Part 26 (1/2)
The boss added a substantial bonus for each day's ”top cut,” and in the lengthening days an intense rivalry sprang up between the sawyers; not infrequently Bill and Fallon were ”in on the money.”
It was nearly two weeks after the incident, that Creed came to Moncrossen with his own story of what happened that night at Melton's No. 8, and the boss knew that he lied.
As they talked in the little office the greener, accompanied by Fallon, pa.s.sed close to the window.
At the sight of the man the spotter's face became pasty, and he shrank trembling and wide-eyed, as from the sight of a ghost, and Moncrossen knew that his abject terror was not engendered by physical fear.
He flew into a rage, cursing and bullying the craven, but failed utterly to dispel the unwholesome fear or to shake the other's repeated statement that at a few minutes past ten o'clock that night he had seen the greener lying hopelessly drunk upon the floor of the shack with the flames roaring about him, and at six o'clock the next evening had seen him hobble into Burrage's store, forty miles to the southward, fresh and apparently unharmed save for his injured foot.
Moncrossen's hatred of the greener rested primarily upon the fear that one day he would expose him to Appleton; added to this was a mighty jealousy of his rapid rise to proficiency and the rankling memory of the scene of their first meeting in the grub-shack.
But his fear of him was a physical fear--a fear born of the certain knowledge that, measured by his own standards, the greener was the better man.
And now came the perplexing question as to how the man had reached Hilarity when Creed was known to have arrived there with the team eight hours after the burning of the shack.
The boss had carefully verified so much of Creed's story by a guarded pumping of Dunnigan, and the crafty old Irishman took keen delight in so wording his answers, and interspersing them with knowing winks and quirks of the head, as to add nothing to the boss's peace of mind.
While not sharing Creed's belief in the greener's possession of uncanny powers, nevertheless he knew that, whatever happened that night, the greener knew more than he chose to tell, and as his apprehension deepened his rage increased.
Hate smoldered in the swinish eyes as, in the seclusion of the office, he glowered and planned and rumbled his throaty threats.
”The drive,” he muttered. ”My Bucko Bill, you're right now picked for the drive, an' I'll see to it myself that you git yourn in the river.”
CHAPTER XXIV
THE LOG JAM
The feel of spring filled the air; the sun swung higher and higher; and the snow turned dark and lay soggy with water. With the increasing warmth of the longer days, men's thoughts turned to the drive.
They talked of water-front streets, with their calk-riddled plank sidewalks and low-fronted bars; of squalid back wine-rooms, where for a week they would be allowed to bask, sodden, in the smiles of the painted women--then, drugged, beaten, and robbed, would wake up in a filthy alley and hunt up a job in the mills.
It was all in a lifetime, this annual spring debauch. The men accepted it as part of the ordered routine of their lives; accepted it without shame or regret, boasting and laughing unblus.h.i.+ngly over past episodes--facing the future gladly and without disgust.
”You mind Jake Sonto's place, where big Myrtle hangs out? They frisked Joe Manning fer sixty bucks last year. I seen 'em do it. What! Me? I was too sleepy to give a cuss--they got mine, too.”
And so the talk drifted among them. Revolting details of abysmal man-failings, brutal reminiscences of knock-out drops, robbery, and even murder, furnished the themes for jest and gibe which drew forth roars of laughter.
And none sought to avoid the inevitable; rather, they looked forward to it in brutish antic.i.p.ation, accepting it as a matter of course.
For so had lumber-jacks been drugged, beaten, and robbed since the first pine fell--and so will they continue to be drugged, beaten, and robbed until the last log is jerked, dripping, from the river and the last white board is sawed.
On the night of the 8th of April the cut was complete, and on the morning of the 9th ten million feet of logs towered on the rollways along the river, ready for the breaking up of the ice.
Stromberg had banked the bird's-eye to his own satisfaction, and Moncrossen selected his crew for the drive--white-water men, whose boast it was that they never had walked a foot from the timber to the mills; bateau men, who laughed in the face of death as they swarmed over a jam; key-log men, who scorned dynamite; bend watchers, whose duty it is to stay awake through the long, warm days and prevent the formation of jams as the drive shoots by--each selected with an eye to previous experience and physical fitness.
For, among all occupations of men, log driving stands unique for its hards.h.i.+ps of peril, discomfort, and bone-racking toil.
From the breaking out of the rollways until the last log slips smoothly into its place in the boom-raft, no man's life is safe.