Woodsmen of the West

by Martin Allerdale Grainger

  Bill slowed the engines down: we crawled along hour after hour, with frequent stops to test the usefulness of some new idea, some way of dealing with the damaged engine. So it happened that daylight had come, long since, before we saw the head of the Inlet and ran to our usual anchorage, a mile below the camp. We took our usual soundings; held the Sonora on and off, until we had found the exact edge of the “drop-off” – where the river flats of the Kleen-a-Kleen go steep to the Inlet’s bottom. We dropped our anchor and tested its hold. Anchoring at the head of the Inlet was quite an affair! …

  Bill, by now, had guessed the cause of the pounding in our engines. A key, a sort of little metal wedge that should have been jammed tight into an iron casting, had got worn and loose. We spent a day in taking the engines to pieces, in carrying the casting and its companion piece up to the blacksmith shop at the camp, and in forging and fitting a new and excellent key. Bill it was who gave the finishing stroke to the job. He drove the key home with such enthusiasm that the priceless casting broke. The Sonora, for all purposes of movement upon the Inlet, was now a useless log upon the water! There we were at our camp with a broken-down steamboat, the boat with which we kept open communication with the world. Port Browning was over seventy miles away; a new casting could only be bought in Vancouver. As for the old one, it was doubtful if our tools could mend it. Like two guilty schoolboys, we wondered what Carter would say.

  The Sonora after an accident.

  By supper-time, however, the weather occupied all men’s thoughts. It was snowing in very clouds when the wind began to blow from down the Inlet, gusty and fierce; blowing, an unusual thing, into our little bay. Carter was uneasy, for his logs. Indeed, there was risk of loss; waves were breaking in spray all along the edge of the boom, thrusting the line of logs about, straining the boom-chains. Within, the carpet of floating logs heaved up and down upon the swell. The camp buildings, on these rafts, swung to the movement. They cracked; we thought they might slew over and collapse. Our rowboat, tied outside the boom, could be seen in the breaking waves that banged it against the chain of outer logs. I watched to see it smash. But Bill did not. He went walking over the heaving, grinding logs with elegant balance, sprang into the boat, and rowed it away to shelter; an action that, to look at, seemed of some merit. Soon after Bill’s return the squalls ceased suddenly and the night fell calm….

  Next morning all hands were working ashore, on the rigging. Carter was desperate, as usual. “Them logs must be got out before more snow comes,” he trumpeted.

  So he took Bill up the hillside to work signals for him; and me he put to split wood and act as fireman to the donkey-engine on the beach. Thus it happened that I worked all day in sight of the Sonora. She lay much nearer to the shore than she ought to have done, closer than we had anchored her. Evidently the storm of the previous evening had made her drag anchor. But Bill and Carter reckoned she was all right, good enough. “No time to bother with her to-day,” said Carter; “we got to get them logs out right now.” So the Sonora lay at her new anchorage all day; and at dark I saw her still there….

  After supper Bill went down to see if the Sonora wanted bailing. Carter and I sat in the office. He was at peace. He planned new buildings. I did the “figuring,” calculating quantities of planking needed, and the expense, and calling my results. It was, by-the-bye, Christmas Eve.

  Bill came in, shut the door, and sat himself wearily by the stove. Carter and I went on with Carter’s amusement. There came a pause.

  “Well, there’s another two thousand dollars gone to hell,” remarked Bill.

  Carter started. “What’s that?” he said, his eyes swift, glaring at Bill.

  “She’s gone,” said Bill, and chewed his quid.

  There was silence – silence for minutes and minutes.

  Poor fellow! Crass and “wicked” as Carter might be, here he was, sore-stricken by bitter Fate. Bill too!

  Figure the case of these two men who, by years of exhausting effort, by denial of pleasure, disregard of comfort, had won their way out of the ranks of thriftless wage-men. They had become men of substance; possessors of a small sufficient fortune; winners of success; employers of others. All had been gathered by them in fields that disaster hedged. They had laboured and succeeded and had thought themselves secure. Soon they would have had each his joy: Carter, some business in which men buy and sell; Bill, a little, well-stocked ranche, safety, and peace.

