The Young Timber-cruisers; or, Fighting the Spruce Pirates Part 1

CHAPTER ONE

IN SEARCH OF WORK

The youth in the road paused and listened intently. He was tall and thin, almost emaciated in appearance, and stood with shoulders stooped as if weary. But it was not fatigue that caused him to stay his steps and cock an ear curiously. What he had heard was the whine of a cross-cut saw, eating its way through a log. But all the wood sounds were new to him and as yet he could interpret none of them. Again the saw voiced a shrill complaint tinged with a note of anger at encountering a stubborn knot, and the youth left the rough road and awkwardly made his way through the alders.

He beheld two men operating the saw, only to his unpractised eye it seemed as if the smaller of the two were trying to prevent the other from obtaining possession of the notched steel blade.

Instantly his sympathy was aroused; he resented the unequal odds.

​“Hi, you big fellow, quit that,” he called out, straightening his shoulders and briskly approaching..

“Bon jour,” cheerfully saluted the man addressed, turning to face the newcomer, but not releasing his hold on the saw.

“You needn’t ‘good morning’ me,” returned the youth. “But if the little fellow wants that saw you let him have it. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

The man grinned blankly, not understanding the command. Then he faced his companion and gave the saw a violent yank. The little man frowned and squaring his jaw pulled the handle for the return stroke. Like his companion he understood no English. Unlike his companion he was of a sullen temperament. Both knew they were there to saw the log and must waste no time on strangers. As they tugged and strained the good-natured light faded from the big man’s eyes, and with compressed lips he sought to keep up with the pace set by his mate, who despite his slender physique could tire out many a larger man.

The youth, already out of temper because of the hardships of the day, buttoned his coat to the chin, while his blue eyes kindled into little fires.

​“Will you stop it?” he growled, advancing yet nearer.

The big Frenchman turned his head, but did not desist in his endeavor to take the saw as fast as his companion forced the stroke upon him. His face, also, in reflecting the physical strain under which he was laboring, impressed the youth as being distorted with malice.

“For the last time,” cautioned the youth; “quit it.”

Believing he was being praised by the stranger, he bared his teeth and with a hissing sound increased the pace.

The youth hesitated no longer, but with an inarticulate cry sprang forward and caught the brawny shoulder and whirled the man about. The Frenchman instinctively clasped his assailant in a bear-like embrace, while the latter attempted to clutch the brown neck.

“Here! here! Hi! break away!” screamed a shrill voice, and the poorly matched combatants paused in their struggle and remained in a rigid pose as a short, stocky built youth made towards them, clearing logs and stumps and rocks with marvelous agility.

Then seizing the interlocked arms he pushed between them. He first addressed himself to the Frenchman, jabbering at him angrily. The ​Frenchman flung out his hands and with equal rapidity explained the situation insofar as he understood it. The little man, with clouded brow, remained at his end of the saw, seemingly not interested in the scene.

“Say, what do you mean by jumping Big Louey in this way?” demanded the last comer of the pugnacious stranger.

“He lays the blame on me, eh?” panted the youth. “I don’t understand his lingo.”

“’Course he blames you. It’s his place to be working here. It isn’t your place to be here at all. What do you mean by trespassing on the company’s land and picking up rows with innocent workmen?”

“I don’t care what he told you,” answered the stranger, now more composed. “I am in the habit of telling the truth. I was passing along the road and heard a noise. I came here and found this big, hulking fellow trying to take this instrument from the little fellow. I told him to quit it, and let the little man alone. He paid no attention to my orders and I pitched into him. Now, what are you going to do about it? I can’t fight two of you; I’m not a fighter, anyway. But I’ll not stand by and see a small man abused by an overgrown bully.”

​The stocky youth stared wide-eyed for nearly a minute; then with a sobbing cry of mirth he fell to the ground and rolled back and forth.

“O dear! O dear!” he cried between wild peals of laughter. “Can it be real! O you’ve killed me! Thought they was fighting over the saw! Ha! ha! ha!”

“Seems to strike you as being funny,” growled the stranger.

“Please don’t say any more just yet, or you’ll kill me, sure,” gasped the other. “I—I never expected a treat like this. I—I don’t mean to offend you, but—ha! ha! ha!”

“I hope you have your laugh out,” said the stranger. “It seems I have made some kind of a mistake and I’ll be going.”

“Wait, wait. I’m better now,” said the merry one, staggering to his feet. “What did you think these men were doing? Fighting over the saw?”

“Certainly,” stiffly replied the stranger, turning to go.

“But hold on; don’t get huffy. Let me explain to Big Louey.” And facing the now grinning giant he quickly explained to him the cause of the attack. Then he continued to the ​stranger, “These men are sawing a log. The little fellow was crowding Louey pretty hard. They are great chums. I guess you don’t know much about lumbering.”

The stranger flushed to his ears. “Tell your Louey I am sorry to have misunderstood the situation, and give him this.” The “this” was a silver dollar. “And tell him I sincerely hope I did not hurt him.”

The stocky one gave way to a new burst of merriment, unable to speak for a moment. “He—he thanks you for the doller,” he finally managed to inform; “and he says you didn’t hurt him enough to make him take his bed. You hurt French Louey, Big Louey, Fighting Louey—the best natured giant that ever licked a whole drive of loggers into shape! Why, for a doller’n a quarter he’d let you punch him for three days and he’d never raise a hand. If he’d just closed those arms of his he’d broke every rib in your body. Lucky for you he’s good-natured.”

“I thank you for your information. I’ll be going now.”

“Say, you don’t talk like me. You’re city bred, I guess.”

“I have lived much in the city, yes. Good-day.”

​“But, hold your hosses for a second. Where are you bound for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where were you going when you started to reform Louey?”

“I was looking for work and food.”

“I see,” mused the other, now grave of face. “You look as if you were about played out.”

“I am faint from walking and fasting.”

“Well, why don’t you rest and eat?”

“I have no money to buy food with.”

“Huh! well, well. Gave your last doller to Louey, eh?” admired the other. “I’ll go back and get it.”

“No you won’t,” growled the stranger, seizing his arm and pulling him into the road. “Men in my family don’t give and take back.”

“I see. What’s your name?”

“Stanley Malcolm.”

“Would you mind if I called you Splinter for short?”

“I certainly should,” cried Stanley.

“All right; I won’t, then. My name is Thomas, Bub Thomas, and the men at the mills will call you Reddy, or Rusty, as sure as you are born. Your hair is a reddish brown, you know.”

“My hair is my own and as for your men at ​the mills they’ll have no chance to make sport of me.”

“Dear! dear! how proper we be. Now, don’t git mad; it uses up your nerve force. Let’s git down to business. You want a job?”

“Certainly,” moodily replied Stanley. “But I can see there is no chance for me up here. I’ll go back to Errol and try to earn my way to Boston. I was a fool to have left the city.”

