Woodsmen of the West Read online

  If you take a large scale map of British Columbia you will notice how the three-hundred-mile stretch of Vancouver Island, like a great breakwater, shuts off from ocean a fine strip of sea, and how that sea is all littered with islands. You will see the outline of the mainland coast, from Vancouver north, a jagged outline all dented with inlets and sounds and arms – fiords they call them elsewhere. Try to realise that the shores of these fiords are mostly mountain slopes, that slopes and narrow valleys and hilly islands – all the land everywhere – are covered with big forest to the very edge of tide-water, and you will have some idea of the scenery I looked upon that morning from the after-deck of the Cassiar.

  There was green forest – and it looked like a moss upon the higher slopes; and the bristling dead poles of burnt forest showing against the bare mottled rock: standing timber, fallen timber, floating logs and tree tops; and drift logs piled white upon the beach. There were long stretches of coast along which, every few yards, little lanes seemed to have been cut in the water-side forest. And now we were well into the northern logging country; for these little lanes marked the work of hand-loggers, and were the paths down which big logs had crashed their way into the sea.

  I let the scenery be and wandered round the ship, watching, under cover of a bored demeanour, my fellow-passengers. All of us had become quiet and respectable. The bar-room did no business. Some men slept on benches, slept solid; sleeping off the after-effects of Vancouver and “life.” Most of us mooned about the deck, in silence; or listened, in groups, to the conversation of those who spoke.

  Some of us were obviously not loggers. One man, I think, was a lawyer going up to a camp on some business. There were one or two timber buyers – one I recognised as a man who acts as agent for a Lumber Company on Broughton Island.

  Last summer the timber speculators and pulp-concession men persuaded the authorities to send a police launch cruising round the islands and inlets of the coast: the story was that the hand-loggers were getting logs from timber lands that had been staked – that is to say, that had become private property. The police on the launch collared a number of men and took them down for trial to Vancouver on the charge of stealing. Some of these men were now on board, returning north on bail. One man told us that day how he had been at work with his mate sawing a tree when the policeman came and demanded his licence; and how the policeman wouldn’t let him go to his cabin (a few miles away) to fetch it, but had dragged him off then and there. The man talked of suing for damages. There was a boss logger on board who had been obliged to stop work by the police – they said he had been taking logs from a pulp-concession. The quaint thing about this is that a pulp-concession is only granted on lands where there is no timber fit for logging purposes. Some one, one supposes, has had to swear that these lands can yield no logs – and then, a year or so after, hand-loggers are prosecuted for stealing the logs whose existence has been denied!

  I know nothing of the other side of the case; but on board that morning men talked freely of “graft” and “political pull.” It was held to be shameful that great tracts of country should be closed against the bona fide logger and lie idle for the future profit of speculators….

  Every now and again we would see the distant roof of a logging-camp shining yellow through the trees, and hear the whistle of a donkey-engine from where white puffs of steam would show against the forest green. Then the Cassiar would toot and slow down, and the camp rowboat would put out to intercept us. A whole fleet of hand-loggers’ boats would come out too, and tie up to the steamer’s side for a few hurried minutes while meat and supplies and mail were being thrown into them. We passengers would all lean over the deck-rail above and laugh at little breakages that would occur to freight, and recognise acquaintances in the boats alongside and shout the latest news from Vancouver to them….

  Down on the Cassiar’s lower deck were rows and rows of huge quarters of beef for the camps, and piles of heavy boom chains and coils of wire cable and groceries galore, in boxes and in sacks. There were new rowboats fresh from the builders in Vancouver, and old rowboats belonging to passengers who were going timber-cruising farther north. The lower deck, in fact, was just a cargo-room, with a space partitioned off to hold the liquor and the bar-tender. Aft of the cargo-room were the oily-smelling engines, and the little rooms where Chinamen and Japanese cooked and washed dishes and peeled potatoes. There too was the skookum box – that is, the strong room or lock-up. To it the first mate of the Cassiar is wont to shoot too noisy drunks, pushing them before him, at arm’s length, with that fine collar-and-trouserseat grip of his that is so much admired….

