Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/12

4 as that!" a contemptuous gesture toward the plume into which the moon drifted, "counterfeit pine!" He breathed audibly through his open mouth and turned to glare at his son who sat motionless.

"Counterfeit! So's my life! They tell me it was th' weeks in cold water that drives me down here when the geese comes over Detroit, an' keeps me here until the ice is out of the Great Lakes. They tell me it's th' cold of Michigan rivers that's in my bones now. It ain't! I know what it is!" He wriggled deeper into his fur coat, muttering inarticulately.

"It's somethin' else that's gone, boy. It's the Pine! You young bucks ain't what we were. There's nothin' to make your blood jump like a White Pine forest did mine! If I could lose every penny even now, old as I am, but could walk through a stand of real Michigan timber again, I wouldn't be cold. Them days, I could sink my axe to th' eye every blow; with a saw gang, I could finish my fifteen thousand a day, an' th' days were short, too. There was somethin' in that, which you bucks can't know. Pine! Pine, standin' there, straight an' true, trees thick as hair on a dog, waitin' for good men to come an' get it!"

He seemed to shrink in size as his voice fell.

"Gad! It warms me to think about goin' into Pine again! Not to make money!" with a sudden cry. "To cut! To drive! To saw it! To see a forest all about you when th' snow flies, an' to know that when winter breaks up there'll be sections with nothin' left but tops an' stumps on 'em; to know that it's your hands an' your men's hands that'll do it! There's power in that, boy, because logs build homes an' homes build nations!