The Rules of the Game Read online

  IV

  The train stopped about noon at a small board town. Fox and Bobdescended. The latter drew his lungs full of the sparkling clear air andfelt inclined to shout. The thing that claimed his attention moststrongly was the dull green band of the forest, thick and impenetrableto the south, fringing into ragged tamaracks on the east, opening into acharming vista of a narrowing bay to the west. Northward the land randown to sandpits and beyond them tossed the vivid white and blue of theLake. Then when his interest had detached itself from the predominantnote of the imminent wilderness, predominant less from its physicalsize--for it lay in remote perspective--than from a certain indefinableand psychological right of priority, Bob's eye was at once drawn to thehuge red-painted sawmill, with its very tall smokestacks, its row ofwater barrels along the ridge, its uncouth and separate conical sawdustburner, and its long lines of elevated tramways leading out into thelumber yard where was piled the white pine held over from the seasonbefore. As Bob looked, a great, black horse appeared on one of theseaerial tramways, silhouetted against the sky. The beast movedaccurately, his head held low against his chest, his feet lifted andplanted with care. Behind him rumbled a whole train of little cars eachladen with planks. On the foremost sat a man, his shoulders bowed,driving the horse. They proceeded slowly, leisurely, without haste,against the brightness of the sky. The spider supports below them seemedstrangely inadequate to their mass, so that they appeared in an occultmanner to maintain their elevation by some buoyancy of their own, somequality that sustained them not only in their distance above the earthbut in a curious, decorative, extra-human world of their own. After amoment they disappeared behind the tall piles of lumber.

  Against the sky, now, the place of the elephantine black horse and thelittle tram cars and the man was taken by the masts of ships lyingbeyond. They rose straight and tall, their cordage like spider webs, ina succession of regular spaces until they were lost behind the mill.From the exhaust of the mill's engine a jet of white steam shot upsparkling. Close on its apparition sounded the exultant, high-keyedshriek of the saw. It ceased abruptly. Then Bob became conscious of aheavy _rud, thud_ of mill machinery.

  All this time he and Fox were walking along a narrow board walk,elevated two or three feet above the sawdust-strewn street. They passedthe mill and entered the cool shade of the big lumber piles. Along theirbase lay half-melted snow. Soggy pools soaked the ground in the exposedplaces. Bob breathed deep of the clear air, keenly conscious of thefreshness of it after the murky city. A sweet and delicate odour wasabroad, an odour elusive yet pungent, an aroma of the open. The youngman sniffed it eagerly, this essence of fresh sawdust, of new-cut pine,of sawlogs dripping from the water, of faint old reminiscence of curedlumber standing in the piles of the year before, and more fancifully ofthe balsam and spruce, the hemlock and pine of the distant forest.

  "Great!" he cried aloud, "I never knew anything like it! What a countryto train in!"

  "All this lumber here is going to be sold within the next two months,"said Fox with the first approach to enthusiasm Bob had ever observed inhim. "All of it. It's got to be carried down to the docks, and talliedthere, and loaded in those vessels. The mill isn't much--tooold-fashioned. We saw with 'circulars' instead of band-saws. Not likeour Minnesota mills. We bought the plant as it stands. Still we turnout a pretty good cut every day, and it has to be run out and piled."

  They stepped abruptly, without transition, into the town. A double rowof unpainted board shanties led straight to the water's edge. This rowwas punctuated by four buildings different from the rest--a hugerambling structure with a wide porch over which was suspended a largebell; a neatly painted smaller building labelled "Office"; a trim housesurrounded by what would later be a garden; and a square-fronted store.The street between was soft and springy with sawdust and finely brokenshingles. Various side streets started out bravely enough, but soonpetered out into stump land. Along one of them were extensive stables.

  Bob followed his conductor in silence. After an interval they mountedshort steps and entered the office.

  Here Bob found himself at once in a small entry railed off from the mainroom by a breast-high line of pickets strong enough to resist abattering-ram. A man he had seen walking across from the mill wastalking rapidly through a tiny wicket, emphasizing some point on asoiled memorandum by the indication of a stubby forefinger. He was ashort, active, blue-eyed man, very tanned. Bob looked at him withinterest, for there was something about him the young man did notrecognize, something he liked--a certain independent carriage of thehead, a certain self-reliance in the set of his shoulders, a certainpurposeful directness of his whole personality. When he caught sight ofFox he turned briskly, extending his hand.

  "How are you, Mr. Fox?" he greeted. "Just in?"

  "Hullo, Johnny," replied Fox, "how are things? I see you're busy."