“Don’t git faint hearted. It’s because you want some grub. We’ll have that mighty soon. Thank the Lawd one can eat up here without paying, if it is simply a case of tough luck. As to work, you don’t know but what a job is waiting for you this minute.”

“I tried for work down below here at a big mill, but was not successful,” said Stanley dispiritedly.

“I see; called into the paper mill, eh? Queer you couldn’t fit in; they usually need a boy.”

“A boy! I am sixteen, if you please,” corrected Stanley.

Bub eyed him humorously. “So am I,” he informed, “but we rank as younkers up here. Say, if you git something to eat won’t it sort of soften that fiery temper of yours? Tempery, ​peppery people don’t git on very well up here: Shouldn’t think they would in the city.”

“I suppose not,” wearily conceded Stanley; “but this is all new to me and I’ve had a tough time this last week.”

“Well, well,” soothed Bub, studying his companion with new interest; “let’s cheer up. Your Uncle Thomas is going to take you in hand. But it’s mighty queer about the paper mill. Did you git huffy? Did you talk high-falutin with the boss?”

“I talked with no one,” replied Stanley coldly.

Bub’s eyes opened very wide, and he halted and faced the other in amazement. “Let’s git this straight. How did you know you couldn’t git a job if you didn’t ask for one?”

“I looked in the doors and saw that all the men were loafing. I knew there would be no work for me when the help had nothing to do. Even the big wheels in the engine room were idle.”

Bub’s facial expression first alarmed and then angered Stanley. For beginning with a strained, swollen look that puffed out the cheeks and made the dark eyes to fill with tears, it finally exploded in a shriek of laughter. “O my poor child! If you only knew how green ​you are! I shall never live to git to the mills. Men and wheels idle! Ha! ha! ha!”

“Your way lays up the road; I’ll return to Errol,” gritted Stanley, wheeling about.

“But don’t you see!” cried Bub, wiping his eyes and striving to sober his expression. “The—the men in a paper mill are always loafing when things go right. When you see ’em hustling and bustling about you can bet the company is losing money, ’cause something has gone wrong. But when they loll back and take it easy everything is going all hunkey dory. And—and you thought—ha! ha! There! I’ll laff no more. And the wheels were still! Ha! ha! ha! Don’t, please don’t leave me. I’ll quit; honest I will, but if you only knew how funny it is. Wheels stopped. Ha! ha! ha!”

“What is there funny about idle engine wheels?” demanded Stanley, now thoroughly irritated.

“They—they was using water power and saving seventy-five dollars a day,” feebly explained Bub. “If they could have water power the year ’round it would be a gold mine. Later, when the streams narrow up, they’ll have to use them wheels you saw idle and it’ll cost them seventy—five dollars for each day. Now, Stan, we’re friends again. You know I’m ​going to like you awfully; for if you’re green up here you know I’d be green in the city.”

“Yes, that’s probably so,” agreed Stanley, now mollified. “Most people are a bit green on their first trip to town. I was brought up there.”

“And what did you do?”

“Er—why, I haven’t done much of anything.” And Stanley’s voice and bearing were confused, Bub shrewdly observed.

“Hm,” muttered Bub; “never met a feller before but what could do something.”

“I’ve been to school and believe there are many things I could do if I had a chance to learn,” continued Stanley, earnestly.

“I see,” dryly commented Bub. “Well, we’ll have a talk with Mr. Hatton. That is, I’ll tell him you want a job. He’ll say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and that will end it.”

For about half a mile the two walked along in silence, Bub often stealing a compassionate glance at his foot-sore companion. The wind soughing through the pines came pleasantly to his ears, pricked through now and then with the tuneful call of a blue bird; but Stanley, with knit brows heeded nothing beyond the rough road before him.

“Here’s the mills,” finally announced Bub.

​Stanley halted and raised his eyes. Before him was a collection of long buildings and small mountains of sawdust, while the soft spring breeze brought to his nostrils the aroma of the lumber.

“Them two over there are the sawmills. Next is the pulp mill, the brick one, and across the way are the three boarding houses and the company’s store and offices,” explained Bub, a proud note in his voice as he remembered he was a part of the busy industry.

“What’s the name of the company?” idly asked Stanley.

“Great Scott! but you are a cool one,” admired Bub. “Here you’ve come way up here to git a job, have given your last doller to Frenchy, and you don’t even know the name of the Great Northern Lumber and Paper company.”

“I’ve heard the name several times,” puzzled Stanley, frowning as he attempted to recall when and where.

“You have!” jeered Bub. “That’s mighty nice of you. Why, don’t you know we are the biggest thing in the lumber and paper game and that we cut, all told, more’n four hundred million a year?”

“Of what?” innocently inquired Stanley.

​“Stan, you’re a wonder!” gasped Bub, throwing up his hands in dismay. “Millions of feet of lumber, greeny. That first mill over there eats four hundred cords of spruce a day. That’s some eating, ain’t it? And if it ain’t fed to the top-notch you’ll hear something drop. Then we own the paper mill down where you tried to git work. Ha! ha!”

“Who is ‘we’? Are you a part of the company?” sneered Stanley, resenting the other’s reference.

“Sure,” stoutly replied Bub. “The company would have to close up shop if I wasn’t here to help old Abner Whitten on his trips.”

“And I suppose that that tramp coming along the road, the one who looks more unfortunate than I, also is one of the company,” ironically remarked Stanley, pointing to the slouching figure of a man.

Bub’s eyes danced gleefully. “That is Wilson, our buyer. The company pays him ten thousand dollars a year. He knows the lumber game and the timber lands of New England and Canada as no other man knows it. Stanley, remember this; clothes don’t cut much of a figure up here. The only thing that counts is results. If you deliver the lumber you git the ​money and a dude isn’t worth forty cents a week.”

Stanley did not reply; he was humbled. For the first time he realized how utterly unlikely he was to fit in with this environment. Even French Louey was of more value than he. And as he pondered on this bitter truth his heart sank and a feeling of homesickness flooded his soul and the tears trembled in his eyes.

But Bub saw his emotion and his generous spirit urged him to find some diversion, something to distract his companion’s thoughts. Nearby, leaning against a pile of fresh spruce bolts, was a swarthy complexioned man, whose hair grew coarse, black and long. It was Big Nick, the half-breed, who had lost his license as a guide for poaching. He had been discovered trapping beaver out of season and for this summer at least he could not hire out to any party at three dollars a day. He had blamed the lumber company, believing Hatton had set the game wardens on his trail. He had come down to the settlement to interview the manager and ask him to have the license restored; for Hatton was a power in that section and the half-breed believed he had ample power to reverse the action of the officials. Hatton had ​refused to see him and he was in no frame of mind for jest.

