by Byron White
The smell of fuel and exhaust fumes curled back and eddied around in the flatbed box. Gerald wrapped his arms around himself tightly and buried his nose deeply into his chest. His head bounced to and fro, swivelling on his neck. He was not feeling well at all. In fact, he was downright wretched. He thought he would vomit but tried to will his mind to dwell on pleasant things. He pictured himself in his punt with the sail up, coming back from hauling lobster traps in Flatfish Cove, Coal All Island. But still his stomach churned. He tried again. This time he fancied himself in Loon Bay, courting the lovely Kathleen Luscombe. Oh! What a pleasant thought! For a moment, all other thoughts were banished. Sweet nothings were being whispered in his ear. But alas, it was not to be. The truck hit a particularly rough spot in the road. The men became momentarily airborne and there was no longer any doubt where Gerald’s body was. His mind would not be tricked again.
After hitting the rough section of road, the truck slowed considerably as Greg drove forward at a reduced speed. With the flow of air slowed, the fumes accumulated more quickly. The contents of Gerald’s stomach were making a determined bid to escape. He swallowed hard and crawled slowly to the back of the truck. All his dignity was gone now—he didn’t care what Cyril or Bertie or Albert or Art or anyone said. All he wanted to do was to be left alone to die.
At the back of the truck Gerald clasped the side with his left hand and sprawled half lying on the floor. He opened his eyes and looked down at the road rushing out beneath him. Instantly, he squeezed his eyes shut. Too late. The bacon and eggs he had recently eaten at Lew Hill’s in Glenwood flew through his nose and mouth onto the icy road. Again and again he retched. Water poured from his eyes. He closed his eyes and lay back, content to die. Gradually, he became aware of the cold air on his face. The fumes weren’t so strong here at the back. After a moment or two, Gerald sat up and leaned against the side of the truck.
Albert Oake’s voice came to him. “You all right, Gerald?”
Gerald wiped his mouth with the back of his coat sleeve; he nodded and gave a small smile. He kept his eyes firmly closed. The cold air eddied about his body. If he didn’t freeze to death, he began to think that he just might live.
The truck slowed and turned. They were crossing the wooden bridge over Dead Wolf Brook. They were now on the branch road leading to Camp 13. Gerald willed himself to hang on. Soon the truck was heading past the old barn and the sled repair building. Finally, it slowed and came to a stop with the cookhouse up front to the right and the bunkhouse and the forepeak to the left. Gerald roused himself and slid down from the truck. Art Brenton tossed down his gear. Soon, Gerald thought, he would be in the warm bunkhouse, in his bunk, curled up in his nice warm sleeping bag.
At the moment, this was his idea of heaven.
CHAPTER 18
BILL GINN LED MIN onto the high landing. The horse was moving very slowly with just enough effort to keep the sledload of wood going forward.
“Come on, Min,” Bill was saying. “Good girl. Keep goin’. Keep goin’.”
The old horse looked at Bill, trudged on a few feet, and came to an abrupt stop. Bill sighed, took off his cap, and wiped his brow. Min had stopped short of where Bill had intended for her to go. Still, it would do; he didn’t have the energy or the desire to coax her any farther. The wood would go over the cliff right here.
It was 2: 00 p.m. on Wednesday, February 6. Bill and Min were the last team to reach the landing. All the other teamsters had gone to lunch around noon. Bill had not yet eaten. Today, the last of the wood had been hauled off the ridge. At this moment, the last load lay on Bill’s sleds. Taking his pulp hook in his hand, Bill began unloading. The last wood to go over the big landing this winter was soon flying down into the river canyon. It had taken him three hours to get this wood out the trail!
Bill sighed again as he remembered his recent trials. He had loaded Min around 11: 00 a.m. and started on his way. Just as he came from the branch onto the main trail, Min had decided it was time to rest. Bill had coaxed and pleaded with her to move on. He had tried many a “click, click” and “get up, Min,” but nothing worked. Min was having a bad day.
