FullReads

“I’ll tell you, Jimmy Bourke,” replied FitzPatrick, calmly, “th’ stick is sound and good, or was before your murderin’ crew got hold of it, but if ye’ll take a squint at the butt of it ye’ll see that your gang has sawed her on a six-inch slant. They’ve wasted a good foot of th’ log. I spoke of that afore; an’ now I give ye warnin’ that I cull every log, big or little, punk or sound, that ain’t sawed square and true across th’ butt.”

“Th’ log is sound and good, an’ ye’ll scale it, or I’ll know th’ reason why!”

“I will not,” replied FitzPatrick.

The following day he culled a log in another and distant skidway whose butt showed a slant of a good six inches. The day following he culled another of the same sort on still another skidway. He examined it closely, then sought the Rough Red.

“It is useless, Jimmy Bourke,” said he, “to be hauling of the same poor log from skidway to skidway. You can shift her to every travoy trail in th’ Crother tract, but it will do ye little good. I’ll cull it wherever I find it, and never will ye get th’ scale of that log.”

The Rough Red raised his hand, then dropped it again; whirled away with a curse; whirled back with another, and spat out:

“By God, FitzPatrick, ye go too far! Ye’ve hounded me and harried me through th’ woods all th’ year! By God, ’tis a good stick, an’ ye shall scale it!”

“Yo’ and yore Old Fellows is robbers alike!” cried one of the men.

FitzPatrick turned on his heel and resumed his work. The men ceased theirs and began to talk.

That night was Christmas Eve. After supper the Rough Red went directly from the cook-camp to the men’s camp. FitzPatrick, sitting lonely in the little office, heard the sounds of debauch rising steadily like mysterious storm winds in distant pines. He shrugged his shoulders, and tallied his day’s scaling, and turned into his bunk wearily, for of holidays there are none in the woods, save Sunday. About midnight someone came in. FitzPatrick, roused from his sleep by aimless blunderings, struck a light, and saw the cook looking uncertainly toward him through blood-clotted lashes. The man was partly drunk, partly hurt, but more frightened.

“They’s too big fer me, too big fer me!” he repeated, thickly.

FitzPatrick kicked aside the blankets and set foot on the floor.

“Le’ me stay,” pleaded the cook, “I won’t bother you; I won’t even make a noise. I’m skeered!”

“Course you can stay,” replied the scaler. “Come here.”

He washed the man’s forehead, and bound up the cut with surgeon’s plaster from the van. The man fell silent, looking at him in wonderment for such kindness.

Four hours later, dimly, through the mist of his broken sleep, FitzPatrick heard the crew depart for the woods in the early dawn. On the crest of some higher waves of consciousness were borne to him drunken shouts, maudlin blasphemies. After a time he arose and demanded breakfast.

The cook, pale and nervous, served him. The man was excited, irresolute, eager to speak. Finally he dropped down on the bench opposite FitzPatrick, and began.

“Fitz,” said he, “don’t go in th’ woods to-day. The men is fair wild wid th’ drink, and th’ Rough Red is beside hi’self. Las’ night I heerd them. They are goin’ to skid the butt log again, and they swear that if you cull it again, they will kill you. They mean it. That’s all why they wint to th’ woods this day.”

FitzPatrick swallowed his coffee in silence. In silence he arose and slipped on his mackinaw blanket coat. In silence he thrust his beechwood tablets into his pocket, and picked his pliable scaler’s rule from the corner.

“Where are ye goin’?” asked the cook, anxiously.

“I’m goin’ to do th’ work they pay me to do,” answered FitzPatrick.

He took his way down the trail, his face set straight before him, the smoke of his breath streaming behind. The first skidway he scaled with care, laying his rule flat across the face of each log, entering the figures on his many-leaved tablets of beech, marking the timbers swiftly with his blue crayon.