The Boss of Wind River/Chapter 8

HE year drew into September, time of goldenrod, browning grasses, crisp, clear mornings and hazy, dreamy days. The shanty lads began to straggle back to town from little backwoods farms where they had spent the summer loafing or increasing the size of the clearings, from mills, from out-of-the-way holes and corners. They haunted the lumber companies' offices looking for jobs. There things began to hum with the bustle of preparation and owners held long consultations with walking bosses and laid plans for the winter's campaign.

Kent's tender for the choice Wind River limits was accepted, somewhat to his surprise and to Crooks's profane amazement. The latter, through the good offices of a middleman working for his rake-off, secured the limits on Rat Lake. Remained the question of how the logs should be cut, and when.

Joe, after taking counsel with Crooks, Wright, and Locke, decided on his course. That winter he would make a supreme effort to cut every stick he could, and sell them in the drive, retaining only enough logs to run his mill on half time or a little better. This seemed the only thing to do. Locke had been unable to push his complaint anent the freight rate to a hearing before the commission.

Kent's liabilities were piling up and maturing; the general financial stringency was increasing, as predicted by Ackerman; his timber sales, taking into consideration the unprofitable contract with the Clancys, showed a very narrow margin; and the consensus of advice he received was to market his raw product while he could, reduce his liabilities as much as possible, and then sit tight and hope for better luck and better times.

For once fortune seemed to play into his hand, for while he was considering the question of opening negotiations for the disposal of the surplus logs the following spring he received a letter from Wismer & Holden, who were very large millmen and did little logging, either jobbing out such limits as they bought or buying their logs from loggers who had no mills. The letter stated that they wished to obtain from twenty million feet upward, in the log, deliverable at their booms not later than July 1st of the following year. They offered a good price, and were prepared to pay cash on delivery. And they wished to know if Kent could supply them with the above quantity of logs, or, if not, what part of it.

This was too good a proposition to be neglected, and Joe immediately took train and called on Wismer & Holden. In half an hour the preliminaries were settled.

“You understand,” said Wismer, “that we must have these logs by July 1st. A later date won't do.”

“I can get them down by then, of course,” said Joe.

“Then we might as well close the deal now,” said Wismer, and called his stenographer. He dictated an agreement from a form which he took from his desk. In this agreement was a clause providing a penalty for non-delivery by the date named. Joe was not versed in legal terminology, but it read pretty stiff and he took objection to it.

“That's our ordinary form of delivery contract,” said Wismer. “We have to protect ourselves somehow. We give you ample margin for delivery, you see, but we've got to have some guarantee that you'll make good, because we make other contracts in the expectation of getting the logs by a certain date. If we didn't get them we'd be up against it.”

That seemed reasonable enough, and Joe signed the instrument. But when a few days afterward he showed it to Locke, the lawyer pounced on that clause like a hawk, switched over to the last page, looked at Joe's signature duly witnessed, and groaned.

“Boy, what on earth did you sign that for? Did they chloroform you?”

“What's the matter with it?” asked Joe.

“Matter with it?” snorted Locke. “Why, it's a man-trap, nothing short of it. Can't you read, or didn't you read? If you didn't know what you were signing there's a glimmer of hope.”

“I read the thing,” Joe admitted.

“And yet you signed it! Why, you young come on, if you fail to deliver by July 1st they may refuse to accept any logs whatever; and, moreover, you become their debtor and bind yourself to pay an amount which they say is ascertained damages for non-performance. Do you get that with any degree of clarity?”

“Oh, that's all right, I guess,” said Joe, and repeated Wismer's explanation. “I'm sure to have the logs down early in June, so it doesn't matter.”

“Any clause in a contract matters,” said Locke. “You're gambling on a date. The amount they specify as damages is an arbitrary one, and may be twice as great as the loss to them. This is another of Nick Ryan's deadfalls—I recognize the turn of the phrases—and he's got the little joker tucked inside, as usual. After this don't you sign a blame thing without showing it to me.”

Locke's words would have caused Joe some uneasiness but for the fact that he was sure of making delivery. Having arranged a market for his logs, or, rather, one having arranged itself for him, the next thing was to provide the logs themselves. He and Wright held council with McKenna, Tobin, Deever, and MacNutt, the former being Kent's walking boss and the last three his foremen.

