Woodsmen of the West

by Martin Allerdale Grainger

  There was no wind. I dreaded wind – at least the sou’easter, the probable wind, the head wind. But a gentle swell was coming up the Inlet, and beyond Axe Point I could see disturbance in the clouds, and trouble seemed to be awaiting me ahead. I bailed the boat, and then settled myself on my seat and rowed steadily, with the restraint of a man who knows he has to support the exertion for hours and hours ahead, and who knows he must keep reserve power, in case of surprise by bad weather, for a struggle to shelter. I listened to the noise of the rowlocks, and looked at the swirls my oars made in the water, and guessed how far I had come, and wondered at the desperate slowness of my progress. The boat was water-soaked and heavy as lead in the pulling; and besides, as a steamboat man, I had become used to rather greater speeds. A hard-earned three miles an hour fretted me; and then – oh, where should I be when darkness should come, and where, oh where, should I camp? To the devil with Carter’s day-and-night journey. I should like to see him, a man alone, go on for twenty-four hours lugging at home-made oars in a boat that dragged like a barge! I began to glow with anger against Carter…. But just then sadness fell upon me; a breeze began to ruffle the water. And soon the breeze was wind, and soon ripples became waves, and waves began to whiten and break; and the short, surfy seas hurried one after the other, row after row, and storm was beginning to sweep the whole width of the Inlet. I was well out from the near shore, and there was no shelter anywhere along it that I could see. But some one had told me once that Old Village was out of the wind, and there was Old Village – straight across, on the far shore of the Inlet. And now from which wind was Old Village a shelter? The north, the west, the sou’-easter? A sou’-easter was blowing. Old Village looked good enough; I turned the boat, angling across, deferent to the seas. A miserable business it was, to my mind, tossing and wallowing across two miles of channel; the heavy boat responding to one’s hardest work by slow forward lurches that stopped dead at the bash of every alternate wave; and wind and sea increasing in uncomfortable power. But the time came when a headland shut off the wind direct, and I rowed on gently heaving water to the mouth of a little river, and saw good anchorage and camping ground.

  It was still early in the afternoon, but there was no hope of the wind dropping that day. I found a flat place just above the shore rocks, and cleared away the snow. “Firewood!” Carter had said in derision. “Fancy a man worrying about firewood in this country!” And you might have sniggered at the thought, looking at the forest slopes and the driftwood jammed in the rocks, and the fallen timber everywhere. But the Inlet is cleft deep among mountains, and little sunshine can come to dry the slopes, and rain falls for all the winter months, or snow. So all wood is wet, and dead timber soon becomes moss-covered and soggy; and there are few parts of the world where a camp-fire is harder to light, in winter-time.

  I cursed Carter as I dug my axe into log after log and found them all rotten; and every pole and even every twig seemed rotten too. And at that twinge of despair the horror of loneliness came upon me, and I looked up the mountain, and over the misty, white-capped sea, and round upon the scattered tangle of fallen timber on the mossy rocks – and the sight was dreary, the abomination of desolation. “Curse Carter!” I thought; “I’ll never come up the Inlet again. Never! never! never! To hell with him and his freight! …”

  But then there were my unpaid wages of the last three months; I couldn’t afford to lose them; I should have to come back. And at the commonplace thought I fell again to work, seeking wood; and was soon healed of the bitterness of lonely sadness. But I was unhappy still….

  I found, in the end, dead clumps of alder thicket; and chopped them and dragged the sticks to my camp, a pile sufficient for the night. Then I got my stuff ashore, at the foot of a big rock, and threw it all up on to the little flat above. The boat I moored out in deep water, with a stern anchor. Now dusk was coming; but my camp was nearly made.

  I rolled a rotten log to the rock’s edge – a back log for my fire; and soon the long alder sticks were burning good, and my fire had a heart. There were hemlock boughs for a fine bed in front of the long line of fire; and a tarpaulin (for wind screen, roof, and heat reflector) stretched on sloping poles behind me. And by dark I had had hot supper, and my clothes had dried upon me and by the light of the fire I could see to mend torn garments. So I sat stitching, and the evening passed slow.