  "Yes, we're busy," replied the man, "and we'll keep busy."

  "Everything going all right?"

  "Pretty good. Poor lot of men this year. A good many of the old menhaven't showed up this year--some sort of pull-out to Oregon andCalifornia. I'm having a little trouble with them off and on."

  "I'll bet on you to stay on top," replied Fox easily. "I'll be over tosee you pretty soon."

  The man nodded to the bookkeeper with whom he had been talking, andturned to go out. As he passed Bob, that young man was conscious of akeen, gimlet scrutiny from the blue eyes, a scrutiny instantaneous, butwhich seemed to penetrate his very flesh to the soul of him. Heexperienced a distinct physical shock as at the encountering of anelemental force.

  He came to himself to hear Fox saying:

  "That's Johnny Mason, our mill foreman. He has charge of all the sawing,and is a mighty good man. You'll see more of him."

  The speaker opened a gate in the picket railing and stepped inside.

  A long shelf desk, at which were high stools, backed up against thepickets; a big round stove occupied the centre; a safe crowded onecorner. Blue print maps decorated the walls. Coarse rope matting edgedwith tin strips protected the floor. A single step down through a doorled into a painted private office where could be seen a flat table desk.In the air hung a mingled odour of fresh pine, stale tobacco, and thecloseness of books.

  Fox turned at once sharply to the left and entered into earnestconversation with a pale, hatchet-faced man of thirty-five, whom headdressed as "Collins." In a moment he turned, beckoning Bob forward.

  "Here's a youngster for you, Collins," said he, evidently continuingformer remarks. "Young Mr. Orde. He's been in our home office awhile,but I brought him up to help you out. He can get busy on your tallysheets and time checks and tally boards, and sort of ease up the straina little."

  "I can use him, right now," said Collins, nervously smoothing back astrand of his pale hair. "Glad to meet you, Mr. Orde. These 'jumpers' ...and that confounded mixed stuff from _seventeen_ ..." he trailed off, hiseye glazing in the abstraction of some inner calculation, his long,nervous fingers reaching unconsciously toward the soiled memoranda leftby Mason.

  "Well, I'll set you to work," he roused himself, when he perceived thatthe two were about to leave him. And almost before they had time to turnaway he was busy at the papers, his pencil, beautifully pointed, runninglike lightning down the long columns, pausing at certain places asthough by instinct, hovering the brief instant necessary to calculation,then racing on as though in pursuit of something elusive.

  As they turned away a slow, cool voice addressed them from behind thestove.

  "Hullo, bub!" it drawled.

  Fox's face lighted and he extended both hands.

  "Well, Tally!" he cried. "You old snoozer!"

  The man was upward of sixty years of age, but straight and active. Hisfeatures were tanned a deep mahogany, and carved by the years andexposure into lines of capability and good humour. In contrast to thisbrown his sweeping white moustache and bushy eyebrows, blenched flaxenby the sun, showed strongly. His little blue eyes twinkled, and finewrinkles at their co
rners helped the twinkles. His long figure was soheavily clothed as to be concealed from any surmise, except that it wasgaunt and wiry. Hands gnarled, twisted, veined, brown, seemed less likeflesh than like some skilful Japanese carving. On his head he wore avisored cap with an extraordinary high crown; on his back a rather dingycoat cut from a Mackinaw blanket; on his legs trousers that had been"stagged" off just below the knees, heavy German socks, and shoes nailedwith sharp spikes at least three-quarters of an inch in length.

  "Thought you were up in the woods!" Fox was exclaiming. "Where'sFagan?"

  "He's walkin' white water," replied the old man.

  "Things going well?"

  "Damn poor," admitted Tally frankly. "That is to say, the Whitefishbranch is off. There's trouble with the men. They're a mixed lot. Thenthere's old Meadows. He's assertin' his heaven-born rights some more.It's all right. We're on their backs. Other branches just about down."

  There followed a rapid exchange of which Bob could make little--talk offlood water, of "plugging" and "pulling," of "winging out," of "whitewater." It made no sense, and yet somehow it thrilled him, as at timesthe mere roll of Greek names used to arouse in his breast vague emotionsof grandeur and the struggle of mighty forces.

  Still talking, the two men began slowly to move toward the inner office.Suddenly Fox seemed to remember his companion's existence.

  "By the way, Jim," he said, "I want you to know one of our new men,young Mr. Orde. You've worked for his father. This is Jim Tally, andhe's one of the best rivermen, the best woodsman, the best boss of menold Michigan ever turned out. He walked logs before I was born."

  "Glad to know you, Mr. Orde," said Tally, quite unmoved.