Other Main-Travelled Roads

by Garland, Hamlin

  A tall old man with a long red beard came out. He held one bare red arm above his eyes. He wore an apron.

  "Hello, Sandy!"

  "Hello, Mr. Ridgeley!"

  "Ready for company?"

  "Am always ready for company," he said, with a Scotch accent.

  "Well, we're coming in to get warm."

  "Vera weel."

  As they went in, under the roofed shed between the cook's shanty and the other and larger shanty, Mrs. Field sniffed. Sandy led them past a large pyramid composed of the scraps of beef bones, egg-shells, cans, and tea grounds left over during the winter. In the shed itself hung great slabs of beef.

  It was all as untidy and suggestive of slaughter as the nest of a brood of eagles.

  Sandy was beginning dinner on a huge stove spotted with rust and pancake batter. All about was the litter of his preparation. Beef—beef on all sides, and tin dishes and bare benches and huge iron cooking-pans.

  Mrs. Field was glad to get out into the sunlight again. "What a horrible place! Are they all like that?"

  "No, my camps are not like that—or, I should say, our camps," Ridgeley added, with a smile.

  "Not a gay place at all," said Field, in exaggerated reserve.

  But Mrs. Field found her own camps not much better. True, the refuse was not raised in pyramidal shape before the front door, and the beef was a little more orderly, but the low log huts, the dim cold light, the dingy walls and floors, the lack of any womanly or home touch, the tin dishes, the wholesale cooking, all struck upon her with terrible force.

  "Do human beings live here?" she asked Ridgeley, when he opened the door of the main shanty of No. 6.

  "Forty creatures of the men kind sleep and house here," he replied.

  "To which the socks and things give evidence," said Field, promptly, pointing toward the huge stove which sat like a rusty-red cheese in the centre of the room. Above it hung scores of ragged gray and red socks and Mackinac boots and jackets which had been washed by the men themselves.

  Around were the grimy bunks where the forty men slept like tramps in a steamer's hold. The quilts were grimy, and the posts greasy and shining with the touch of hands. There were no chairs—only a kind of rude stool made of boards. There were benches near the stove, nailed to the rough floor. In each bunk, hanging to a peg, was the poor little imitation-leather hand-bag which contained the whole wardrobe of each man, exclusive of the tattered socks and shirts hanging over the stove.

  The room was chill and cold and gray. It had only two small windows. Its doors were low. Even Mrs. Field was forced to stoop in entering. This helped to make it seem like a den. There were roller-towels in the corner and wash-basins, and a grindstone which made it seem like a barn. It was, in fact, more cheerless than a barn, and less wholesome.

  "Doesn't that hay in the bunks get a—a—sometimes?" asked Field.

  "Well, yes, I shouldn't wonder, though the men are pretty strict about that. They keep pretty free from bugs, I think. However, I shouldn't want to run no river chances on the thing myself." Ridgeley smiled at Mrs. Field's shudder of horror.

  "Is this the place?" The men laughed. She had asked that question so many times before.

  "Yes, this is where Mr. Williams hangs out. Say, Field, you'll need to make some new move to hold your end up against Williams."

  Mrs. Field felt hurt and angry at his rough joke. In the dim corner a cough was heard, and as a yellow head raised itself over the bunk-board a man presented a ghastly face. His big blue eyes fixed themselves on the lovely woman with a look of childish wonder.

  "Hello, Gus—didn't see you! What's the matter—sick?"

  "Yah, ai baen hwick two days. Ai tank ai lack to hav doketer."

  "All right, I'll send him up. What seems the matter?"

  As they talked, Mrs. Field again chilled with the cold gray comfortlessness of it all: to be sick in such a place! The silent appearance of the man out of his grim corner was startling. She was glad when they drove out into the woods again, where the clear sunshine fell and the pines stood against the blazing winter sky motionless as iron trees. Her pleasure in the ride was growing less. To her delicate sense this life was sordid, not picturesque. She wondered how Williams endured it. They arrived at No. 8 just as the men were trailing down the road to work, after eating their dinner. Their gay-colored jackets of Mackinac wool stood out like trumpet notes in the prevailing white and blue and bronze-green.