  What is it, I wonder, that starts one listening, of a sudden, during night-time in the woods? I was sitting at my camp-fire, toasting warm, weary of worrying, comforted by such good shelter from the falling rain, and drowsy at my sewing. Then, with a shock, I was painfully awake, alert; my eyes on a search, my ears listening, my whole body taut and ready for swift movement. Some sound or some gleam of firelight reflected from rock or tree must have startled into activity the primeval instinct, the sense of watchfulness that lies asleep in civilised life. A new nervous system seemed to flash into brilliant action in my body.

  A log shot down the mountain-side by hand-loggers.

  Where hand-loggers once worked.

  I was amused to find myself thinking of the glowing eyes of beasts – panthers they proved to be on further thought. I have seen a panther in the Zoo, and I rather fancy I have seen the footprints of panthers on river-bars, and beasts’ eyes are said to glow. So it was quite easy to watch the phantom of a panther that eyed me from behind the trees and moved in little glides, creepy crawly, among the underbrush.

  But I got tired of watching the panther, and he lost form and vanished. Then the noises of the world burst upon me with sudden loudness. I held my breath, straining to hear above the noise of throbbing in my ears. How absurd, I remarked, that one’s own effort to hear should spoil one’s hearing! At my self-conscious snigger the throbbing stopped. Then I could hear the rushing sough of the waves out in the open Inlet, and the gentle roaring of the creek in its narrow valley, and the occasional crash of the sea-swell against the rocks down behind my fire. There was a queer note that rose above the other noises, a sort of whir-o-o-o-o-ing and whistling in the tall trees. It seemed interesting to try to coin a word to describe the noise – noise of the dead Siwashes, I said. For the forgotten generations lay boxed in every cavity among the rocks around me; and Old Village has been avoided by the living this hundred years and more. I wondered why. I wondered would that ghostly shrieking scare a Siwash?

  And then I brooded over discredited feelings that are the jest of educated men in civilised countries – feelings that exist, nevertheless, rudimentary and latent, in most reasoning people – superstitions of the aboriginal. I recalled my childish fears in the dark; and the lesser uneasiness I had often felt in the woods as a younger man; and touches of superstitious fear that had, on occasion, given edge to my vigilance as a sentry. Had I still some relic of that ghost-fear? It would be most interesting to know the truth; to see what instincts one had; to get a glimpse at one of those hidden little parts of Self that, like the bridge of one’s nose, no effort of one’s own will can make visible. I remembered how my nurse …

  Something flashed behind my ear!!! My head jerked round to look. Yet, quicker than sight could work, my head was jerking back again. Through the corner of my eye on into my brain had flashed knowledge of Something Wrong, there beyond the fire. I stared hard.

  Then from the very flickers of the burning logs began to rise a FACE. It rose a foot, perhaps; hovered; then flew aloft and hung in air amid the swirling smoke. My thoughts were still working undisturbed: “How queer, a face! A Mongolian face, too – see the high cheek-bones and the slitting eyes. Did they not say that the ancient Siwashes were of Mongolian extr …” My thoughts stopped dead; Instinct had taken charge!

  I had been sitting, lounging, on the strewn hemlock boughs. Crash boughs! I was standing by the fire – nerves tingling, body light as a feather – about to fling myself at the FACE….

  Superstitious fear? Other emotions? Alas! I was conscious of no feeling at all. But please notice that I had sprung towards the FACE –
not from it. Let me wear that fact like a medal!

  But certainly I heard a raucous voice bark, “WHAT’S THAT?” And if you press me I will admit the voice was mine. Let us talk of other things, lest you take smiling notice of the word I used. “Who’s that?” I hasten to agree, would have sounded better. For the FACE was the face of a living man.

  RACE DOWN THE INLET

  At the head of the Inlet there was Carter’s camp – on the western shore. Half a mile down was the place where Kendall felled timber and had his tent. He was at enmity with Carter, and never came near Carter’s camp. Across the Inlet were two men, Fisher and his partner, hand-loggers. On calm days we could hear the rumbling noise of the timber they shot into the sea. But they never visited our camp; they also were at enmity with Carter.

