Argosy, December, 29, 1917
NE day, while the Black Creek gang
bounded a bale of black, which seemed to roll of loggers were skidding on the and tumble along, and finally scurried into the O Cotton Lake Ridge, Mr. Vroon, the woods out of sight.
owner of the paper mill to which the spruce
“Wasn’t that a bear?” Mr. Vroon asked
was bound, arrived at the camp and mildly.
immediately accompanied Foreman Bigger up
“Sure as you’re born, sir!” Bigger
into the chopping to see the men at work.
replied.
They followed the footpath up to the
“Lots of game around here, it seems to
back of the ridge behind the camp and then me?”
along the crest to the top of the new chopping
“Lots of it—I see a deer every day or
which had been made during the summer two.”
months. Within three hundred yards of the
“How do you account for it?”
camp a regular old rocking-chair buck stepped
“No one hunts here. Too far to hunt in
out of a clump of pole spruces, stared at the one day, and too near to camp out.”
two men for five seconds with startled brown
“Lots of room in camp?”
eyes, and then bucked sideways, turned and
“We’ve some extra cots, usually.”
bumped down the far side of the ridge.
“Well, perhaps a man will come here
“Many deer around?” Mr. Vroon hunting toward the end of the season,” Mr.
asked.
Vroon suggested.
“Quite a lot—yes. None of the boys
“Friend of yours—glad to have him!”
hunt any.”
“Oh, yes, one of those—um-m—well,
“Um-m,” the capitalist nodded.
he’s always looking for a chance to go
They had gone nearly half a mile when
hunting, or fishing, or like that. Perhaps I’ll there was a sudden flurry in some witch-dump him onto you?”
hopples, and into the pathway ahead of them
“I can stand it if he can,” Bigger
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grinned.
paid Lafay, the liveryman, twenty dollars,
“Oh, you must be real nice to him!”
which was double rates, to bring him in to the
“I’d certainly be!” Bigger declared, Black Creek log camp, where he arrived on looking around sharply, and then he added: Saturday afternoon.
“But I’ve some very rough men around camp, Four suit-cases, three gun-cases, and
here—Red Hamblin—”
two or three wooden boxes comprised his
“Red? Say, now, you know, I can’t get
baggage, and he had Lafay put them all in the that man here too quick. His name is Pelyon—
lobby. There they remained until the log crew D. Cuecy Pelyon. You’ve probably read about returned from the chopping, tired, sweaty, and him?”
yet with threats of chills and incipient colds.
“Not since I was a boy,” Jim shook his
Cuecy had taken one of his guns and
head and Mr. Vroon chuckled.
gone hunting. Mr. C. Vroon had told him
When they arrived at the scene of the
about the path along the back of the ridge skidding operations, Red Hamblin had just behind the camp, and he must immediately go become provoked at a spruce stick ten inches up and try to see the big buck, or perhaps the in diameter and twelve feet long. This stick bear.
had been hooked at the end of a string of five Red Hamblin walked into the camp,
logs, which a horse was towing down a gutter with his red-bearded face turned over his on the rough hillside, and a little crook in the shoulder to tell Ross Comply that if he
log made it corkscrew into every root, stump, despised anything in all the world, it was and tree, and fall over every rock and wedge Saturday night, after four days’ rain, and when in.
everybody was tired out and there wasn’t
Red seized a bar and pried the dog out
anything—
of the log and yelled for the horse to go on its Red stepped against a suit-case, and to
way. The horse took the logs down alone
save himself, he jumped ahead and over,
without difficulty, now that the spite-log had landing upon another suit-case which was
been cut out. The man picked the stick up by leaning against a small, wooden box, and
one end, wrapped both arms around it, and though Red was agile, and reached in all the began to pull and growl and worry it, directions, the hay-wire overhead, on which suggesting nothing else so much as a puppy were numerous shirts, socks, and other things eating a rubber boot.
drying, proved too weak to give him the
Of course, Red’s voice could be heard
support he most needed. He fell upon the
half a mile. He carried the log down to the floor, with the drying-line full upon him, and skids, and threw it at the two men who were numerous ribs bumped by corners of leather skidding the timber. Then he jumped on the and wood.
horse and rode it backward up the side hill, Red fought the pile of baggage in the
swearing at the scenery and his mates.
dim light, not sure that some of it was not
“Yes,” Mr. Vroon continued, “I think
alive. When a light was struck, and a lamp lit, I’ll surely have to send Cuecy up here. Red’ll Red was on his feet, prepared for any needful do him good!”
action. The logger looked around at the suit-Cuecy arrived ten days later. The cases, boxes, and gun-cases.
leaves had all been whipped down from the
“Jee—gosh—some
dangwhanged
witch-hopples by a heavy autumn rain-storm.
party of sports—”
The woods were gray, wet, and soggy. A chill,
“On, ho!” Jim Bigger hastened to
suggestive of frost, was in the air. Cuecy had correct a misapprehension. “There’s only
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3
one—Mr. D. Cuecy Pelyon’s his name—”
arrived in the camp lobby.