  But the cold wind of hard times – the hardest ever known upon the Coast – had blown upon them. Their fortune, of a sudden, had shrivelled in the cold. And then came, oh malicious Fate! the loss of the Sonora, interfering with their work, spoiling their plans. They had no ready money: no fault of theirs. Money seemed to have vanished from all the Coast. Here had been the Sonora, a ready, useful asset; an easy thing to borrow money on – and there might be desperate need of borrowed money, to avert the loss of all. Besides, the Sonora meant two thousand dollars of hard-earned money. Hard earned!

  Carter, who had “beaten his brains out” getting logs off that disheartening side-hill! Carter, cursed of every man who had felt his oppressions – for this! … We sat in the office, silent. There was no noise in the world outside. Only the quiet murmur of men talking in the bunk-house came to us.

  Then Carter spoke.

  “I knowed we oughter have taken her up the slough,” he said.

  Allen chewed.

  Carter said: “She can’t lie in very deep water.” Then Carter got his idea.

  “We might take the donkey-engine down the beach,” he said reflectively, “and take the main-line and tangle it round the boat … then haul her to shore … under water….”

  He fell to considering the details of plans.

  It was admirably met, I thought – that vicious stroke of fortune. I said so to Bill.

  He looked up with sudden surprise.

  “Why?” he said – “why? What’s the use of worrying when a thing has happened?”

  I guess he was right. I lost two pairs of boots and an axe in that damned steamer myself.

  CHRISTMAS DAY

  After the first surprise and burst of talk the evening in the bunk-house became like any other evening. We men kept a fire in the stove, and hung up our boots and turned our drying clothes; and lay, between whiles, in our bunks smoking and spitting and thinking. The only difference was that Carter and Allen came and sat with us in the bunk-house, and in their presence our manner was subdued to show sympathy; for we were sorry for them in a tepid sort of way, and we had not lost many things ourselves in the sunken steamer. And so the evening passed – Christmas Eve, if you please, beloved of magazine story-writers for the dramatic things that happen upon it.

  When the Chinaman’s gong went for breakfast next morning Carter went out and took a look at the weather. It was snowing fairly hard; we wondered whether Carter would want us to work or not. But the loss of the steamer must have taken starch out of his spirit, for he ate breakfast slowly and then returned to the warmth of bunk-house, and made no sign of work. Allen and others of us took the rowboat and went down the coast to the Sonora’s usual anchorage, and prodded for her in the water with a pole; a vain, dispiriting occupation in falling snow, on Christmas Day, with its faint suggestion of holiday. Even Allen lost interest after a while and turned the boat towards camp. We passed the rest of the day loafing in the bunk-house, contented to be warm and in shelter from the snow.

  It was after supper before Carter’s mind began to work. He fell to figuring how much grub he needed to finish the logging of the claim, and how he could get it up the Inlet now that the steamboat was not running. Flour and bacon and other things would add up to one thousand pounds in weight, he concluded, and he lay back upon his bunk silent awhile – and I saw his decision was made. Then he began talking to himself, to be overheard; a long, rambling talk that would bring up now at this point – the need for grub – and now at that – the grub lying ready at Port Browning, eighty miles away. Then he would d
eal with other matters, fluting variations on the tune. He would stop now and then and hold debate with himself, shrewdly, carefully. But always he would come back to the two subjects – the grub for the camp that must be got, the grub at Port Browning that could be got. Then he fell to praising the Inlet: how fools exaggerate; how the Inlet was far from being a son of a dog of a place; how suited it was, after all, to voyages in a rowboat. He himself had once made the trip to Port Browning in twenty-four hours; and it made no difference even supposing the trip had been made in summer and with a fair summer wind. A trip in winter weather might take a longer time, but what of that? The Inlet was all right; he was only sorry that being obliged to look after the work at the camp prevented him from going down to fetch that grub himself – in a rowboat. He would do that. He would think nothing of a little trip like that. Yah! who but a frightened fool would think anything of it?

  All this, of course, was aimed either at Bill or at me.