Soon other teamsters were on the main road behind Min. Les Peckford and Howard Parsons were the first to arrive. Min was blocking the road and the other teamsters could not pass. They summoned Allan. He grabbed Min by the bridle and Bill slapped the reins against Min’s back. Reluctantly, the horse moved forward to a wider section of the trail. Allan stopped her there and allowed the other horses to go by. This done, Allan grabbed the bridle again and Bill slapped the reins against Min’s back. Nothing. Min simply refused to move. Allan yanked on the harness and Bill pleaded with old Min. All to no avail. Allan, like Bill, was a patient man, but now his patience wore thin. He took the reins from Bill, doubled them up, and gave the horse a good cut across the rear haunches. Min snorted, took a few steps, and stopped. For half an hour, Min just stood there in her shafts.
Eventually, word was sent out the trail to Stan. Soon he rounded the turn, a look of stern determination on his face.
“Allan, take the reins from Bill and give Min a few sweet cuts while I yank on the bridle!” Stan ordered in a no-nonsense manner. Allan swung down with the reins. Min jumped in her shafts, but the sled remained in place.
“Jingoes! Wouldn’t that get you?” Stan stated as he looked around. Seeing what he needed, he took his axe and went over and cut a long, slender birch. Min watched Stan and her nostrils flared. She had seen this movie before.
Stan raised his arm and brought the switch down. Min shook and strained forward. Soon she was moving down the ridge at a quick pace—too quickly, it turned out. Rounding a bend in the trail, the load slid sideways and the pulpwood toppled off into the deep snow. The sled and wood rack had had to be straightened up and all the pulpwood reloaded. Stan and Allan had given Bill a helping hand. Miraculously, Min moved forward this time when Bill clicked on the reins. She plodded on without any more trouble until she stopped here on the high landing. Stan arrived a little later and helped Bill push Min’s load of wood over the cliff.
“Jingoes, Bill, you’ve got a lot of patience with that horse,” Stan stated, shaking his head as he worked.
“Yeah. S’pose I do,” Bill replied. Bill was a gentle, quiet man: a man of few words. He was well-liked at Camp 13.
“Yes, Bill b’y, that horse would try anyone’s patience.”
Bill just nodded and said nothing.
“Min is either too lazy or too old. Either way she’s no good in the lumber woods,” Stan continued. “I think I’ll get rid of her before next winter comes.”
The two men worked on in silence. In a few minutes, all was unloaded. Stan paused with the final piece of pulpwood resting on his left arm. This was the last of the 5,000 cords of wood that had been cut in on the ridge this summer. This was the last stick of wood to go over the cliff here on the high landing. Stan swung his arms back and hurled the piece of wood out into the air and down into the gorge below.
Stan hesitated a moment and then turned away. It was done. For a brief moment he allowed himself to experience relief and satisfaction. Then he turned to Bill.
“Go up and get your lunch and return to camp. That’s it for you and Min today.”
“You eaten yet?” Bill asked.
“No. I’ve got a few buns in my pocket. That’ll do till supper,” Stan said.
Bill nodded and led Min off the landing and up the return trail.
Stan stood alone near the edge of the cliff. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. His shoulders rose and fell. A certain tension seemed to escape with his breath, to lift from his body and take flight. The dangers and safety concerns associated with the high landing were over for this year. No more worries or bad dreams. No more mental images of men or horses falling from the cliff.
He took another deep breath and exhaled slowly. With his eyes still closed his other senses were keener. A slight breeze moved across his face. His ears picked up the s
light movement of air passing through the trees behind him. Off to his left, upriver, he could hear the water as it cascaded over rapids before descending into the gorge beneath. Even in mid-winter this section of river did not completely freeze.
Stan opened his eyes. Below him 5,000 cords of pulpwood plugged the Southwest Gander River and reached halfway up the cliff. At first, in late December, the pulpwood had moved forward a little and stopped by the edge of the ice just downstream. As the dumping continued, the open water in the gorge became filled. The wood soon filled the giant eddy below and churned and circled day and night. The eddy then became a giant, shining, revolving ball, the constant grinding stripping the bark from the wood. Later, as more wood was brought from the ridge, the outside circumference of the round ball stopped circling and froze, sticking to the cliff. Only the central core continued to revolve. By mid-January, the central core ceased its spinning. For the past two and a half weeks, as more wood was added, nothing moved. Upriver, the water had risen a third of the height of the tangled wooden mass. There it had found an escape route and flowed through the wood and out the other side. Pulpwood now stuck up from the congealed mass like a thousand frozen fingers pleading for rescue. This giant, porous plug was now jammed solid, an immovable mass filling and blocking the river.
