Stewart Edward White
The Blazed Trail
By
Stewart Edward White
Author of The Westerners
Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty
New York
McClure, Phillips & Co.
MCMII
Part II of this book appeared in McClure's Magazine for December, 1901, and
January and February, 1902, under the title of "The Forest Runner."
To
My Father
from whose early pioneer life are drawn
many of Harry Thorpe's
experiences
A Table of the Contents
PART I
THE FOREST
THE LANDLOOKER
THE BLAZING OF THE TRAIL
PART IV
THORPE'S DREAM GIRL
PART V
THE FOLLOWING OF THE TRAIL
PART I
THE FOREST
Chapter I
WHEN history has granted him the justice of perspective, we shall know the
American Pioneer as one of the most picturesque of her many figures.
Resourceful, self-reliant, bold; adapting himself with fluidity to diverse
circumstances and conditions; meeting with equal cheerfulness of confidence and
completeness of capability both unknown dangers and the perils by which he has
been educated; seizing the useful in the lives of the beasts and men nearest
him, and assimilating it with marvellous rapidity; he presents to the world a
picture of complete adequacy which it would be difficult to match in any other
walk of life. He is a strong man, with a strong man's virtues and a strong man's
vices. In him the passions are elemental, the dramas epic, for he lives in the
age when men are close to nature, and draw from her their forces. He satisfies
his needs direct from the earth. Stripped of all the towns can give him, he
merely resorts to a facile substitution. It becomes an affair of rawhide for
leather, buckskin for cloth, venison for canned tomatoes. We feel that his steps
are planted on solid earth, for civilizations may crumble without disturbing his
magnificent self-poise. In him we perceive dimly his environment. He has
something about him which other men do not possess -- a frank clearness of the
eye, a swing of the shoulder, a carriage of the hips, a tilt of the hat, an air
of muscular well-being -- which marks him as belonging to the advance guard,
whether he wears buckskin, mackinaw, sombrero, or broadcloth. The woods are
there, the plains, the rivers. Snow is there, and the line of the prairie.
Mountain peaks and still pine forests have impressed themselves subtly; so that
when we turn to admire his unconsciously graceful swing, we seem to hear the ax
biting the pine, or the prospector's pick tapping the rock. And in his eye is
the capability of quiet humor, which is just the quality that the surmounting of
many difficulties will give a man.
Like the nature he has fought until he understands, his disposition is at
once kindly and terrible. Outside the subtleties of his calling, he sees only
red. Relieved of the strenuousness of his occupation, he turns all the force of
the wonderful energies that have carried him far where other men would have
halted, to channels in which a gentle current makes flood enough. It is the
mountain torrent and the canal. Instead of pleasure he seeks orgies. He runs to
wild excesses of drinking, fighting, and carousing -- which would frighten most
men to sobriety -- with a happy, reckless spirit that carries him beyond the
limits of even his extraordinary forces.
This is not the moment to judge him. And yet one cannot help admiring the
magnificently picturesque spectacle of such energies running riot. The power is
still in evidence, though beyond its proper application.
Chapter II
IN the network of streams draining the eastern portion of Michigan and known
as the Saginaw waters, the great firm of Morrison & Daly had for many years
carried on extensive logging operations in the wilderness. The number of their
camps was legion, of their employees a multitude. Each spring they had gathered
in their capacious booms from thirty to fifty million feet of pine logs.
Now at last, in the early eighties, they reached the end of their holdings.
Another winter would finish the cut. Two summers would see the great mills at
Beeson Lake dismantled or sold, while Mr. Daly, the "woods partner" of the
combination, would flit away to the scenes of new and perhaps more extensive
operations. At this juncture Mr. Daly called to him John Radway, a man whom he
knew to possess extensive experience, a little capital, and a desire for more of
both.
"Radway," said he, when the two found themselves alone in the mill office,
"we expect to cut this year some fifty millions, which will finish our pine
holdings in the Saginaw waters. Most of this timber lies over in the Crooked
Lake district, and that we expect to put in ourselves. We own, however, five
million on the Cass Branch which we would like to log on contract. Would you
care to take the job?"
"How much a thousand do you give?" asked Radway.
"Four dollars," replied the lumberman.
"I'll look at it," replied the jobber.
So Radway got the "descriptions" and a little map divided into townships,
sections, and quarter sections; and went out to look at it. He searched until he
found a "blaze" on a tree, the marking on which indicated it as the corner of a
section. From this corner the boundary lines were blazed at right angles in
either direction. Radway followed the blazed lines. Thus he was able accurately
to locate isolated "forties" (forty acres), "eighties," quarter sections, and
sections in a primeval wilderness. The feat, however, required considerable
woodcraft, an exact sense of direction, and a pocket compass.
These resources were still further drawn upon for the next task. Radway
tramped the woods, hills, and valleys to determine the most practical route over
which to build a logging road from the standing timber to the shores of Cass
Branch. He found it to be an affair of some puzzlement. The pines stood on a
country rolling with hills, deep with pot-holes. It became necessary to dodge in
and out, here and there, between the knolls, around or through the swamps, still
keeping, however, the same general direction, and preserving always the
requisite level or down grade. Radway had no vantage point from which to survey
the country. A city man would promptly have lost himself in the tangle; but the
woodsman emerged at last on the banks of the stream, leaving behind him a
meandering trail of clipped trees that wound, twisted, doubled, and turned, but
kept ever to a country without steep hills. From the main road he purposed
arteries to tap the most distant parts.
"I'll take it," said he to Daly.
Now Radway happened to be in his way a peculiar character. He was acutely
sensitive to the human side of those with whom he had dealings. In fact, he was
more inclined to take their point of view than to hold his own. For that reason,
the subtler disputes were likely to go against him. His desire to avoid coming
into direct collision of opinion with the other man, veiled whatever of justice
might reside in his own contention. Consequently it was difficult for him to
combat sophistry or a plausible appearance of right. Daly was perfectly aware of
Radway's peculiarities, and so proceeded to drive a sharp bargain with him.
Customarily a jobber is paid a certain proportion of the agreed price as
each stage of the work is completed -- so much when the timber is cut; so much
when it is skidded, or piled, so much when it is stacked at the river, or
banked; so much when the "drive" down the waters of the river is finished. Daly
objected to this method of procedure.
"You see, Radway," he explained, "it is our last season in the country. When
this lot is in, we want to pull up stakes, so we can't take any chances on not
getting that timber in. If you don't finish your job, it keeps us here another
season. There can be no doubt, therefore, that you finish your job. In other
words, we can't take any chances. If you start the thing, you've got to carry it
'way through."
"I think I can, Mr. Daly," the jobber assured him.
"For that reason," went on Daly, "we object to paying you as the work
progresses. We've got to have a guarantee that you don't quit on us, and that
those logs will be driven down the branch as far as the river in time to catch
our drive. Therefore I'm going to make you a good price per thousand, but
payable only when the logs are delivered to our rivermen."
Radway, with his usual mental attitude of one anxious to justify the other
man, ended by seeing only his employer's argument. He did not perceive that the
latter's proposition introduced into the transaction a gambling element. It
became ...
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