  The boss and the sealer came out and met them, and after introductions they went into the shanty to dinner. The cook was a deft young Norwegian—a clean, quick, gentlemanly fellow with a fine brown mustache. He cleared a place for them at one end of the long table, and they sat down.

  It was a large camp, but much like the others. On the table were the same cheap iron forks, the tin plates, and the small tin basins (for tea) which made up the dinner-set. Basins of brown sugar stood about.

  "Good gracious! Do people still eat brown sugar? Why, I haven't seen any of that for ages!" cried Mrs. Field.

  The stew was good and savory, and the bread fair. The tea was not all clover, but it tasted of the tin. Mrs. Field said:

  "Beef, beef—everywhere beef. One might suppose a menagerie of desert animals ate here. Edward, we must make things more comfortable for our men. They must have cups to drink out of; these basins are horrible."

  It was humorous to the men, this housewifely suggestion.

  "Oh, make it napkins, Allie!"

  "You can laugh, but I sha'n't rest after seeing this. If you thought I was going to say, 'Oh, how picturesque!' you're mistaken. I think it's barbarous."

  She was getting impatient of their patronizing laughter, as if she were a child. They changed their manner to one of acquiescence, but thought of her as a child just the same.

  After dinner they all went out to see the crew working. It was the biggest crew anywhere in the neighborhood. Ridgeley got out and hitched the team to a tree, and took Field up to the skidway. Mrs. Field remained in the sleigh.

  Near her "the swamping team," a span of big, deep-red oxen, came and went among the green tops of the fallen pines. They crawled along their trails in the snow like some strange machinery, and the boy in a blue jacket moved almost as listlessly. Somewhere in the tangle of refuse boughs the swampers' axes click-clocked, saws uttered their grating, rhythmic snarl, and great trees at intervals shivered, groaned, and fell with soft, rushing, cracking sweeps into the deep snow, and the swampers swarmed upon them like Lilliputians attacking a giant enemy.

  There was something splendid (though tragic) in the work, but the thought of the homelessness of the men, their terrible beds, and their long hours of toil oppressed the delicate and refined woman. She began to take on culpability. She was partly in authority now, and this system must be changed. She was deep in plans for improvement, in shanties and in sleeping-places, when the men returned.

  Ridgeley was saying: "No, we control about thirty thousand acres of pine as good as that. It ain't what it was twenty years ago, but it's worth money, after all."

  It was getting near to dark as they reached No. 6 again, and Ridgeley drew up and helped them out and into the cook's shanty.

  Mrs. Field was introduced to the cook, a short, rather sullen, but intelligent man. He stood over the red-hot stove, laying great slices of beef in a huge dripping-pan. He had a taffler, or assistant, in the person of a half-grown boy, at whom he jerked rough orders like hunks of stove wood. Some hit the boy and produced noticeable effects, others did not.

  Meanwhile a triumphant sunset was making the west one splendor of purple and orange and crimson, which came over the cool green rim of the pines like the Valhalla March in Wagner.

  Mrs. Field sat there in the dim room by the window, seeing that splendor flush and fade, and thinking how dangerous it was to ask where one's wealth comes from in the world. Outside, the voices of the men thickened; they were dropping in by twos and fours, with teams and on foot.

  The assistant arranged
the basins in rows, and put one of the iron forks and knives on either side of each plate, and filled the sugar-basins, and dumped in the cold beans, and split the bread into slabs, and put small pots of tea here and there ready for the hands of the men.

  At last, when the big pans of toast, the big plates of beef, were placed steaming on the table, the cook called Field and Ridgeley, and said:

  "Set right here at the end." He raised his arm to a ring which dangled on a wire. "Now look out; you'll see 'em come—sidewise." He jerked the ring, and disappeared into the kitchen.

  A sudden tumult, shouts, trampling, laughter, and the door burst open and they streamed in: Norwegians, French, half-breeds—dark-skinned fellows, all of them, save the Norwegians. They came like a flood, but they fell silent at sight of a woman, so beautiful and strange to them.