  Now on Christmas Day Fisher and his partner were tempted to a decision. Their grub supply was getting low; they would be obliged, sooner or later, to make a trip to Hanson Island Hotel to get more grub for the winter months and the early spring. Why not go and fetch that grub at Christmas time, and join the festive throng at the hotel? Fisher reckoned he was about due for a drunk; he had no need to make inquiry of his partner. Business, pleasure, and the reward of virtuous months called to these men from Hanson Island. Besides, they really needed a new rowboat.

  So on the afternoon of Christmas Day Fisher was busy tinkering up his ancient damaged boat. He put new pieces of plank in her, and drove in caulking where he could, and mixed up stiff dough and plastered leaks with that, and flattened out some tins and tacked them over the dough. He made her, as one might say, sea-worthy. His partner roasted a goose and cooked goat meat for the journey.

  It was not, however, till late the next day that they were ready to start. And of course they had no idea that the steamboat had sunk, or that I was travelling down the Inlet in a rowboat that afternoon. I had coasted down the western shore, too far away for them to see – even supposing they had looked. And when the storm had forced me to cross the Inlet to Old Village I was eight or nine miles away from them.

  Towards evening they left their camp. They coasted along the eastern shore, Siwash fashion; for fear of accidents, neither man feeling much trust in the dough plasters of the boat. The curve of the eastern shore kept them well out of the way of the storm that was whitening the centre of the open Inlet; and it fell pitch-dark before they reached Old Village, so that they did not see the weather awaiting them ahead. But when they tried to round the point beyond Old Village the blast of the wind struck them full, and the waves made them fear for the boat, and they turned back into shelter and wondered what to do. That was how one of them saw a gleam from my camp-fire. They rowed into the bay, hauled their light boat up beyond tide-marks, and came to seek refuge from the pelting rain at the strange fire. That was how, through a cranny of the rocks, a shaft of light from Fisher’s lantern had gleamed upon my canvas shelter; and that was why Fisher’s partner, climbing up the cleft of rock just behind my fire, had seemed to show a face rising from the flames. Fisher’s partner was dressed in dark blue; only his face was visible in that flickering light, and his jaw was covered with stubble of beard, that left a Mongolian outline to the hairless parts. The awful look upon his face proved to be merely the expression of eyes screwed up to support the glare and the smarting pain of wood smoke from my fire. I had never seen this man before. His name was John Simpson. Think of my joy at the presence of these men, my ecstasy of joy at hearing of the journey they were upon. We would travel together!

  So I welcomed Fisher and John to my camp, and we cooked another supper and sat talking, enjoying the warmth of the fire. Late in the evening they fetched their blankets from the boat, and we all slept cosily together in front of the glowing coals….

  By morning the wind had abated. For as far as we could see the Inlet was free of whitecaps and merely ruffled by a breeze. It was so pleasant and comfortable in camp that we hated the thought of turning out into the drizzle and wind, for long hours of rowing. But there was no help for it; we got our boats loaded; we took to the oars – Fisher finishing his after-breakfast pipe as he rowed. I myself was filled with a new anxiety. I watched the way Fisher handled his oars, to judge of his efficiency; I watched his boat, to get some idea of the pace he would go at. For I felt instinctively that Fisher and his partner would not delay their journey by waiting for me should my pace be slower than theirs; and they were two, to spell one another on the oars; and I was one, to row all the time; and their boat was light, while mine was big and heavy. I kept level with them, further from the shore, and watched. Then Fisher put his pipe away, and we came out from the shelter of the point into the wind, striking out to cross the Inlet. Fisher’s boat drew ahead.

  Now hand-loggers, as a rule, are like any other working-men out West – like sailor-men, too, as far as that goes. They can often row with some effect standing up – facing forward and pushing on the oars. But they do not understand the surpassing value of a long, steady stroke, sitting down. They row with their arms, and not with their body, in the jerky, lug-at-the-finish style of the Cockney clerk on a holiday up the river.