The winter's work was divided in this way: Deever and Tobin were to finish cutting the limits on the Missabini; MacNutt was to take the Wind River limit, just acquired; Dennis McKenna, the walking boss, had a general oversight of the camps, but would divide his time between Tobin's and Deever's, after locating the camp at Wind River, which limit he had cruised before the purchase.

Immediately on reaching this decision, the foremen got together the nucleus of crews.

“Why don't you go up to the Wind with McKenna and take a look at things?” said Crooks.

Joe welcomed the suggestion with enthusiasm. He had been sticking pretty closely to the office, and the prospect of a couple of weeks in the open air was attractive.

Three days later saw him trudging beside McKenna and MacNutt, while behind them a wagon laden with tents, blankets, food, and tools bumped and jolted.

They left roads behind, and plunged into unmarked, uncharted country where the wheels sank half-way to the hubs in damp, green moss, crashed through fern to the horses' bellies, or skidded perilously on rocky hillsides. Ahead, McKenna piloted his crew, a light axe in his hand, gashing the trees with blazes at frequent intervals. He blazed them both back and front, until the road was plainly marked so that going and coming the way might be seen. To Joe the instinct of the old woodsman was marvellous. He made no mistakes, never hesitated, never cast back. But always he followed the lines of the least natural resistance, and somehow these lines, which he apparently carried in his head, became a fairly straight route to an objective point.

There were obstacles easier to surmount than to avoid—logs to be cut and thrown aside, pole bridges to be built, bits of corduroy to be laid in shaky places; merely temporary things, these, for the flying column. Later others would make a road of it, but at present anything that would carry team and wagon served. So the crew slashed out a way with double-bitted or two-faced axes—“Methodist axes,” as they were called in an unwarranted reflection upon that excellent denomination—throwing light, frail bridges together with wonderful celerity, twisting fallen timber out of the way with peavey-hook and cant-dog, and doing the work effortlessly and easily, for they were one and all experts with the tools of their trade, and such work was child's play to them.

In due course they arrived at the site chosen by McKenna when he had cruised the limit. It was a natural opening, ringed about with towering, feathery-headed pines. At one end it sloped down to alder and willow through which a little stream slid gently between brown roots and mossy banks. This meant water supply. Ruffed grouse roared up from under Joe's feet as he parted the bushes, and when he rose to his knees, having drunk his fill lying flat on the ground, he saw a big, brown swamp hare, already graying about the ears, watching him not twenty feet away. Also, in a bare and muddy place, he saw the pointed tracks of deer, and dog-like prints which were those of a stray wolf. However, he had not come to hunt.

Tents came out of the wagon and were rammed up and made fast in short order. The cook dug a shallow trench and built his fireplace, drove forked stakes, laid a stout, green pole between them, slung his pot-hooks on it and below them his pots, and so was ready to minister to the needs of the inner man. With tape-line and pegs McKenna laid out the ground plans of bunk-house, eating-camp, caboose, foreman's quarters, and stables. At a safe distance he located the dynamite storehouse.

Already the crashing fall of trees announced that the crew was getting out timbers for the buildings, and Joe watched the work of axes and saws with a species of fascination. No sooner did a tree strike the ground than men were on it, measuring, trimming, cutting it to length. When a square timber was required, one man cut notches three feet apart down the sides of a prostrate trunk and split off the slabs. Another, a lean, wasp-waisted tiemaker, stripped to underclothes and moccasins, mounted one end with a huge, razor-edged broad-axe which was the pride of his heart. Every stroke fell to a hair. He hewed a straight line by judgment of eye alone, and the result was a stick of square or half-square timber, absolutely straight, and almost as smooth as if planed.

As fast as the logs were ready the teamster grappled them with hook and chain, and the big horses yanked them out into position. Another wagon and more men arrived. Buildings grew as if by magic. The wall-logs were mortised and skidded up into place; the whole was roofed in; the chinks were stuffed with moss and plastered with wet clay; bunks in tiers were built around the walls; tables and benches knocked together in no time; and the Wind River camp was finished and ready for occupation.

While these preparations were going forward, Joe, McKenna, and MacNutt prowled the woods at such times as the last two had to spare from construction work. The walking boss and the foreman sized up the situation with the sure rapidity of experts. They knew just how many feet of timber a given area held, how long it should take so many men to cut it, and in how many loads, given good sleigh-roads, it should be hauled out to the banking grounds at the river.