  Bill was plainly the more useful man at the camp. My heart went into my boots as I realised that I was the person who was to make that rowboat trip to Port Browning by himself. I hate isolation. To set out alone on a long trip makes me feel like the small child who, lingering behind, screams from fear of being abandoned; or like the squadron horse, on scouting work, that frets to get back to the other horses. Nearly always, in rough journeys, one has a companion, a partner; and a partner means safety and cheerfulness and the surety of proper camps and fires and meals. A lonely man, panting to get to his journey’s end, pushes on too hard, tires himself, travels too late into the falling dusk, and is exhausted as he makes camp. Making camp by oneself in bad weather, in a bad country, is a dismal thing to look forward to. As Carter talked my mind pictured, in nightmare hues, the upper reaches of the Inlet: the gloomy lowering roof of clouds, hanging across the water; the steep-to shores, black walls of cliff streaked and splashed with dreary whiteness of snow; the dark, quiet sea; and the ever-present threat of storm, a threat almost visible to the eyes in that scene of misery. That was the Inlet at peace – unstable peace – the peace of a few short hours. Then there was the Inlet disturbed: the cloud mass dragging past the mountain slopes, tailing wisps of mist; the sea all ridged with the white tops of waves in the path of a wind slanting from cliff to cliff across the bends of the Inlet. How depressing the thought of pulling a heavy boat with tired muscles; vainly seeking shelter from the swell of the sea in curve after curve of the rocky shore. And darkness coming on, perhaps, and no sign of an anchorage for the boat, and no sign of dry wood or camping place.

  “I suppose you’ll want me to go?” I asked Carter at last, meeting the inevitable with what grace I could. Carter gave, as it were, a start of surprise.

  “Well, now,” he said, “that’s quite an idea! I hadn’t thought of sending anybody. I wouldn’t have liked to have asked you, boy; it’s kind of a tough trip to ask a man to take in winter.” And he began hurriedly to make my arrangements, keeping me on the run, so to speak, showing how easily every difficulty that occurred to me could be overcome or ignored.

  “Keep moving night and day; never stop while the weather holds good,” said Carter. I thought of that sodden log of an eighteen-foot boat, so heavy to pull. Oh, the weary hours of rowing! Keep a-moving indeed! “What bothers me is how I’m going to keep that boat safe at nights if I have to stop,” said I; “she’s too heavy to haul up, and there’s dam few places anyway where a boat can be hauled up.” The rise and fall of the tide is fifteen feet on the Inlet.

  “Wait till high tide and haul her what you can, and then sleep till the tide comes up to her again,” said Carter. “If there ain’t no beach, anchor and sleep in her.” Delightful thought! Sleeping in wet clothes across the thwarts of a leaking boat; rising to bail her every hour or so; creeping into wet blankets beneath a dripping sailcloth; kicking aching cold feet against the kitchen box to warm them; eating meals of sodden bread, cold to the stomach. Ugh! The wait-for-the-tide scheme for me, in spite of the delays it would mean!

  “That boat leaks like a sieve; she wants fixing,” I said.

  “Fixing! Why, I put some new planks in her last month,” said Carter; “she’s no business to leak. What do I fix a boat for if you men are going to knock her all to pieces? That boat is all right.” Carter had never been in her; he spoke with conviction.

  “When that thousand pounds of freight is in her she’ll be down in the water, to her top board,” said I; “how about bad weather? how about a small breeze?”

  “You’ll just have to lay up when there’s any wind, that’s all,” said Carter; “you’ll have to wait for calm weather. Never get it? Don’t you believe that. I don’t care if it is only calm once in every few days, for a few hours. Take your time, boy. Take two weeks, three weeks. I don’t care if it takes you a month. Just work your way up little by little.”

  “That freight will get all spoiled, lying in an open boat for weeks; what with water leaking in, and waves splashing in, and rain and snow,” said I.

  “Well, it’s your business to see it isn’t spoiled,” said Carter; “that’s what I’m sending you for. You’ll have to take all that freight ashore every time you stop, and pile it good and keep it well covered. And you’ll have to keep the boat well bailed.”

  I must confess I felt like telling Carter that he could go and fetch his own damned freight, and that I would see him in hell before I would do it. But I said nothing.