But Bub in his desire to arouse his companion did not hesitate to make use of Nick, and in a tantalizing treble sang out,

“Beaver, beaver, taking a nap,
Big Nick caught him in a trap,
Then came—”

But before the crude taunt could be completed the half-breed was galvanized into action, and with a guttural oath leaped towards the boy, with one bronzed fist drawn back for a smashing blow.

Bub’s face blanched and he jumped aside, tripped and fell. Instantly the infuriated guide was over him, one foot raised to stamp down into the upturned, terrified face.

Then the guide shot backward, and Stanley, who had stood as if petrified, beheld Wilson, the buyer, standing over the fallen boy.

“Want any more?” he muttered.

The guide crawled to his feet, one hand stealing to his belt.

“Drop it! Touch that knife and I’ll shoot you,” warned Wilson in a low, metallic voice.

Without a word Big Nick faced about and hurried away. Then Wilson caught Bub by the collar, not only to lift him to his feet, but ​also to thoroughly shake him. “You young pup!” he upbraided. “What do you mean by trying to cut up with that Injun? Don’t you know he’s poison and would kill you as quickly as he would a mink? If you keep on with your smart Alec tricks you’ll stop growing quick some of these days.”

“I thank you very much, Mister Wilson,” humbly returned Bub.

“You’d better, but that doesn’t fill the bill. That Injun is now doubly sore on the company. If ever he gits you in the woods he’ll even up what he believes he owes you. But that ain’t the worst.” And the buyer dropped his chin and ruminated gloomily.

“Why, what worse can he do?” whispered Bub, his voice trembling as he fancied a meeting with Big Nick in the woods, where each man was a law unto himself.

“He’ll make a campaign against the company. He’ll start fires,” growled Wilson. “You young pup, it would almost be better if I’d let him smashed you. Now, get back where you belong.”

As Bub led the way to the small office he was much crestfallen. His step lagged and the light faded from his gaze.

“I’m sticking by you, Bub. Where you go ​I’ll go, and perhaps the two of us will be enough for the Indian,” murmured Stanley.

“You’re a good sort and we’re going to hitch up fine,” ruefully replied Bub. “And let this be a lesson to you, young man; it’s possible for a feller to be green even after he thinks he knows the ways of the woods and mills. What a greeny I was!”

 CHAPTER TWO

STANLEY’S FIRST JOB

Bub’s remarks as they drew near the office were half inaudible because of the increased clamor pouring out of the mill. A hasty glance sufficed for Bub to know the manager was in one of the mills, or at the sorting gaps.

“We’ll try in here,” he shouted in Stanley’s ear. “Sawing pine into lumber. I tell you, my son, we are the only people and you must git in with us.”

Stanley smiled gloomily; at another time he knew Bub would be a continuous source of delight to him, but now the future was veiled in doubts and misgivings. It was too late to retreat, however, for with his last optimistic observation Bub had led the way into the place of noise. The songs of the saws were keyed from droning monotones to the shrill screech that seemed to split the ear. Added to this vibrating babel was the clang and roar of pulleys and belts and the racket of the boards sliding from the tables. For the fraction of a moment Stanley forgot their errand and with ​mouth agape and eardrums singing, stared at the sawdust—covered men bending over and clustered around the discs of flashing steel. The Western sun in burnishing a huge circular saw into silver and gold was unable to reveal its motion. For all the world it was stationary and smooth of rim. And yet, when the huge log was urged upon the table and fed against its edge it divided like a cheese under the knife and only the intense scream of the long, hooked teeth evidenced that it was alive.

When Stanley turned to look for his new found friend he beheld Bub nearby, talking to a square built man, whose eyes were as cold and hard as the monster now severing the log. Although they were within a few feet of him Stanley could hear no word spoken. He saw the motion of Bub’s lips and then knew the manager had uttered some monosyllable. Bub turned and gaining his side said something.

“Can’t hear you,” bellowed Stanley; nor could he hear his own words. Bub smiled and let him outdoors, but it was some seconds before the ringing left his ears and Bub’s voice was very hollow and sounded far off as he informed:

“Good luck. You are to work in the kitchen helping the cook. You’ll have to git to work ​at four o’clock in the morning and you’ll get three dollers a week and your board. Not bad, eh?”

“Is that all?” asked Stanley, now thoroughly discouraged.

Bub misunderstood him and laughed merrily. “I don’t wonder you think it is a cinch. I started in there at only two dollers a week, but I didn’t have anyone to speak for me. I pulled your oar in great shape, my son. Besides helping the cook you’ll have to carry water to the men, build the fires and so on. If you have any spare time you’ll be sent to help with the bosses, of course.”

“I didn’t know anyone ever worked for three dollars,” sighed Stanley.

“You didn’t expect Wilson’s place right off the reel, did you?” drawled Bub.

“No; but this kitchen work—what do I have to do?”

“Come up to my room, or rather our room, for you’ll bunk with me, and I’ll tell you,” said Bub, leading the way.

Bub’s room was in the middle boarding house and was not a large one. Still the owner seemed proud of it and pointing at the one chair and a small pine table, the latter covered With writing material and some old magazines, ​exulted, “There’s style for you, my son. You’re lucky in meeting up with me.”

Stanley turned aside to conceal his dismay and in a choked voice asked, “And now as to my duties?”

“Build fires, put on the coppers, clean the kettles, pots and pans, peel potatoes—”

“Hold hard! Peeling potatoes is girl’s work. I’ll have none of it.”

Bub sank on the bed, head in his hands, and moodily remarked, “I don’t know as I can do anything for you after all. You’re too finicky. What had you in mind, Mister Malcolm?”

“I certainly expected to get some clerical work, something more fitting,” irritably returned Stanley.

“Very well, Mister Malcolm,” politely observed Bub. “Please draw the chair up to the table and write as I talk. No, I mean it. We must find out where you are heavily wooded and blaze a trail to that place.”

Stanley grimly seated himself and dipped the pen. “‘Mister Bub Thomas, Esquire,’” began Bub, gravely.

“What nonsense is this?” cried Stanley, throwing down the pen.

“See here, Mister Malcolm, pick up that pen,” growled Bub. “Think I’m spending my ​time up here for fun? ‘Mister Malcolm, Esquire. My dear sir; although I ain’t no particular ability and never worked I would like a nice job at a fat salary—’”

“I’ll write no more,” cried Stanley.

Bub reached over and picked up the paper and studied it thoughtfully; then he said, “I don’t blame you. They wouldn’t let you sharpen pencils in the office, and if you don’t cut more of a figure peeling potatoes than you do slinging ink you’ll say good-bye to the kitchen mighty quick. I can’t git into the office, but I’m more shakes then you on writing. See here,” and seizing the pen he rapidly copied Stanley’s scrawling effort and presented for inspection a fair, clean bit of copy.