A measure of darkness again found a home in Stan’s mind. Seeds of doubt again began to take root and grow. Had he made a mistake in putting so much wood into one narrow, confined section of the Southwest Gander? Never before, in all of his years working in the lumber woods, had he seen so much wood piled into one small spot. Had he gone too far this time? Had he taken one chance too many and gambled and lost? Perhaps he had been blinded by the advantage of using this high landing. Here wood could be brought and unloaded in ten minutes, a fraction of the time it would take to unload anywhere else. It was simply a matter of stopping the loaded sleds parallel to the cliff edge and then pushing the wood off and down into the river far below. The positive side of using this landing was evident. The first week of February was not yet over, and he had 5,000 cords of wood in the river. This placed Camp 13 far ahead of the other operators.
Stan stood there thinking. He raised the cap off his curly hair and scratched his head. Jingoes, he hoped he hadn’t gone too far this time. He hoped the wood would move come spring. He hoped that Lester Shea had not been right! He again recalled Lester’s final words that day when Stan had shown him the landing.
“It’ll never work! First of all, it’s too dangerous, and secondly, that narrow canyon can’t hold five thousand cords of wood! If you manage to put five thousand cords of wood into that narrow gorge, the river will plug so tight that it will never come out!”
Had Lester been correct? Stan wondered. Had he been wrong in his decision to use the landing? Stan shook his head. He was by no means certain of the outcome. Time alone would tell.
It was time to leave. Stan turned and took one last look around, then started walking up the trail. He intended to go back in on the ridge and take one final look around.
As Stan trudged in the road, he attempted to put his doubts and concerns behind him. He remembered Brigadier Hickman’s comments about the Whites getting so much enjoyment out of feeling miserable. He chuckled to himself. Perhaps there was a kernel of truth in that statement. Thoughts of Brigadier Hickman led Stan back to this past weekend—stimulating discussions on religious beliefs, rousing singalongs, the delicious fresh beef dinner, and the highlight of getting mail from home. Things had gone well.
And now they had pulled the last of the wood off the ridge. Only 2,000 more cords to pull. Most of this lay in on the small brook, with an extra few hundred cords on the river outside.
In the afternoon, Stan had sent Allan and four of the teamsters in to the small brook to break trail. Tomorrow, all hands would begin moving the inside wood out onto the pond, and come spring the wood would be driven down the small brook to Dead Wolf Brook and out into the Southwest Gander. Things were going well. So far so good. If the weather held, all the wood, 7,000 cords, would be off before the end of February. Stan hoped against hope that the weather would hold.
As he walked along, his mind began to unwind. There was no further need to focus on road repairs on this ridge road, nor did he need to seek out weak places in the trail bed or check the turns for proper retaining walls. His mind was no longer wound up tight over safety on the high landing. He was able to relax.
He recalled how he and Ron Ginn had encountered a moose in the trail where he was currently walking. It was in the fall and they had been working on preparing the winter road. Ron had demonstrated to Stan how to call out a moose. He had cupped his hands and made a couple of short coughs. Stan had laughed and joked that the sound Ron made greatly resembled Uncle Ben Mills coughing up tobacco juice. The two men had worked for twenty minutes with pick, shovel, and axe, Ron’s moose call entirely forgotten, but not, apparently, by the moose. Suddenly, Stan had looked up to see, not more than a hundred feet away, a nearsighted, lonely, and formidable-looking bull. Ron had seen the beast a second later and exhaled a large lungful of air. The bull, apparently, took this sound to be an expression of love, for he now stepped forward, slowly advancing on the two men.
Ron raised the shovel he had been using and waved it back and forth in the air. Not a great weapon to fend off a large bull moose. As for its part, the bull appeared to be somewhat perplexed. The bull was upwind of the men and seemingly unsure of their odour. It stopped its advance and flattened its large ears back on its head, and then they resumed their upright position; its great nostrils opened and closed in an apparent attempt to get a good scent.
