for Mr.Withee."

  "A loafer like the rest of 'em!" snorted Barrett, starting away. "Dighim out, Withee, and send him to me. I'm going to eat."

  At the sound of his retreating footsteps "Ladder" Lane unfolded hisgaunt frame, stood up, and swung the rifle into the hook of his arm. Heopened the office door and came upon Withee standing where Barrett hadleft him. In the gloom the operator's toil-stooped shoulders and bowedlegs were outlined by the flare from the cook-camp. He continued hismutterings as he turned his head to look at Lane, his gray beardsweeping his shoulder.

  "It's runnin' north from Misery, Mr. Withee," reported the warden. "It'srunnin' in the slash and goin' fast. If it gets through Pogey Notch itmeans a crown fire in the black growth."

  "I hope it'll burn every spruce-tree between Misery and the Canadaline!" barked the furious old operator. "If I could stand here and putit out by spittin' on it I wouldn't open my mouth."

  "I've 'phoned the alarm through Attean," went on Lane, calmly, with noapparent thought except his duty. "You ought to send twenty-five men."

  "Not a man!" roared the operator. "Let the infernal hogs save their owntimber lands. They want all the profit in 'em; let 'em stand all theloss, then."

  "Look here, Withee," said the warden, implacably, "you know the law aswell as I do. A fire warden has the same right as a sheriff to summon aposse when a fire is to be fought. Every man that is summoned and don'tgo pays a fine of ten dollars unless he is sick or disabled, and you'llhave to stand good for your crew."

  "I know it!" bellowed Withee, beside himself. "Some more of the devilishlaw they've cooked up to make us work like slaves for their profits.Talk about monarchies! Talk about freedom, whether it's in a city or inthe woods! We ain't anything but cattle. The rich men have stoodtogether and made us so."

  "I didn't make the law, Withee. I'm simply delivering my errand as theState orders me to do. I've done my duty. It's up to you." He sighed,shifted the rifle to the other arm, and mumbled behind his teeth, "NowI'll attend to a little matter of business that ain't the State's."

  He started for the door of the meal camp, the operator on "Lazy Tom"stumping angrily at his heels.