“Why, you write better than I do,” sorrowfully admitted Stanley.

Blandly ignoring the compliment Bub assumed a paternal air and inquired, “What about arithmetic? Can you scale lumber, can you reckon stumpage? Or can you find a discount, the number of acres in a piece of land shaped like a lobster. I, myself, have gone only through plane geometry and the high school algebra. Of course Mister Malcolm is much farther advanced."

“No; I’m not,” soberly corrected Stanley, ​eying Bub with chagrin and respect. “I give in; you’re ahead of me.”

“Now we are improving and peeling potatoes don’t look so black, eh?” cried Bub, kindly and encouraging again.

“You’ll admit there isn’t much of a future in that kind of work,” said Stanley, smiling sadly.

“But when a man is down and out and has no money, nor grub, there’s a supper and other suppers in it,” reminded Bub. “Now, if you’re keen to git ahead and are really ambitious, think I can fix it so you can git some washings to do outside of hours. The men pay twenty-five cents per wash. Ten of ’em a week would nearly double your income.”

“Income!” sneered Stanley; then repentant, “Bub, you’re a good fellow. I’ll tackle the potatoes, but we’ll leave the washings for the time being.”

At this juncture a bell rang down below and Bub made a leap for the door. “Supper!” he cried, gaining the stairs in another bound.

“Won’t there be enough?” asked Stanley, keeping up with him only by something of an exertion.

Bub’s boyish laughter rang out clear and full, even rising above the warning of the bell ​and he slackened his steps. “Enough? Of course we have enough. Eat all you can hold, but we fellers git so all fired hungry we usually sprint for the dining room. Hear ’em outside! You’d think there was only a slice of bread and we’d got to fight for it. Follow me.”

For the first time in his life Stanley beheld more than a hundred men eating in their shirt-sleeves, and eating as if life depended upon their finishing quickly. Only they didn’t finish but helped themselves again and again. Mountains of baked beans, hills of doughnuts, seas of strong coffee, plateaus of gingerbread, foothills of fried potato vanished and were replaced, only to vanish again. And no one spoke, except to grunt a request for some particular dish. The rattle of the knives and forks, the clatter of the dishes, was a reprodution in miniature of the confusion in the mill.

“Pitch in,” encouraged Bub, manfully wresting the doughnuts from the expectant hand of a Prince Edwards Islander.

“I’m through,” whispered Stanley, suddenly finding his appetite had fled.

“Jumping cats!” exclaimed Bub, pausing in amazement. “Off your feed as bad as that? I thought you was hungry.”

“I was, but the noise, the sight of so much ​food,” mumbled Stanley. “Why don’t they bring in what you order instead of putting everything on the table at once?”

“O my son, my son!” choked Bub, holding his sides. Then in a mincing voice, “Waiter, I will have a bit of a bean and a sprig of spruce—”

“Shut up!” snarled Stanley.

“Say, Red-head, shoot over them biscuit. Be ye deef?” called out a black whiskered man across the table. Stanley’s face reddened and he opened his mouth to resent the tone and language, but mastered himself and silently obeyed the rough request.

Bub nudged him and whispered, “That’s better. I have some hopes for you. Remember, you are only a kitchen boy for the present. If you ain’t got nerve enough to be that and be it right you’ll never amount to shucks at anything else up here.”

“Let’s get out of here,” was Stanley’s answer.

Bub looked ruefully at his plate, recently refilled, but stifling a sigh rose and ushered his new friend, not to the outer air, but to the kitchen.

“You must meet the cook. He’s your boss. Try and be pleasant. You won’t disturb him ​any if you’re not, but he’ll have a new kitchen boy.”

Stanley heard this final bit of advice with a grimace, and Bub approaching a perspiring man stirring something in a kettle said, “This is your new boy, Cook.”

“Git out of my way, or I’ll scald ye,” cried the cook, not raising his eyes from the kettle.

“He goes on tomorrow morning. I’ll tell him what to do,” continued Bub, in no way abashed.

“Out of this kitchen or I’ll be the death of ye,” bawled the cook.

“There! we’ve fixed that all right,” enthusiastically cried Bub as they gained the open air. “You’d had a disagreeable time if I hadn’t gone in to break the ice. When I began in there I didn’t have a soul to speak a good word for me.”

“And you call that a cordial welcome?” asked Stanley, his voice trembling.

Bub’s eyes widened in surprise. “Did you expect him to throw his arms around you and kiss you?” he at last inquired.

Stanley was too depressed to resent the scorn in Bub’s tone and he could only say, “Threatened to scald me!”

“But he didn’t hurt you, did he? Words ​don’t break no bones or float logs. Why, my son, when you git use to it you’ll go ’round feeling real lonely, when the cook stops jawing you.” Then sagely, “You see, Stan, there never was a cook but what gits filled up with hot air from the cooking, and if he don’t let off steam he’ll bust, and then the whole settlement goes hungry. If you was over to Number One or Two you’d find either cook a heap worse’n this one.”

“Are there more boarding houses?” faltered Stanley.

“Three of ’em., This is the best, though. The saw gangs live here and the teamsters. Over to One and Two you git the loggers and the foreigners. The loggers are all right, but they’ve blown their winter wages and their drive wages and they feel out of sorts. One of ’em threw a cup at me once and cut my head open.”

“I’m tired. May I go to bed?” humbly asked Stanley.

“Sure. Of course you’re tired; I ought to have remembered. Go ahead up and take either the front or back side of the bed. Most of the men have bunks, but we officers have to throw on style. I’ll bring the alarm clock so you can git up in time.”

​“I don’t know why you should bother, Bub,” said Stanley, clasping the other’s hand impulsively. “You know more’n I do.”

“No, I don’t,” sorrowfully replied Bub. “I can’t talk the lingo you can.” Then with a blaze of optimism, “But, my son, if you’re not fired I’ll learn the trick from you. I talk rough, but watch my smoke. I’ll pick it up. So long.”

Stanley found the room as one in a dream. Not only was he worn out by physical hardships, but by gloomy thoughts. It all seemed so hopeless. A dozen Frenchmen now could have been abused in his sight and he would not offer to interfere. It was all so rough and hard. There was no single redeeming feature. Hold on—there was Bub. Bub was a true friend. He owed his supper and bed to Bub. Then with a flush of shame he remembered that this same uncouth Bub, with no advantages, was ahead of him in book knowledge. Accompanied by these disagreeable thoughts he fell asleep.

In a vague way Stanley knew four o’clock in the morning, was, at some seasons of the year, in the neighborhood of sunrise. He always had believed it to be an early hour, judging entirely from hearsay; but he never had appreciated just how early it was until Bub ​shook him violently and commanded, “Git up! Turn out!”

“You just come to bed?” sleepin asked Stanley, preparing for another nap.