  But Fisher, some time in his life, had done some rowing for pleasure – perhaps before he deserted from the 11th U.S. Infantry; and now he was rowing to show off. I would have done that myself if I had had a better boat; but I was rowing desperately as it was – not to get left behind. My only hope was to convince Fisher by the apparent ease of my movement that the pace was a trifle slower than my usual pace, and so weary his interest in his own performance.

  And while we were crossing the Inlet the little waves were in my favour; for the heavier boat held way the better. Then we came to Axe Point, and suddenly Fisher’s partner was whistling and pointing. Up among the cliffs were a herd of mountain goat, staring patches of white against the dark rock. Fisher must needs stop and shoot from the boat, and declare he hit one. I bailed my boat and took a thankful rest.

  By now the rain had ceased, but the wind blew cold. Oh, the misery of cold, aching feet! That was the worst of rowing; it did not warm my feet. Besides, the water of many leaks splashed around my boots. Fisher had a clock with him, and as we rowed on, side by side, he would call the hours. And every hour he and John would change places. The man who had been resting would start off with a spurt, partly to warm himself, partly from high spirits, partly from a touch of annoyed vanity that I should be rowing alongside. I dreaded those spurts; they meant gruelling work for me, for I had to keep level with their boat at all costs. Once I should drop behind and lose sight of my pacemaker, I knew my own speed would slacken; and John and Fisher, looking back, would row hard to distance me, and they would pass out of sight. Then perhaps wind would come up, and they would have reached some shelter, while I, with my clumsy boat, must turn back elsewhere; and then we should be separated for good. I knew the brutes! They would dig right on to Hanson Island Hotel, and air their great selves in the bar-room. “Met Mart coming down the Inlet,” they would remark. “Say, boys, but we just passed him a-flyin! Him keep up with us? Well, I should smile!”

  That was how the day passed: I rowing hard, but trying to look as if I was rowing easy, trying to keep the idea of competition out of their heads, trying to bluff them; they rowing I do not know how hard – hard enough at least to make me long passionately for camp. We stopped once, to light a fire and restore feeling to our icy feet; eating a lunch the while. And at last, in darkness, with sails set to catch a following air, we made out the dim whiteness of the cliffs by Sallie Point. We rowed in to where the deserted cabin stands by the mouth of the creek, and, with utter weariness, carried our stuff ashore. Then we helped one another to haul the boats up on the welcome beach. Oh, hot supper, and warm feet, and numb, insensible sleep!

  Inhabitants of houses in some London square – ordering their lives among fellow-men, occupied in very thought with mankind and its milder activities – may gain the habit of regarding death and agony and natural catastrophes as mere topics of conversation. So also
the traveller, to whom companions are given, may clean forget his nervous fear of the tragic face of Nature. Witness, in my own case, how a wilderness that had daunted me became the barely noticed frame to a human picture. I passed a day of tiring work, in the company of two other men, occupied by the interplay of a few childish vanities. That was all! So prosaic and so simple! …

  Yawnings and the creaking of the cabin floor under Frank’s waking movements woke me in the dark to take my share in the breakfast work. We were short of wood, so, rather guiltily, we tore up planks of the flooring and made a good fire, for there was starlight outside and the air was bitter cold. Breakfast, besides, was that morning an important meal. We knew, inevitably, that we should push right on to Hanson Island that night, at any cost of effort. Need to fill our stomachs well; we might have to row the whole cruel distance. We hoped not; we hoped heartily for wind, now; for the Inlet turns west at Sallie Point and all winter winds are fair, going down. But when, soon after starting, our boats turned the corner point and we could see in the early dawn the long western stretch of water before us, no sign of wind was there for our encouragement. We had to row and, rowing, be victimised by vanity. So the hours passed as they had passed the day before. We rowed abreast, oar almost to oar; we quickened our pace when John changed with Fisher, or Fisher changed with John. We stopped at the same moments to bail our boats. The ache of cold feet was a daylong misery.