“What—one?” Red demanded. “But
“Oh, Mr. Bigger!” he shouted. “I heard
there’s—one, two-three, four, all them a deer, and I don’t know if I hit ’im or not, but suitcases and the boxes, ’sides the guns!”
if he was there anywhere, I hit him! I certainly
“Only one,” Jim shook his head. “Mr.
did!”
D. Cuecy Pelyon—”
“You shot exactly where you heard
“Cussy Pell which?” Red demanded.
him?” Foreman Bigger asked softly.
“D. Cuecy Pelyon,” Foreman Bigger
“You bet I did! My! He made an awful
repeated again gravely.
racket!”
“Well, by—um-m—D. Cussy Hellion!
“You must have done’a lot of huntin’
Ain’t that a name—friend of yours, Jim?” Red in your day,” Red Hamblin exclaimed, with asked quickly.
admiration, “knowing a deer by the sound of
“No; Mr. Vroon sent him up here.”
his jump!”
“Must of wanted to get rid of him!”
“Oh, I’ve hunted!” the young man
Red snorted.
beamed. “I never hu
nted deer before, but I’ve
“Yes, very, likely,” Jim admitted. “Mr.
hunted foxes on horseback—”
Pelyon had been pestering Mr. Vroon a long
“You’re qualified!” Red shook his
time, for a chance to enjoy sport from one of head violently. “Yes, sir! Now I expect we’re his log camps. Mr. Vroon hated to let him in going to have a lot of venison to eat in this any of them. You see, Mr. D. Cuecy Pelyon camp—”
might accidentally—”
“Oh—I—you see, I’m going to carry
“Mistake somebody for a deer?” Red
the deer home with me,” the hunter declared.
demanded. “And Mr. Vroon asked him to this
“Really, you know, you must have lots to eat camp? Why, the dod-blasted—”
here. You couldn’t afford to eat venison—it’s
“Oh—Mr. Vroon asked if a tough old
very expensive, you know!”
fellow he used to know was here—man name
“Oh, that’s all right!” Red hastened.
of Red Hamblin. Then he said perhaps we’d
“Come on in and set up! Supper’s ready—
have a visitor—”
come on, old boy! We’ve took a shine to you.
“Eh—what? The old boy said that? He
Stick that gun up in the corner—the damned seen me fight, wunst, to Forestport—time I thing’s loaded?”
took Old Barney, the Black River canaler, and
“Why—”
painted his boat with him, an’ a barrel of tar D. Cuecy started to hand the weapon
fer paint! Yes, sir! By Jee! An’ he said—he to Red, but it slipped, and the butt fell to the said?”
floor. At that there was a roar, and every man
“He didn’t say anything, Red,” Jim
yelled. The rifle had been cocked, and the jar exclaimed sternly. “Mr. D. Cuecy Pelyon is—
had pulled the trigger. The bullet, happily, er—the guest of the camp. We must entertain went straight up, through a beam, then the him!”
floor, then a rafter, and out of the roof. That
“We’ll do it!” Red declared far the loggers traced its course.
vehemently. “What the—”
From all sides there ensued low and
All stopped to listen. Up on the ridge a
profane swearing, but Red Hamblin laughed few hundred feet they heard a firing and a aloud.
shooting of many cartridges in swift
“That’s all right, old sport!” he said to succession. The shots ceased after a time. A the blue-lipped young man. “Accidents will few minutes later, Mr. D. Cuecy Pelyon happen, y’ know. Two, three years ago I killed
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4
a feller myself, kind of accidentally.”
more things to eat on the big plate, till there
“You did?” the youth asked was an outlying ridge of fried cakes, bread, breathlessly. “How did that happen?”
meat, potatoes, and other things which had
“Why, all there was to it, I picked up a
fallen off the plate, or which the guest had gun like this, and I poked it against his ribs succeeded in pushing away, as Red’s big
that way”—Red poked the young man just
hands tried to press it upon him.
above the belt with the rifle muzzle—”and I Commonly, the log crew ate its fill in
was kind of fooling with the trigger—like that, twenty to twenty-five minutes, but this night it you see! And the danged thing went off!”
took them nearly forty minutes to dine. Some
“Oh—yes!” the sport gasped, side-
of them ate twice as much as usual, just to stepping the muzzle quickly, exclaiming: have an excuse to remain. The cook brought
“Look out—that might—”
two cups, one for coffee and one for tea—and
“Oh, no! This ain’t loaded!” Red while D. Cuecy was putting one down, Red shook his head.