“Just come to bed! It’s morning and time you was hoofing it downstairs. Want the cook to come up and git you? Better not have him, my son.”

“But it’s dark,” remonstrated Stanley, his heart sinking at the loneliness of the hour.

“It’ll be mighty hot if you ain’t downstairs in two jumps,” warned Bub. The note of earnestness in his voice had its effect on Stanley.

With a shiver the youth crawled from the warm blankets and fumbled for his clothes. He had never known that nights and mornings in late May could be so desolate and cold. The rawness of the early morning air bit to the bone. And to heighten his sense of isolation Bub snored softly as he cuddled luxuriously. And with his heart in his boots Stanley stole awkwardly down the stairs and out into the kitchen.

Here he found the cook’s assistant, an Irishman named Gilvey. He was some four years older than Stanley, but ages ahead of him in importance.

​“Think this is a lawn party?” greeted Gilvey, icily. “Ye be late again, me lad, and ye’ll answer to me.”

“I thought the cook was my boss,” defended Stanley.

“The cook is my boss, ye red-head,” snarled Gilvey. “Think he has time to bother with bossing tramps? It’s bad enough for me to have to be saddled with the dirty work. Now hump yerself. Start them fires.”

With many blunders and under a liberal cursing Stanley worked through the early morning tasks. When breakfast was ready he found he could not sit down with Bub, but must work the harder in the kitchen. After the men had trooped away he was allowed to eat his meal in the corner. While he drank his coffee and tried to believe he had not been working for days Gilvey kept up a fire of coarse remarks. Lost in his somber meditations Stanley did not heed these at first. Then as he caught the insults and heard the cook chuckle an encouragement his blood boiled and he was about to rise from the table, when Gilvey’s malice was given a new turn by the breezy entrance of Bub.

“Hi, my son. How goes the battle?” he greeted, running up and slapping Stanley on the shoulder.

​“It’s horrible,” groaned Stanley, shaking his head. “Everyone is so cruel. The assistant has been abusing me fearfully. I won’t stand it.”

“Nonsense, man,” brusquely returned Bub in a low voice. “He wants to bedevil you till he can git you mad. Keep smiling if you want to git even with him. As for me I ain’t under his command and I’ll touch him up a bit.”

Saying this he walked down by Gilvey, who watched him suspiciously. As he reached the door he turned and cried out, “Say, Paddy, how much did you pay for stealing that last pig?"

With a terrible oath Gilvey seized a butcher knife and hurled it at the grinning face. The door slammed to and the knife sank deep into the plank, quivering back and forth. But if Bub intended to lighten his friend’s spirits by this method he succeeded only in part. For once Gilvey had completed his arraignment of Bub he redoubled his persecutions of Stanley. He offered the youth no violence, but he sought in every way to provoke him into making an assault. When the water was brought in he declared it to be filled with dirt and with an oath told the weary lad to bring fresh. By this and other means he completely exhausted ​Stanley by the time the supper dishes and kettles were washed and set away.

That night, aching in every bone and thoroughly heart-sick, Stanley threw himself on the bed and for an hour or two would not be comforted. Finally he said, “It’s no use, Bub. I can’t stand it. I’d rather die of starvation than endure Gilvey’s insults and abuse longer.”

“And that would tickle Gilvey to death,” cried Bub. “Can’t you see he is trying to make you so mad you’ll forgit and go at him. Then he’ll have an excuse for polishing you off. He did that to the last feller.”

“He is horrible. Sometimes to-day I felt like killing him.”

“None of that,” sharply warned Bub. “I ain’t sharing my room with assassins. Gilvey is ignorant and a brute. If you say so I’ll join you and we’ll lick him. We could do it easy, only it wouldn’t help you much. For the men would say I had to help you hoe your row.”

“It’s not to be thought of,” quickly replied Stanley, reddening. “I’ll fight my own battles in the kitchen. I’ll keep on my guard and if he keeps his hands off me I’ll let him be and let him talk.”

“He won’t touch you,” assured Bub.

​On the next morning Stanley progressed more rapidly with his work, but there was no surcease in Gilvey’s abuse. It seemed to anger him that the youth made no mistakes this morning.

“Why haven’t ye peeled that other kettle full of pertaties?” he finally demanded, a note of triumph in his voice. “Didn’t ye hear me tell ye a dozen times?”

“Yes, I heard you,” quietly responded Stanley, his form trembling.

“Why didn’t ye do it then?” roared Gilvey, approaching, his eyes flashing.

“Because the cook told me you had made a mistake, and that I wasn’t to peel them,” politely replied Stanley, a cold little smile playing around his mouth as he faced Gilvey.

Infuriated at the smile Gilvey screamed an oath and flung himself upon the youth. The cook paused in amazement to see the two struggling. Before he could interfere the combatants whirled clear of the tables and fell with a heavy thud. When Stanley rose panting to his feet Gilvey remained motionless. From a cut in his head, received from the edge of a kettle, a thin stream of blood trickled across the floor Stanley had just washed.

​“You git out of here!” cried the cook, advancing threateningly.

“I’ll wait and see how badly he is hurt,” stoutly replied Stanley, now surprised to find himself no longer afraid. “Bring some water.”

The cook mechanically dipped into a pail and between them Gilvey soon regained his senses. Then with a new burst of rage the cook repeated, “You’re fired. Git! I’ll have no trouble-makers here.”

“I may be fired, as you say, but I am no trouble-maker. That man has abused me from the start. You have laughed at him and encouraged him. If either of us had been killed today the blood would have been on your head,” indignantly accused Stanley.

The cook lowered his tone, but lost none of his insistence, as he said, “You’re through. Git your time. Gilvey may have nagged you a bit too hard. I may have done wrong to laff, but the woods are full of chore boys, while a good second-man is hard to find, and harder to hold. So, git!”

“What’s the matter? Had a raise in pay?” cried Bub as Stanley found him cleaning three rifles back of the office. The query was occasioned by Stanley’s new bearing. He walked ​more erect and his eye was clearer. The lines about his mouth had disappeared and there was almost the shadow of a smile on his face. “What’s up? Money from home?” anxiously persisted Bub.

“No, I’m discharged,” informed Stanley, dropping beside the rifles.

“Fired!” gasped Bub in dismay, rubbing his nose with an oily rag. “And I’d planned on we two having such good times. Fired! And to think you feel good over it.” His voice was now one of reproach.

“I’m sorry I’m discharged,” said Stanley, “but Gilvey will never abuse me again.” And he hastened to relate his experience.

Bub’s eyes blazed with joy as he listened and he threw his hands wildly about as Stanley reached the climax. “Hooray!” he softly bleated. “I love you for it. I’ll git you a job on the loading gang. It’ll break your back for a few days, but it’s the only place you can work in after being fired. You see, McPherson hates Gilvey. Mac is the boss of the loaders. If I can hustle you down there before Hatton learns of the fracas you’ll be let alone once Mac has hired you. Come, my warrior boy, let’s hurry.”