Again, it took another step forward and stopped—dangerously close now—and Stan looked around for some area of protection, but there was none. No sizable tree or boulder! The situation was becoming uncomfortable.
The men shouted and jumped around, waving their arms in the air. The moose looked confused, but this time it lowered its head and shook its antlers from side to side. Clearly, the beast was in no mood to be trifled with. He had heard a beckoning love call, had been invited to the dance, and he was intent on finding a partner.
What happened next, Stan visualized as if it were being replayed in slow motion. The moose advanced slowly with its head lowered. Stan had raised the axe he was carrying and swung it behind his shoulders. He brought it forward and hurled it at the moose. The axe hit the moose’s antlers and bounced off the side of its head. With that, Stan turned and flew out the trail with the moose snorting and breathing at his heels. Rounding a bend, he turned and dived head first into a thicket of small spruce. Another great body hurtled in and landed on top of him, knocking the air out of his lungs. As he lay there sucking for air, he slowly came to realize that Ron Ginn was stirring close by. It had been Ron, not the bull moose, that had been snorting and breathing behind him. The two men gathered up their dignity and stood up. After a lengthy wait, they cautiously walked back up the trail. Stan’s axe lay by the side of the road and the moose had gone. From that point on, Ron’s moose call was classified a dangerous weapon, to be used only if a rifle were close at hand.
Later this past fall, there had been more moose adventures. A dozen men were back at camp repairing the winter sleds, stacking up supplies, working on the dams and chutes, and stumping the winter roads. The horses had been retrieved from their summer feeding grounds out on the flatlands at the mouth of the Southwest Gander River. Everything was being readied for the coming winter and the following spring river drive.
In early November, four men from Stan’s hometown had come up Gander Lake in search of moose. These four—Martin and Edgar Head, and Lewis and Jim Eveleigh—travelled to Camp 13 and stayed the night. Next morning, they woke up early and had breakfast with the men. When some of the workers headed in over this ridge road toward the cutover section, Stan gathered the moose hunters and went with them.
It was a cold morning and the ground was covered in a blanket of snow. Conversation w
as kept to a minimum. Stan and the four moose hunters now took the lead. A short distance from the first of the cutovers, Stan raised his arm, signalling the men to stop. There were moose tracks in the snow just ahead. As the hunters crept forward, each with their guns at the ready, they could see where the road and the ground nearby had been well-trodden by a number of moose. The immediate area, in fact, greatly resembled a barnyard, such had been the moose activity in the area.
The excitement grew and the men crept forward with bated breath. Ahead there was a bend in the road. The men bent low and slowly moved forward through the snow. Every few steps they stopped to steady their breathing and listened. Then, on a signal from Stan, who was in front, they crept forward some more. Stan crouched low and headed back to the hunters. No one spoke. There were five moose on the cutover to the right. Martin Head and Lewis Eveleigh had turned their caps backwards in readiness to swing their rifles to their shoulders and focus their sights on a moose. Stan pointed to a bank where the hunters could get a good look. All four edged forward. On a low rise about 400 feet away were five fine moose: four cows and a noble bull!
The men took up their positions on the low bank at the bend in the road. Their wool mittens were off now. They each slipped a bullet up into the chamber of their rifles. Lew slowly whispered, “One, two, three.”
The morning air was shattered by the bark of four rifles. One of the cows rose straight up on her hind legs and toppled back, dead. The bull and two other cows dropped nearby. The fourth cow moose, standing to the side, sped off across the cutover and disappeared into the woods. Stan came running up just as the men were lowering their rifles. Four fine moose lay on the ground. Excited chatter filled the air as the men moved forward to dress their animals. There would be lots of bottled moose and moose soup in Comfort Cove this winter.
Suddenly, the hunters remembered that they had only three moose licenses among them! Not a problem. Heber Hurley, one of the road crew, had a license. He would take one of the moose off their hands. There was a collective sigh of relief and everyone fell to work quartering their animals. Stan called Jack Soper and sent him back to the barn to fetch a horse and sleigh to bring the meat back to camp. Later, Bill Broderick arrived at Camp 13 with the company truck. Twelve quarters of moose meat were loaded aboard and transported to the boat for the trip down Gander Lake. The four men had gone home happy. It had been a successful hunt.