  Just beyond Church House we lay at anchor for an hour or two, waiting for slack water in the Euclataws. The northern and the southern tides meet here, and in the narrow channel whirlpools form. There’s something in the sinister, all-powerful thrust and sweep of such water that puts the fear of God into a man in a rowboat – if he is a little bit late for slack water. But of course the Cassiar doesn’t mind going through, as long as the tide hasn’t turned very long….

  The White Frenchman came out in his boat for supplies. In the last month, I notice, he has collected quite a few logs – all lonely himself in that dismal place. For his shack is on the mountain slope just below the rapids: the situation chosen for beach-combing purposes. When a tug towing a raft gets into trouble at the Euclataws and loses logs Auguste is sure to pick up some….

  Perhaps it was the monotony of the cheese and grape-nuts (eaten within smell of tempting odours from the dining-saloon) that made the day seem dull to me; perhaps it was the vague gnawing unhappiness that a nervous person always feels when facing the uncertainty of getting work; or perhaps it was the poorness of my luck in attempting acquaintance with other men on board. I cut a feeble figure in such casual talk; the men I spoke to seemed to be duller still….

  The westerner – especially the American westerner – has usually a composed and competent air. It is surprising sometimes when you have nerved yourself (after some shyness) to commence a conversation with a grim-looking stranger, to find that he is really feeling rather lonely and “out of it” in strange surroundings. There is so often a wonderful contrast between the ease of the man’s appearance and the uneasiness that shows in his talk….

  I noticed that I broke the ice with about ten men on board, but not a soul took the first step and addressed me. And yet some of the men I tackled proved to be desperately anxious to talk once they had been spoken to. One reason I imagined was that the great demand for men had brought an unusual number of strangers about. Another reason was that one’s “twang” and “broadness of speech” and queer way of expressing oneself – the result of an education in England – made one strange and difficult for them to size up.

  AT HANSON ISLAND HOTEL

  At eleven o’clock, in the pitch darkness of that Friday night, the Cassiar drew near to Hanson Island and made the hilly shores of the narrow channel re-echo with her siren. We passed a dark headland and saw the lights of the hotel.

  Several lanterns were flickering about along the beach, and we could judge that men were launching rowboats and hurrying to meet us at the raft. For at Hanson Island there is no wharf. A large raft anchored in the sea serves for the landing-stage; a shed built thereon serves as warehouse for the freight….

  The Cassiar’s searchlight glared upon the raft where men stood waiting to catch the mooring ropes. The steamer edged her way gingerly alongside and was made fast; the doors of the cargo-room were opened, freight was poured out upon the raft, hurriedly; and we passengers let ourselves down upon the boxes and bales that lay piled in rank confusion. All was black shadow, and dim forms and feeble lantern gleams.

  I was surprised, for a moment, to find that a man had seized my blanket roll and pitched it into the far darkness; but then I found a boat was waiting there. Some one flashed a lantern; I jumped into the boat. I saw a solemn, fat old Dutchman tumble in behind me; other men came pushing in. Soon in that boat w
e were a solid mass of men and bundles. Then we began to move, and I heard a weak, drunken voice appealing for more room to work his oars. Heavens! I recognised those wheedling tones at once. The oarsman was my old acquaintance Jim; Jim the “engineer;” Jim, ex-coal-trimmer from the White Star Line.

  My old acquaintance Jim was dreadful drunk, but not too drunk to know his duty. He held to a design to row the boat ashore, aiming for where the hotel lights shone bright above the beach. We moved through utter darkness, Jim’s oars waggling feebly in the water….

  Then we went bump and bump again, and reaching out our hands, we felt a floating log that barred our path. We seemed to get entangled with logs; logs everywhere. Jim, with sudden fury, tried to row over them. Then he gave up the attempt and told us to walk ashore upon the logs. But a tearful-drunk old voice wailed against the idea in foreign-sounding cockney accents, and other voices made an angry chorus, saying that their boots were not spiked and that they would walk no slippery logs in darkness, and they swore. So the engineer became absorbed again in trying to row over logs, bump, bump, bump … until he felt it futile and reached the querulous verge of tears…. I jumped, thigh-deep, into the water then and took my stuff ashore, leaving the fools in drunken argument….

  I opened the front door of the hotel and walked, half blinded by the dazzle of acetylene, into the public room. Noise was my first impression – noise of shuffling feet, stamp of dancing men, loud talk and shouted cuss-words. Then I saw that the room was crowded.