CHAPTER THREE

STANLEY WANTS A CHANGE

“Now, Sonny, you keep shut,” admonished McPherson as Bub began a voluble eulogy on his friend. “I guess this young man is big enough to do his own talking.” Then to Stanley, “What can you do?”

“I can work hard and do my best,” eagerly replied Stanley.

“That is a great deal, but not quite enough up here,” slowly informed McPherson, carefully whittling a chip of pine into a cube. “What you call working hard might strike us as being a pretty thin effort. Your hands don’t look as if they’d been used much.”

“But he just—” began Bub, excitedly, as he caught a glimpse of the stern faced Hatton approaching.

“Keep shut,” broke in McPherson, not unkindly. “Never see such a younker to talk. You ought to be a auctioneer. Now, young man,” this to Stanley, “I guess there’s nothing doing for you. What I need is men that can pile, load and unload lumber, toss pulp squares ​about and keep at it between meals to the last second.”

“If I can’t do a man’s work you can pay me a boy’s pay,” entreated Stanley. “Surely, my labor would be worth something.”

“That’s the boy of it; you don’t examine into things. Only so many men can work around a lumber pile, or pass pulp squares into a car. You’d take up as much room as an able-bodied man without doing the man’s work. It ain’t what we call economy. If you had a boss that could only pull a colt’s load you’d not waste time by hitching him up with a real worker, eh? Of course not. Where’ve you been working?”

“In the kitchen,” bitterly replied Stanley, his hopes now down to zero.

“Then I’d advise you to dig back to the kitchen,” curtly said McPherson.

“But, Mister McPherson, he’s had a row with Gilvey and has got the best of him and he can’t go back there,” exploded Bub, now in a frenzy to clinch the situation before Hatton could arrive.

“What! licked Gilvey,” exclaimed McPherson, his eyes lighting.

“He assaulted me and I only defended myself and in the tussle he fell underneath and cut his head open,” apologized Stanley.

​“Licked Gilvey, eh?” murmured McPherson, his rugged features relaxing. “That feller makes poor coffee a purpose, just because he knows I’d rather have a good cup of coffee than the best meal ever cooked.” Then almost fiercely, “So that’s the way you start in to git a job, eh? You come in here and go a bullying and rowdying ’round and expect hard working bosses to find you work when your evil ways has kicked you out of a job. I’m ashamed to hear you confess it.” And McPherson frowned heavily on the disconsolate youth.

“I’m sorry to have troubled you. I had hoped to get a chance to earn my living,” said Stanley, hanging his head as he turned to walk away.

“What’s the matter with you?” sharply demanded McPherson. “Think I’m going to lug you around in my arms and hand your work to you? Why don’t you git busy?”

“You mean?” cried Stanley, his face illumined.

“I mean I’ll fire you if you don’t hustle down to that car and tell the feller with the whiskers you’re to help juggle pulp. Come, git a moving.” As the two delighted youths raced for the car McPherson softly repeated, “Licked Gilvey, eh? Well, well, who’d a ​thought it. There must be something in the younker even if his hands is soft.”

His soliloquy was interrupted by Hatton’s harsh voice asking, “Who are those boys you were talking with?”

“Only Bub and a new feller I’ve hired for gang four,” carelessly replied McPherson, yet eying the manager narrowly from the corner of his eye.

“You mean the chap the men call Red?” said Hatton, looking after the youths.

“I guess that’s among his nicknames,” easily returned McPherson.

“Take him off. Tell him to get his time. He half killed Gilvey. He can’t work here.”

McPherson’s jaw squared and he closed his knife with a click. “Say, Mr. Hatton, who’s the most importance ’round here? The cook’s helper, or me?”

“Why, Mac, you’re worth a million helpers,” Hatton hastened to assure, detecting the danger signal in the Scotchman’s grey eyes.

“All right; I want that younker in my gang. Of course you don’t mind?”

Hatton smiled grimly at the politeness in McPherson’s low voice. He knew his man to be one of the best bosses in the district and one who could be very stubborn in small things. ​“Of course not, Mac,” he returned. “He’s your man now and you’re responsible for him.”

“I’m starting him at six dollars a week,” said McPherson.

“Very well; tell the time-keeper. Now give me the figures on last week’s shipments of pulp. They’re kicking hard down there and we must get more stuff through.”

Stanley found his new job more to his taste although the first half-hour found him aching in every bone. There was no abuse, but the machine-like rapidity with which the men passed the large squares of wet pulp into the car, called for every ounce of muscle in his body. At the end of the first hour he believed he must stop and rest, or drop in his tracks; but the men showed no inclination to pause. Then he seemed to get his second wind. He ached in every joint and cord, but by clinching his teeth he discovered he could keep moving.

At last the man with the whiskers, who had immediate charge of the loading, turned to him and humorously remarked, “You like this light work, eh?”

“It’s pretty tough, but it’s good to have a try at a man’s work,” panted Stanley.

“Wal, you make a pretty good try. Now git up in the car and take your time seeing the ​stuff is piled squarely,” kindly directed the man.

In a few moments Stanley jumped down from the door and announced, “No use of me in there. Everything is squared up beautifully.”

“Then git over on that pile of boards and keep tally till I call you,” snapped the man.

Then Stanley appreciated that he had found a new friend, who was trying to find a way to allow him a breathing spell. His heart swelled with gratitude and for thirty minutes he enjoyed the luxury of complete relaxation.

“Hi! going to loaf all day?” bawled the man at last.

Stanley leaped to his feet, his eyes blazing his thanks, and with renewed zeal assailed the ever arriving squares of pulp.

That night he slept the sleep of the exhausted and did not have to go to work until seven o’clock in the morning. The next few days were a repetition of the first, only now his muscles began to harden and respond more quickly and less painfully to the call made upon them. Then he was shifted to the lumber gang and underwent new torture.

The boards were long and heavy and his hands filled with splinters until the boss ​accosted him brusquely one day and concluded by giving him a pair of old gloves. He now found himself doing a man’s work, indeed. And the man at the other end of the board never waited for him to get a grip on the lumber, but with head bowed threw his end onto the flat car. This often resulted in a benumbing jar to Stanley’s whole frame as one end of the heavy timber fell on the car while the other end was in his hands. But he asked no quarter and pluckily stuck to his task.

Bub had been away from the settlement for several days and it was with genuine pleasure that Stanley limped to his room one night and found the good-natured youth sitting on the bed.

“Well, my son; how goes things?” cried out Bub, jumping to his feet and warmly clasping the other’s hand. “Licked any more people?”

“Bub, I never knew I could be so glad to see anyone as I am to see you,” earnestly replied Stanley.

