King Spruce Part 21

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

"That's the way with some of these big timber-owners," remarked the cook, still in humorous mood. "They raise tophet with a sport because he throws down a cigar-b.u.t.t, and they themselves will go out right in a dry time and spit cuss words that's just so much blue flame. It's dretful careless!" he sighed.

"But when you come to think of what he found there on that towns.h.i.+p,"

said Charlie, "you have to make allowances. More'n a third of the board measure left right there on the ground as slash, and slash that's propped on the branches of the tops like powder-houses on stilts. And the whole towns.h.i.+p only devilled over at that! Barn only took the stuff that 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 an operator, doin' all the hard liftin', with a rich stumpage-owner with a rasp file goin' at me on one end and a log-buyer whittlin' me at the other, I'd figger to save myself. But I've always lived and worked in the old woods, gents. I ain't one of those dudes that never want to see an 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 see enough of the old woods wasted on every winter operation to make me rich, and all because the men that are gettin' the most out of it are fightin' each other so as to hog profits, it makes me sorry for the old woods and sick of human nature."

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

The odor of warm food was good in the nostrils of old "Ladder" Lane, the fire warden of Jerusalem, as he strode down the valley wall towards the camp. He hung his extinguished lantern on a nail outside the cook camp and stooped and entered the low door. Among woodsmen the amenities of a camp 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 and voraciously.

"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 treasurer ought to offer twenty-five dollars for the scalp and thumbs of every Skeet 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 seconds devoted to his breakfast.

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

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

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

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

Lane stopped and whirled suddenly, the lineman's climbers at his belt clanking 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 as much 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 my sympathy. A man who stole these lands at twenty cents an acre, buying tax t.i.tles, and has squat on his haunches and made himself rich sellin'

stumpage,[1] has got more'n he deserved, even if half the timber is rottin' in the tops on the ground."

[Footnote 1: The right to cut trees on the seller's land. Payment is based on the measurement of the logs as they are brought to the landing and 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 for haste.

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

Lane settled into his woods lope and darted into the Attean trail without reply.

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

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

"He was rigged out to climb a pole and had a telephone thingumajig with him," 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'-gla.s.s telegraft is busted," he added, with slighting reference to the Jerusalem helio. He followed his men, who were streaming up the tote road towards the cuttings. Far ahead trudged the horses, drawing jumpers. From the cross-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 tins from the breakfast-table and whistling shrill accompaniment to the clatter; and the blacksmith, busy at his forge in the "dingle," the roofed s.p.a.ce between the cook-house and the main camp.

It was just before second "bean-time" when Lane came back along the Attean trail and staggered, rather than walked, into the "Lazy Tom"

clearing. His face was gray with exertion, and sweat coursed in the wrinkles of his emaciated features.

"Shouldn't wonder from your looks that you'd made time," suggested the cook, cheerfully, as the warden stumbled up to the door. "From here to the 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 appet.i.te than you had this mornin'," remarked "Beans," hospitably. He started to ladle from the steaming kettle of "smother" on the stove.

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

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

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

"If you're reck'nin' to lie down for a nap, warden, don't get into them bunks. Them Quedaws have brought in the usual a.s.sortment of 'travellers'

this season, and I don't want to see a neat man like you acc.u.mulate a menagerie. Now you just go right across there into Withee's private camp. He'd say so if he was here. I'll do that much honors when he ain't here. You won't wake up scratchin'."

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

"He's about as sour and crabbed an old cuss to do a favor for as I ever see," remarked the cook, fiddling a s.m.u.tty 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 up the 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 of biscuits.

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