  All words ceased. They sank into place beside the table with the thump of falling sand-bags. They were all in their shirt-sleeves, but with faces cleanly washed, and the most of them had combed their hair; but they seemed very wild and hairy to Mrs. Field. She looked at her husband and Ridgeley with a grateful pleasure; it was so restful to have them close beside her.

  The men ate like hungry dogs. They gorged in silence. Nothing was heard but the clank of knives on tin plates, the drop of heavy platters of food, and the occasional muttered words of some one asking for the bread or the gravy.

  As they ate they furtively looked with great curiosity and admiration up at the dainty woman. Their eyes were bright and large, and gleamed out of the obscure brown of their dimly lighted faces with savage intensity—so it seemed to Mrs. Field, and she dropped her eyes before their glare.

  Her husband and Ridgeley tried to enter into conversation with those sitting near. Ridgeley seemed on good terms with them all, and ventured a joke or word, at which they laughed with terrific energy, and fell as suddenly silent again.

  As Mrs. Field looked up the second time she saw the dark, strange face of Williams a few places down, and opposite her. His eyes were fixed on her husband's hands with a singular intensity. Her eyes followed his, and the beauty of her husband's hands came to her again with new force. They were perfectly shaped, supple, warm-colored, and strong. Their color and deftness stood out in vivid contrast to the heavy, brown, cracked, and calloused, paw-like hands of the workmen.

  Why should Williams study her husband's hands? If he had looked at her she would not have been surprised. The other men she could read. They expressed either frank, simple admiration or furtive desire. But this man looked at her husband, and his eyes fell often upon his own hands, which trembled with fatigue. He handled his knife clumsily, and yet she could see he, too, had a fine hand—a slender, powerful hand, like that people call an artist hand—a craftsman-like hand.

  He saw her looking at him, and he flashed one enigmatical glance into her eyes, and rose to go out.

  "How you getting on, Williams?" Ridgeley asked.

  Williams resented his question. "Oh, I'm all right," he said, sullenly.

  The meal was all over in an incredibly short time. One by one, two by two, they rose heavily and lumbered out with one last, wistful look at Mrs. Field. She will never know how seraphic she seemed sitting there amid those rough surroundings—the dim, red light of the kerosene lamp falling across her clear pallor, out of which her dark eyes shone with liquid softness, made deeper and darker by her half-sorrowful tenderness for these homeless fellows.

  An hour later, as they were standing at the door, just ready to take to their sleigh, they heard the scraping of a fiddle.

  "Oh, some one is going to play!" Mrs. Field cried, with visions of the rollicking good times she had heard so much about, and of which she had seen nothing so far. "Can't I look in?"

  Ridgeley was dubious. "I'll go and see," he said, and entered the door. "Boys, Mrs. Field wants to look in a minute. Go on with your fiddling, Sam—only I wanted to see that you weren't sitting around in dishabill."

  This seemed a good joke, and they all howled and haw-hawed gleefully.

  "So go right ahead with your evening prayers. All but—you understand!"

  "All right, captain," said Sam, the man with the fiddle.

  When Mrs. Field looked in, two men were furiously grinding axes; several were sewing on ragged garments; all were smoking; some were dressing chapped or bruised fingers. The atmosphere was horrible. The socks and shirts were steaming above the huge stove; the smoke and stench for a moment were sickening, but Ridgeley pushed them just inside the door.

  "It's better out of the draught."

  Sam jigged away on the violin. The men kept time with the cranks of the grindstone, and all faces turned with bashful smiles and bold grins at Mrs. Field. Most of them shrank a little from her look, like shy animals.

  Ridgeley threw open the window. "In the old days," he explained to Mrs. Field, "we used a fireplace, and that kept the air better."

  As her sense of smell became deadened the air seemed a little more tolerable to Mrs. Field.

  "Oh, we must change all this," she said. "It is horrible."

  "Play us a tune," said Sam, extending the violin to Field. He did not think Field could play. It was merely a shot in the dark on his part.

  Field took it and looked at it and sounded it. On every side the men turned face in eager expectancy.

  "He can play, that feller."