Bub’s face burned red with pleasure, although he said, “O stop your kidding. Anyone abusing you? If Whiskers bears down on you just let me know and I’ll have a talk with him.”

For the first time since his arrival at the ​mills Stanley laughed aloud. “You’re the queerest chap I ever met, Bub,” he said. “No, Mr. White—please don’t call him Whiskers—has treated me mighty well. He’s rough as a bear, but he’s good to me. Where’ve you been?”

“O trotting ’round with Abner Whitten, our best timber cruiser. He’s a sort of cousin to my father and I work with him. In winter time he’s the walking boss and goes all up through the region north of the Rangeleys, visiting camp after camp, crosses over to the Kennebec Valley and on up to the West Branch of the Penobscot. I tell you that man knows his business.”

Stanley’s eyes glistened. “I wish he’d let me go with you. That’s the kind of life I’d like; free and easy and out in the open.”

Bub smothered a smile and assured, “My son, if you are looking for a snap don’t take to cruising. It may read pretty in books, but did you ever carry seventy-five pounds of grub and equipment through an overgrown tote road? It’s no picnic.”

“I can do it,” promptly declared Stanley. “Mr. White says I can do almost as well as a man on the loading gang.”

​“Then why don’t you want to stick to it?” asked Bub, a bit suspicious.

Stanley threw out his hands passionately as he explained, “I’m not over-conceited, Bub, but that loading job is tiresome. It isn’t the hard work, but I owe it to my intelligence to get something better. We are nothing but cogs in a machine, lumber and pulp, pulp and lumber, day in and day out. I could do it just as well, perhaps better, if I didn’t know how to read or write. Why, they train elephants in India to pile lumber. Now I want a chance where I can think a bit.”

“Why don’t you think while loading? Did you ever stop to think how the boards you pile were cut way up north; how they were sent down the river, towed across lakes, sluiced from one lake to another, hauled against the current between lakes by endless chains, and at last how the cedar is cut into shingles, pine into lumber and clapboards, how fir, spruce and poplar goes into pulp, only we don’t handle much of the last, if any. Did you ever stop to think of the money spent and the lives lost before you can get a job tossing lumber?”

“No; I never thought of it before because I am green,” soberly replied Stanley. “But now you’ve set me thinking I am all the more ​anxious to go with you and see the work at the beginning. Wouldn’t you like to have me along, Bub?”

The note of entreaty affected Bub keenly and he cried, “I’d be awfully pleased if you was one of us. But, honest, Stanley, Ab Whitten is a most peculiar man and he’d never consent, or I would have asked him before this.”

Stanley’s face became downcast. “When do you start?” he asked.

Bub dropped his eyes and tried to speak indifferently as he replied, “To-morrow.”

“So soon,” sighed Stanley. “Where are you bound for?”

Bub’s eyes brightened as he replied, “I don’t know, but it’s something big. We’re taking three rifles and flatten wants to see Abner to-night for a last talk. I suspect that Jim Nace and his gang has been up to something pretty stiff.”

“Who’s Nace?” inquired Stanley, now deeply interested at the hint of a hazardous undertaking.

“He’s the worst timber pirate in the State. He’s not satisfied with letting out jobs to small operators and then beating ’em out of their money, but it’s believed he’s stolen millions of spruce and pine during the last thirty ​years. Of course we wouldn’t mix up with him if he hadn’t robbed the company in some way. I tell you, Stan, it’s going to be exciting before we return. We’re to push right through to Kennebago river and outfit there. The company has wangans all up through, even beyond Parmachena lake and east along the Dead river.”

“The company has what there?” asked Stanley, looking much puzzled.

“Wangans, Mister Malcolm. A Wangan is a store-house, where they keep the equipment. You can git blankets, blue and red shirts, trousers, heavy woolen cloth coats called Mackinaws—they look like a hoss~blanket and have a belt, made in colors that are very giddy—and then there are pontiacs, or single breasted woolen coats. Then there is tobacco and liniment. You never see so much tobacco and liniment as is used in the woods. The loggers are strong on both. Then there are mittens, leggings; in short, everything a man would need in the woods.”

“That’s where I want to go,” repeated Stanley, his very eyes wistful. “I can’t learn anything piling lumber.”

“No?” sweetly said Bub. “Let’s see; you’ve been handling spruce. Do you know how many ​spruce logs was necessary to scale a thousand feet?”

Stanley shook his head and looked blank.

“It wouldn’t have hurt you to have asked,” suggested Bub, his eyes twinkling.

“Well, I ask now,” humbly said Stanley.

Bub threw out his chest importantly and carelessly explained, “From ten to a dozen. In the old days it wouldn’t take more’n half of that number. Did you know a fir looks like a spruce, only has a smoother bark and when growing shows a little lighter shade of green? I thought so. Did you know a pine’ll stand more heat than any other tree up here and will live when other trees are killed by fire? Dear! dear! Did you know a spruce takes about seventy-five years to get a six-inch diameter at breast height? And that if not cut down will live two or three hundred years?”

“I know none of these things,” sadly replied Stanley.

“I’ll give you an easy one,” kindly encouraged Bub. “We had a boom break on the lake yesterday. Now which would you prefer, to have a boom of logs break on a calm day or a windy day?”

“On a calm day,” promptly answered Stanley, recovering some of his composure.

​Bub grinned. “Wrong again. On a calm day they scatter in all directions and if the lake is a big one it ain’t hardly worth while to pick ’em up. On a windy day they drive ashore in a bunch and are sure to fetch up somewhere. On a calm day there seems to be an undertow, and it’s amazing how quickly they’ll scatter in all directions.”

“I admit I’m ignorant,” said Stanley; “but that’s all the more reason why I should go with you and have you tell me things. I can’t keep asking the men here as the most of them will only swear at me.”

Bub pursed up his lips thoughtfully. “It would be lots of fun to have you along and I’m willing to ask Abner. We’ll find him now; only, don’t git your hopes up. You stand about as much chance as you would to git Hatton’s job. We’ve got to travel fast, cruise several cants along Mt. Jim, besides obeying important orders which I ain’t found out about as yet.”

Stanley moved to the door. “Let’s waste no time in finding him. I’ll work for my board.”

“If you offer to do that he wouldn’t take you,” smiled Bub. “And again, we must wait till he’s had his supper. He’d refuse anything before he’s had his meal. Abner is the greatest man for thinking about his food that you ​ever saw. Wait a minute, so’s we’ll be sure he’s finished.”