“It'll depend a lot on the season, of course,” said McKenna. “If she's a fair winter—a powder of snow and good frost for a bottom and then snow and hard weather with odd flurries to make good slippin'—we can get out all we cut. But if she freezes hard and dry, and the snow's late and scanty or hits us all in a bunch when it comes, it will put us back. Or if mild weather gets here early and the roads break it will be bad.”

As the walking boss spoke he and Joe were standing at the top of a height looking down a vista of brown tree-trunks which sloped gently away to a dense cedar swamp. Suddenly Joe's eye caught a moving figure and he pointed it out to McKenna.

“It can't be one of our men,” said the latter; “we'd better see who it is.”

As the stranger came into plain view, heading straight for them, McKenna gave a grunt of recognition and displeasure.

“That's Shan McCane!”

“Never heard of him,” said Joe carelessly.

“You don't miss much,” the walking boss commented. “'Rough Shan,' they call him. The name fits.”

Mr. McCane was no beauty. He was big, and looked fleshy, but was not. A deceptive slouchiness of carriage covered the quickness of a cat when necessary. His cheeks and chin bristled with a beard of the texture and colour of a worn-out blacking brush; his nose had a cant to the northeast, and his left eye was marred by a sinister cast. Add to these a chronic, ferocious scowl and subtract two front teeth, and you have the portrait of Rough Shan McCane, as Joe saw him. For attire he wore a greasy flannel shirt, open in front so that his great, mossy chest was bare to the winds, short trousers held in place by a frayed leather strap, and a pair of fourteen-inch larrigans. He and McKenna greeted each other without enthusiasm.

“Cruisin'?” asked the walking boss.

“Nope,” replied McCane. “I got a camp over here a ways. I'm cuttin' Clancys' limit.”

“Clancys'!” said Joe in surprise, for Clancy Brothers had purchased the next limit in the name of a third party a couple of years before and their interest did not appear. “Do they own timber here?”

“Their limit butts on your east line,” McCane told him.

“How do you get your logs out?” asked McKenna.

“We'll haul down to Lebret Creek and drive that to the Wind.”

McKenna nodded. The Kent logs would be driven down Wind River. Lebret Creek lay east of it. It was a small stream, but fast and good driving.

“Well, I must be gettin' back,” said McCane. “Your timber runs better than ours. So long!”

He nodded and slouched off. McKenna looked after him and shook his head.

“I'd rather have any one else jobbin' Clancys' limit,” he observed. “McCane keeps a bad camp an' feeds his crew on whiskey. He has a wild bunch of Callahans, Red McDougals, and Charbonneaus workin' for him always. No other man could hold 'em down.”

“How does he get his work done with whiskey in camp?” Joe asked.

“He can make a man work, drunk or sober—or else he half kills him. The worst is that with a booze-camp handy our boys will get it once in awhile. Still, MacNutt can hold 'em down. McCane laid him out a couple of years ago with a peavey, and he hates him. He won't stand any nonsense. A good man is Mac!”

MacNutt, the foreman of the Wind River crew, was a lean, sinewy logger who had spent twenty years in the camps. He owned a poisonous tongue and a deadly temper when aroused; but he had also a cool head, and put his employer's interests before all else. He heard the news in silence.

“Of course we can't stand for booze in the camp,” said Joe. “If any man gets drunk on whiskey from McCane's camp or elsewhere, fire him at once.” He thought he was putting the seal of authority on a very severe measure.

MacNutt smiled sourly. “I won't fire a good man the first time—I'll just knock the daylights out of him,” he said. “As for McCane, I look for trouble with him.” Suddenly he swore with venom. “I'll split his head with an axe if he crowds me again!”

“Oh, come” Joe began.

“Sounds like talk, I know,” MacNutt interrupted. “But he nigh brained me with a peavey once, when I had only my bare hands. It's coming to him, Mr. Kent. I'll take nothing from him nor his crew.”

Joe, on his way back to town the following day, thought of MacNutt's hard eyes and set mouth, and felt assured that he would meet any trouble half-way. His own disposition being rather combative on occasion, he endorsed his foreman's attitude irrespective of the diplomacy of it.