  A red-hot stove stood in one corner, and round it men sat in chairs or stood warming themselves or drying their wet clothes. A card game was going on at a small table, and men stood around, three deep, to watch the play. Large sums were in the pool. There was an incessant coming and going of men between the bar-room and the public room, and men loafed about the rooms and passages and talked, or argued, or scuffled playfully. Some danced to the tunes of a fiddle played by an old man who swayed with shut eyes, rapt in his discordant scraping.

  In fact, the hotel was doing good business that night. The whirlpool, as a temperance tract might say, was a-booming and a-boiling, sucking down men’s wages and perhaps their health; the boys were “on the tear,” and the hotel resounded with their revelry. Those who had fallen lay splayed out upon the floor in drunken sleep; those who were sick lay outside in the night. The scene reminded me a little of boating suppers and undergraduates; but the action, of course, was much more vigorous, as befitted grown-up men.

  Now I had no idea of the arrangements usual in such places, in a loggers’ hotel, and there was no one around to tell me. I quailed before the publicity of confronting the majestic bar-tender at his bar, and drawing the attention of a roomful to my ignorance.

  I felt conspicuous, for by some accident I still wore a dirty collar. Men eyed me askance … and it was some time before I took my courage in both hands and walked nervously into the kitchen. I asked timidly for a bed (a more tactful word I thought than room), and a bar-tender off duty took me up to the second storey – a great loft of a place under the sloping roof – and told me to hunt among the beds until I found what I wanted. “The beds up here are good and clean,” he said, with friendly assurance [no lice, he meant]. That was all I wanted to know. I realised the situation at once, found a fine clean space of floor beneath an open window, spread my blankets, and turned in.

  Gentlemen were breathing stertorously from adjacent beds … and the roar from beneath, and scraping of chairs and shuffling, and the busy hum from the bar, were as the noise of the sea – lulling me to sleep.

  3 A.M. – I must have been in a heavy sleep. Bump! bang! bump, bump! wallop! smack!! A hubbub of talk on the floor beneath. “Albert! Albert!” cried a woman’s voice; “come inside! come! come!” and more talk; and then a loud, angry voice – “That’ll teach you to behave more decent for the future.” Upstairs, some of us sat up in bed listening and wondering … and soon in the light that shone up the staircase we saw the fat and solemn Dutchman mount slowly up the stairs and get into his bed – with ineffable dignity. He was insufficiently clad in a very short vest, that reached just below his armpits.

  Next morning, I heard the rest of the story: which I am afraid I must leave rather vague. The Dutchman, as it were, had been vague himself about the geography of the hotel … and had walked into the proprietor’s bedroom. The proprietor got up, and it was the noise the Dutchman’s body made as it hit each stair that had awakened us. We laughed ourselves sick over it; but the Dutchman never turned a hair. What a curse self-consciousness would have been for him!

  Hunger, next morning, drove me down to pay my fifty cents for breakfast and pass the wary sentry who held the eating-room door. Hunger appeased, I went into the public room. There I found a few pale, silent men who still continued at the card game of the night before. Some had won and some had lost, but the bar, I gathered, had taken all the money. A bar-tender was tidying up the room, putting in place the upturned chairs, and sweeping the rough surface of the floor that was all torn and splintered by the spikes of loggers’ boots. Several men slept where they had fallen. The hotel was very quiet….

  Outside the morning sun shone on a pretty scene: on the little bay, the warehouse raft, the boats upon the beach, the boats at anchor; on the ruffled blue waters of Western Channel, and on the forest slopes beyond. Round the hotel were desolate black stumps of trees and great litter and disorder of splintered planks and tree limbs, empty casks and straw and tin cans. Beyond this the half-burnt logs of the hotel clearing lay thick, criss-cross, where they had been felled; and then the untouched forest began.

  I had a damaged foot, as I have said before, and there was no place where I could walk. For a man cannot get along the steep rocky shores in that country without going up, for long stretches, into the woods; and the woods, for walking in, are “something fierce,” as persons say – underbrush and fallen logs, rocks and crevices, to hinder one; and needles of the devil-clubs to fray one’s temper. There is no comfortable covering of soil to walk upon; moss and huge trees alike grow on the very rock, sustained by the heavy winter rainfall upon a scanty pretence of soil. So I did not dream of walking exercise, but sat myself down upon the hotel veranda and sat bored – my mind churning uselessly at plans of action that would not form.