  "I'll bet he can. He handles her as if he knew her."

  "You bet your life. Tune up, Cap."

  Williams came from the obscurity somewhere, and looked over the shoulders of the men.

  "Down in front!" somebody called, and the men took seats on the benches, leaving Field standing with the violin in hand. He smiled around upon them in a frank, pleased way, quite ready to show his skill. He played Annie Laurie, and a storm of applause broke out.

  "Hoo-ray! Bully for you!"

  "Sam, you're out of it!"

  "Sam, your name is Mud!"

  "Give us another, Cap!"

  "It ain't the same fiddle!"

  He played again some simple tune, and he played it with the touch which showed the skilled amateur. As he played, Mrs. Field noticed a growing restlessness on Williams' part. He moved about uneasily. He gnawed at his finger-nails. His eyes glowed with a singular fire. His hands drummed and fingered. At last he approached, and said, roughly:

  "Let me take that fiddle a minute."

  "Oh, cheese it, Williams!" the men cried. "Let the other man play."

  "What do you want to do with the fiddle—think it's a music-box?" asked Sam, its owner.

  "Go to hell!" said Williams. As Field gave the violin over to him, his hands seemed to tremble with eagerness.

  He raised his bow, and struck into an imposing, brilliant strain, and the men fell back in astonishment.

  "Well, I'll be damned!" gasped the owner of the violin.

  "Keep quiet, Sam."

  Mrs. Field looked at her husband. "Why, Ed, he is playing Sarasate!"

  "That's what he is," he returned, slangily, too much astonished to do more than gaze. Williams played on.

  There was a faint defect in the high notes, as if his fingers did not touch the strings properly, but his bow action showed cultivation and breadth of feeling. As he struck into one of those difficult octave-leaping movements his face became savage. On the E string a squeal broke forth; he flung the violin into Sam's lap with a ferocious curse, and then, extending his hands, hard, crooked to fit the axe-helve, calloused and chapped, he said to Field:

  "Look at my hands! Lovely things to play with, aren't they?"

  His voice trembled with passion. He turned and went outside. As he passed Mrs. Field his head was bowed, and he was uttering a groaning cry like one suffering physical pain.

  "That's what drink does for a man," Ridgeley said, as they watched Williams disappear down the swampers' trail.

  "That man has been a violinist," said Field. "What's he doing up here?"

  "Came to get away from himself, I guess," Ridgeley r
eplied.

  "I'm afraid he's failed," said Field, as he put his arm about his wife and led her to the sleigh.

  The ride home was made mainly in silence. "Oh, the splendid stillness!" the woman kept saying in her heart. "Oh, the splendid moonlight, the marvellous radiance!" Everywhere a heavenly serenity—not a footstep, not a bell, not a cry, not a cracking tree—nothing but vivid light, white snow dappled and lined with shadows, and trees etched against a starlit sky. Unutterable splendor of light and sheen and shadow. Wide wastes of snow so white the stumps stood like columns of charcoal. A night of Nature's making, when she is tired of noise and blare of color.

  And in the midst of it stood the camp, with its reek of obscenity, foul odors, and tobacco smoke, to which a tortured soul must return.

  IV

  The following Saturday afternoon, as Ridgeley and Field entered the office, Williams rose to meet them. He looked different—finer some way, Field imagined. At any rate, he was perfectly sober. He was freshly shaven, and though his clothes were rough, he appeared the man of education he really was. His manner was cold and distant.

  "I'd like to be paid off, Mr. Ridgeley," he said. "I guess what's left of my pay will take me out of this."

  "Where do you propose to go?" Ridgeley asked, with kindly interest.

  Williams must have perceived his kindliness, for he answered: "I'm going home to my wife, to my violin. I am going to try living once more."

  After he had gone out, Field said, "I wonder if he'll do it?"

  "Oh, I shouldn't wonder. I've seen men brace up just as mysteriously as that and stay right by their resolutions. I thought he didn't look like a common lumber Jack when he came in."

  "Ed, your playing did it!" Mrs. Field cried, when she heard of Williams' resolution. "Oh, how happy his wife will be! She'll save him yet!"