“I just seen it go off! I
would be lifting the other to his lips.
tell you, since I killed po’r ole Pete, I be’n Probably D. Cuecy never had another
awful careful. I never seen a man bleed the meal like that. His woods hosts could not do way he done! Well, come on to supper!”
enough for him. One even brought a ham from Red and the rest of the crew went in to
the shed and asked if he would have a slice.
eat. D. Cuecy wanted to wash. When he With some relief he escaped for a moment to finally looked into the dining-room, Red spied the lobby, but there all hands turned too, to him on the instant.
make him comfortable, and Red and Ross
“Right here, old sport!” he shouted.
Comply tried to pull him to the log-end chairs
“Saved a place here for ye!”
which each provided for him.
D. Cuecy walked along doubtfully, and
Red proceeded to clean the rifle, which
when he saw that he must step over the long had been discharged that afternoon. It was a bench to take his place, he hesitated just long beautiful octagon barrel, with engraved breech enough to show that the bench was not to his and carved stock. Red brought out a long
exact liking. Moreover, piled on his place, piece of hay wire, and wrapped a piece of red ready for him, were four potatoes, three great flannel around the end. Then he swabbed the greasy slabs of fried pork, beginning to grow flannel in stove ashes and proceeded to draw it cold, and nearly a cup full of good old pork through the barrel.
grease—the kind that makes the hair grow on D. Cuecy could hear the wire
a man’s chest! as Red told him.
scratching through the barrel, and he began to
“Get around it!” Red exclaimed. worry—he tried to explain that he had a real
“Here’s the butter. Pass that bread, you blue-cleaner, real gun oil, and real linen rags.
eyed sow-belly! This gen’leman’s been
“Them fancy things ain’t no good!”
huntin’, an’ he’s hongry! Say, mister—d’ye Red declared. “Takes good wood ashes to
eat cake er bread with yer taters?”
have a bite to clean a gun barr’l out!”
“Why—I—usually—” D. Cuecy was
D. Cuecy protested, but in vain. In the
nearly speechless.
mean while each of the others took out his He made a stagger at eating, and the
other weapons and looked at them—a
flavor was not really bad. It was good; beautiful double-barrel shotgun, and a little besides, he was hungry, as Red had said, and twenty-two repeater. One fired the shot-gun at Red stood by and with the most friendly the chinkings of the logs; another emptied the solicitation in the world, heaped more and
“twenty-two” at an imaginary moose in one
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5
corner—it was the toe of an old rubber boot.
disappointed. Red urged him to hurry with his
“To-morrer!” Red Hamblin declared,
eating, so they wouldn’t be late. Gulping
“we’ll all go huntin’!”
down the hash, bread, hot coffee, and other D. Cuecy and his belongings were things, Red urged his seat-mate to do likewise, taken up into the dormitory, and he was shown and D. Cuecy, modest, embarrassed, and in to a cot beside the aisle, about midway strange quarters, was dragged away from the between the ladder and the office, in which table before he had fairly tasted his breakfast.
Foreman Bigger slept. His suit-cases and
Early as he was, however, he found
boxes were piled around him, and the loggers that his woodsmen friends had prepared for went to their own places.
the hunt. Slip Wanda had his big rifle, Red Long after the loggers were in bunk,
had his shot
gun, and Ross Compty had his
D. Cuecy was feeling around among his “twenty-two.” His nine-inch blade hunting-possessions, by the dim lantern light, trying to knife was flourishing in the hands of Peter dispose of his things. He had never seen a log Lansley.
camp before!
“Come on, boys!” Red shouted, and
During the night the loggers were led the way up the ridge.
restless. First one, then another would go D. Cuecy, with nothing but his
ambling around. Red wanted his chewing hunting-boots to carry, pressed up with the tobacco; Ross Compty was trying to find his others. Every time he hinted gently, that he old pipe—not the new one! Slip Wanda would just as soon carry his gun, the pretended to be a somnambulist, and fell over woodsmen poo-hooed the idea. Let a guest
D. Cuecy’s cot, and then it required five or six carry a gun! That’d never do in the world!
loggers to carry him back to his own cot and They hurried breathlessly to the ridge
put him to bed.
back, and along the top to Cotton Mountain, At dawn D. Cuecy was heavy-eyed for
and down to Cotton Lake, through the balsam want of sleep. The loggers stirring out for the swamp and caribou moss to Pekan Rocks, and day, however, boasted what a good night’s up over the broken stones to the foot of a high rest they had had, and Red remarked that he ledge, and around through gullies and over had never seen the boys so quiet as that night.
ledges—everywhere at top speed.
“Quiet! Quiet!” D. Cuecy repeated
“Lot’s of bears in this country!” Red
wonderingly.
exclaimed, hauling up his gun and firing a
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