  About half-way through the long morning a bald-headed elderly man came out upon the veranda and stood near me, gazing listlessly at the sea and at the sunny hills beyond. He had been fighting, I supposed, for his eye was painfully discoloured, and a blood-stained handkerchief, that had been a bandage, hung loosely round his neck. “You bin hurt?” I asked by way of making talk. “You-betcher,” he replied, “bin hit by the flying end of a broken wire rope.” He seemed, now that he came to notice it, to take a mild interest in his injury. There was a horrible deep gash. I had a small box of medicines, and I cleaned the wound with an antiseptic and put a proper bandage on. The man’s name was Al.

  Now the getting of hot water from the kitchen for the cleaning of Al’s eye made me acquainted with the hotel proprietor’s wife, and my next move was obvious. There is always work around the house that a woman wants to have done for her. So after the midday meal I laid in wait. When my chance came, “Say! Mrs. Jones,” I said, “you’ve got to find me a job. I’m just crazy-tired of setting around doing nuthin’.” I had to overcome her astonishment that I should want to work for exercise and not for pay.

  They gave me a saw and an axe, sledge-hammer and wedges, and I spent a happy afternoon upon the hillside behind the hotel, sawing up a big log for stove wood. It felt good to be at work again, using one’s muscles and sweating and feeling young. Sunday I worked also, early and late, and Monday and Tuesday morning – and I split an amazing big pile of wood. I began to get known. I was noticed at my morning swim – the first man, except the white Frenchman, ever known to enter willingly those chilly waters. Then logging gentlemen, between drinks, would wander up the hill to see the extraordinary person who liked work and who worked f
or nothing. I used to throw my coat over a saw-cut that was not straight enough for the professional eye, and possibly seat myself, blushing, over unfinished axe-work that I wished to keep private. For my vanity gets on the grill whenever I realise that I shall never become a decent axe-man. I remain, in spite of bitter effort, a mere butcher of wood.

  My patient, of the damaged eye, used to bring me up oranges and sit and watch me work. In confidence, he showed an oppressive regard for dramatic convention. “I made up that about the wire hitting me,” he said; “it don’t look decent for the folks to know how it was really done. It was a fist, or a corner of a table, or maybe some one’s boot that hit my eye, sah. To tell the truth, I am ashamed to say I don’t know which. We was all drunk, sah; and we were all ashamed of ourselves next morning.”

  I had to give him a dose or two of bromide, as he was getting shaky, from much whisky, and I feared the horrors might come. He quite agreed with me that he ought to go back to work, but … Al must have come from the South, to judge by his courtly manners. “Yes, sah,” he told me, “I’m quite the old-timer in these parts. I tend hook in these camps about here, sah…. I lived three years with Fanny Brook, sah” (he mentioned it as you would a diploma), “down at Cape Mudge…. I’m very sorry” (suddenly noticing the little nine-year-old niece of the hotel proprietor’s); “I oughtn’t to have said that…. As for whisky, I’m afraid I’m a hopeless case, sah.”

  “Why did you quit Jenkins’ camp?” I asked him.

  “Well, you see, sah, it was a professional matter. I was tending hook there. Perhaps you know something about steam? … Well, I’ll explain that for getting out logs a man must have 160 lbs. pressure. The engineer said he had, but I knew he was scared of the donkey-boiler and he only got 130 at most out of her. With that pressure I couldn’t get out the logs, sah, in a satisfactory manner…. Jenkins and I parted very friendly, sah…. Yes, I was getting six dollars a day and board…. Oh, well! what does it matter what wages a man like me gets, sah? I only drink them up.” You may sniff and cry common-sense; but it warms me to meet a man who has been capable of single-minded action for a simple sentiment. Here was Al, who had been asked to tolerate some mediocre doings – and his soul had rebelled, and he had left a comfortable job. I like this better than the trained sense for instantaneous compromise that many decent, educated men develop. I like the artist’s pride, the boyish craving for efficient performance, the feeling for sound, clean work, and the very moderate care for consequences….