  Shall I tell you that I was a little sorry for Carter and Allen struggling in the wreck of their hard-earned fortunes; or shall I say that I did not like to disoblige Carter? Or shall I be franker and tell of more serious motives: that I did not like to appear scared of that beastly trip, and that, not knowing the thoughts of other men, I was dead afraid that, should I protest or ask for a companion, Carter might get some other man to go and triumph over my mortified vanity? The journey down the Inlet in an empty boat was no great matter. How could I tell but that the return journey, heavy laden, might not appear an affair of easy achievement to some other man in the camp. Such a journey in summer would give one small anxiety. Was not my courage depressed by the mere wintry appearance of things? That is the worst of a small-boat trip; there is nothing definite to go by. One’s fears may be a matter of moonshine, or they may be caused by sound common-sense. One may boggle at some adventure that the men of the country have found to be of prosaic safety; one may think of possible accidents that are known never to happen; and all this consciousness of the dark, unlikely side of things, of trivial chances of danger, may be mere indulgence in shameful nervousness, like that of a railway passenger who should hesitate to take an express.

  So for moments during that Christmas evening I persuaded my unwilling fear to leave me. But it would spring upon me again at some turning in my thoughts; and I would see that unwieldy boat damaged in a dozen possible ways, and myself ashore on the rocks of a mountain-side, wet and cold, with no matches and no fuel – rescue of my remains the affair of a search party a month or six weeks thence. Would they trouble to search? I wondered; and I fell asleep wishing that I knew less about the rottenness of that old boat, and that other people knew more. And in my sleep I had a numb, stomach-achy feeling like a man under shell-fire: and I was dreadfully unhappy.

  A GHOST STORY

  The noise of Carter stamping his feet into wet boots woke Bill and me next morning. It was still dark outside, as we noticed when Carter opened the door. We heard him jumping his way ashore, the spikes of his logging boots making little, crunching noises on the floating logs. He was off, the first of men at work, to light the fire in the donkey-engine. I felt dismal: I felt like Execution Morning in Newgate. “A rotten ruddy trip for a man to make by himself,” I said to Bill. “Why, we’re both going,” said he. “We’ll take the big skiff; two men can handle her, and she don’t leak. There’s no sense in one man going; he’ll take all winter getting that freight up here.” Happiness burst on me. Bill was coming; the trip would be splendid; no horror of lonelines
s to be feared! But – Carter had spoken, and who was Bill to alter Carter’s word? Bill was Carter’s partner, Carter’s slave. I saw how it would be, and went sadly in to breakfast.

  Carter and I stood by the bunk-house door. “Shall we get that boat fixed up this morning?” said I. “Then I can have a sleep and start down this evening, and get through them windy canyons beyond Axe Point by daylight to-morrow before the wind comes up.”

  Carter looked across me. “I’ll fix her for you,” he said; and stalked away over the boom to where the boat was tied. The boat was full of snow. Carter shovelled some of it out, and trod down the rest. She had taken considerable water. Carter bailed it out. “She’s ready for you,” he called; “tumble in your traps and get started right away. The weather’s good.” It was not; the slight swell told of a wind blowing away down by Anwati.

  But Carter was magnificent! The dramatic vigour of his actions, the very wave of his hand, contrived to put me in the most ridiculous light should I try to protest. Protest would sound so pitifully feeble in face of such convinced, competent ignorance. Carter had forced my hand, had rushed me, in a superbly efficient way. My only chance was to get angry and violent; and I never felt less like violence in my life. I was fascinated by his charming brutality, by the way he ignored my convenience, by the utterly unnoticed sacrifice of my interests to his necessities … and I could only grin. The brute! he played that scene so well that I chuckle still in recalling it. And yet the boat leaked at all times; and when weight was put in her and some of her upper boards became submerged she used to leak like a sieve! It was one man’s work then to keep her afloat by force of bailing.

  “Don’t you never drive no nails into any boat of mine,” said Carter as he saw me go to a nail-keg. So I took a hammer and plenty of nails and took one of Carter’s blankets (for a sail); and a tarpaulin for the freight; and a heavy piece of metal for a stern anchor; and Carter’s best ropes, long ones; and all my dry clothes rolled in my blankets. Then from the cookhouse I took deer meat and bacon and tea, and all the bread that was made (to save camp-fire bakery), and plenty sugar and oatmeal and matches and baking powder. Twenty-five pounds of flour in the boat gave me a feeling of security; and I took a sharp axe, and a big bucket and a small tin for bailing, and two cooking-pots and a plate and a spoon. Finally I found a precious piece of pitch wood that the cook had hidden, and took some kindling wood for fires (in that sodden wet country), and soon was rowing down the Inlet with my eyes on the distant camp. Then I turned the first point and was alone – upon my journey….