第60章

Later Phil drew water for the other shanties, swept out all three, split wood and carried it in to the cook and to the living-camps, filled and trimmed the lamps, perhaps helped the cook.About half the remainder of the day he wielded an ax, saw and wedge in the hardwood, collecting painfully--for his strength was not great--material for the constant fires it was his duty to maintain.Often he would stand motionless in the vast frozen, creaking forest, listening with awe to the voices which spoke to him alone.There was something uncanny in the misshapen dwarf with the fixed marble white face and the expressive changing eyes,--something uncanny, and something indefinably beautiful.

He seemed to possess an instinct which warned him of the approach of wild animals.Long before a white man, or even an Indian, would have suspected the presence of game, little Phil would lift his head with a peculiar listening toss.Soon, stepping daintily through the snow near the swamp edge, would come a deer; or pat-apat-patting on his broad hairy paws, a lynx would steal by.

Except Injin Charley, Phil was the only man in that country who ever saw a beaver in the open daylight.

At camp sometimes when all the men were away and his own work was done, he would crouch like a raccoon in the far corner of his deep square bunk with the board ends that made of it a sort of little cabin, and play to himself softly on his violin.No one ever heard him.After supper he was docilely ready to fiddle to the men's dancing.Always then he gradually worked himself to a certain pitch of excitement.His eyes glared with the wolf-gleam, and the music was vulgarly atrocious and out of tune.

As Christmas drew near, the weather increased in severity.Blinding snow-squalls swept whirling from the northeast, accompanied by a high wind.The air was full of it,--fine, dry, powdery, like the dust of glass.The men worked covered with it as a tree is covered after a sleet.Sometimes it was impossible to work at all for hours at a time, but Thorpe did not allow a bad morning to spoil a good afternoon.The instant a lull fell on the storm, he was out with his scaling rule, and he expected the men to give him something to scale.He grappled the fierce winter by the throat, and shook from it the price of success.

Then came a succession of bright cold days and clear cold nights.

The aurora gleamed so brilliantly that the forest was as bright as by moonlight.In the strange weird shadow cast by its waverings the wolves stole silently, or broke into wild ululations as they struck the trail of game.Except for these weird invaders, the silence of death fell on the wilderness.Deer left the country.Partridges crouched trailing under the snow.All the weak and timid creatures of the woods shrank into concealment and silence before these fierce woods-marauders with the glaring famine-struck eyes.

Injin Charley found his traps robbed.In return he constructed deadfalls, and dried several scalps.When spring came, he would send them out for the bounty In the night, from time to time, the horses would awake trembling at an unknown terror.Then the long weird howl would shiver across the starlight near at hand, and the chattering man who rose hastily to quiet the horses' frantic kicking, would catch a glimpse of gaunt forms skirting the edge of the forest.

And the little beagles were disconsolate, for their quarry had fled.In place of the fan-shaped triangular trail for which they sought, they came upon dog-like prints.These they sniffed at curiously, and then departed growling, the hair on their backbones erect and stiff.

Chapter XXXII

By the end of the winter some four million feet of logs were piled in the bed or upon the banks of the stream.To understand what that means, you must imagine a pile of solid timber a mile in length.

This tremendous mass lay directly in the course of the stream.When the winter broke up, it had to be separated and floated piecemeal down the current.The process is an interesting and dangerous one, and one of great delicacy.It requires for its successful completion picked men of skill, and demands as toll its yearly quota of crippled and dead.While on the drive, men work fourteen hours a day, up to their waists in water filled with floating ice.

On the Ossawinamakee, as has been stated, three dams had been erected to simplify the process of driving.When the logs were in right distribution, the gates were raised, and the proper head of water floated them down.

Now the river being navigable, Thorpe was possessed of certain rights on it.Technically he was entitled to a normal head of water, whenever he needed it; or a special head, according to agreement with the parties owning the dam.Early in the drive, he found that Morrison & Daly intended to cause him trouble.It began in a narrows of the river between high, rocky banks.Thorpe's drive was floating through close-packed.The situation was ticklish.

Men with spiked boots ran here and there from one bobbing log to another, pushing with their peaveys, hurrying one log, retarding another, working like beavers to keep the whole mass straight.

The entire surface of the water was practically covered with the floating timbers.A moment's reflection will show the importance of preserving a full head of water.The moment the stream should drop an inch or so, its surface would contract, the logs would then be drawn close together in the narrow space; and, unless an immediate rise should lift them up and apart from each other, a jam would form, behind which the water, rapidly damming, would press to entangle it the more.

This is exactly what happened.In a moment, as though by magic, the loose wooden carpet ground together.A log in the advance up-ended;another thrust under it.The whole mass ground together, stopped, and began rapidly to pile up.The men escaped to the shore in a marvellous manner of their own.

Tim Shearer found that the gate at the dam above had been closed.