Abner Whitten was a most eccentric man. He lived in two hobbies: loyalty to his employers and worry about food supplies. Yet he was not what the men called a “heavy feeder.” A stranger to hear him talk would believe he was a glutton or was perpetually being starved to death, while in truth he ate but little. The greater part of his life had been spent in the woods and Bub had not exaggerated his value as a timber cruiser and “walking-boss.” When new lands were to be opened up it was Abner who was sent to spy out the situation. In the operating season, or during the winter months, he passed on snowshoes and on tote teams from camp to camp, keeping a general supervision over a thousand and one details pertaining to the various crews.

While the youths were waiting for him to eat his fill he had finished his evening meal and proceeded to the office, where Hatton awaited him.

“You start to-morrow?” greeted Hatton, speaking nervously.

Abner nodded and seated himself on the edge of a table, swinging one leg as he waited for his superior to continue.

​“Who do you take?”

“Noisy Charlie and the boy, Bub,” replied Abner.

“Very well; here is the copy of the old and new lines. Unless we can prove our boundary, as we know it was run out in 1800, the Nace outfit will skin us to the tune of more than one hundred thousand dollars.” And Hatton handed over a paper which revealed the following:

“Of course they’ve done everything to conceal the old monuments,” muttered Abner, intently studying the triangle which the company was in danger of losing.

“Yes; our surveyors were unable to find anything to warrant our contention. On the other hand they say the markings on the beech, ​along the line claimed by Nace, has every appearance of being genuine. The surveyor’s private mark, two circles linked and crossed by an arrow, is there, as well as the initials of the original owners.”

“They’ve got us unless the unexpected turns up,” said Abner, simply, turning the paper over and over in his hands. “Nace is too good a politician to buck up against us in the courts unless he’s sure his line will stand law.”

“He may have us, but he is a scoundrel and anything he’s in is usually rotten at the core. Now I am positive that he is swindling us out of eighty acres of the best spruce timber in the State and I’m sending you up there to prove that fact.” And Hatton’s iron jaws clicked loudly.

“I’ll do everything I can,” simply replied Abner, rising to go. “I suppose I’d better cruise Mt. Jim on the way up so’s not to excite any suspicion.”

“Sure; and don’t let even the guide know your destination till you’re most there,” added Hatton.

“I understand; I’m not much of a talker,” reminded Abner, walking to the door.

He was still deep in thought when Stanley ​and Bub accosted him. At first he did not sense their presence and when they repeated their salutation he waved them aside impatiently and with bowed head walked slowly towards the edge of the settlement. He knew he was approaching a crisis in his affairs. He had been on many ventures for the company, had made many cruises, had managed many camps, and never yet had failed to show the expected results. But now there seemed small chance for success. He knew that Nace must be extremely confident to invite a litigation from so powerful a rival. If the line had been changed it must have been changed fully a score of years before, or when Nace was beginning his career as an operator. Abner could not but help admiring the forethought that prompted the swindle.

“To think of his shifting that line and then waiting twenty years before trying to turn the trick,” he muttered, half aloud.

“Could we speak to you, Mister Whitten?” politely repeated Bub for the fifth time.

“What do ye want?” suspiciously asked Abner. “When ye come snooping ’round and a mistering me I know something is up. Have ye seen to the food for to-morrer?”

“Yes, sir; I’ve put in three tins of that ​sliced ham you like so well,” eagerly assured Bub.

“Three tins, eh?” pondered Abner. Then quickly, “Make it six; we might git stalled somewhere for a day or so. If we make the Kennebago day after to-morrer it won’t have done any harm to have the extry tins along. Kind of look over Charlie’s packs and see if he’s got enough of everything. Then—but who have we here?” And he glanced keenly at Stanley.

“He’s a friend of mine,” informed Bub, trying to speak in an unconcerned voice.

“Uh! Didn’t know ye had any friends. Prob’ly as wurthless as ye be,” grunted Abner.

“Abner, you are the only best friend I have,” smiled Bub. “You know it and it’s no use playing the bear with me.”

“Well, well; what do ye want?” snapped Abner, but not displeased with Bub.

“I want you to take Stanley along with us. He’s a good worker and will help us more’n he’ll hinder us and——”

“Stop it!” roared Abner, waving his hands. “What do ye mean by trying to force help onto me? Of course he can’t go. He’d eat more’n a dozen men, to begin with. Didn’t ​I see him feeding the first night he was here?”

“At that time he was half starved; he doesn’t eat much now,” defended Bub.

“It’s no use; quit talking,” grumbled Abner. “I’ve seen too many of them thin, scrawny fellers not to know a big feeder when I see one. It ain’t no place to be took starving up in the woods. Besides, I don’t need anyone else.”

“Bub told me he knew you wouldn’t take me,” spoke up Stanley, “but I urged him to ask you, as I awfully wanted to make the trip.”

“Do ye know the woods?” asked Abner, veiling a sarcastic gleam in his shrewd eyes.

“I’ve camped out quite a few times,” eagerly replied Stanley.

“I see,” sniffed Abner. “Drank spring water out of fancy drinking cups and thought ye was roughin’ it, eh? If ye was dying of thirst in the woods and see a loon flying above ye and had a gun, what would ye do?”

“I’d shoot the loon,” promptly replied Stanley, bracing back his shoulders as he became more confident.

Bub’s groan told him, however, that he had erred, even before Abner exploded, “Ye would, would ye? Wal, I thought so. Ye’d make a ​woodsman in about seventeen million years. What’d ye shoot the loon for? Did he ever do ye any harm?”

“I thought one could drink his blood,” ventured Stanley, trying to get his cue from Bub’s worried face.

“Ye two just scat! Clear out! I want to think,” commanded Abner, giving them his back.

“For mercy’s sake, Stan, what made you say anything so idiotic as that,” complained Bub, as they walked back to the boarding house.

“What should I have said?” cried Stanley, now thoroughly exasperated. “Try to tame the loon, tie a message to his leg? Why did he bring in the gun if he didn’t mean for me to shoot?”

“He was just trying you,” sadly explained Bub. “Of course, if you knew the A B C about the woods you’d know the loon was pointing for water. That’s what you should have said. And you should have added that while following that course you’d keep your eye peeled for the Indian cucumber plant, so’s to dig up one and stop your thirst. It’s no use for me to try to describe it to you—”

“Not a bit,” interrupted Stanley. “It’ll be much better to wait and show me one.”

​“You’d have to go into the woods for me to do that,” said Bub. “I shan’t have time till after this trip.”

“Oh, yes, you will; you’ll show me lots of them during the trip. I’m going with you, you know,” smiled Stanley.

“How?” gasped Bub.

“I don’t know, unless I walk. But I’m going,” cried Stanley. “I’ve been bossed about and swore at and now I’m going to see the woods. And Mr. Whitten must include me in his party. I don’t know just how it is to be worked, Bub, but it’s going to be worked just the same. What time do you start to-morrow?”

“A little after the noon hour. The gas boat takes us across Umbagog lake to Rapid river. We shall push right through to the north of Kennebago lake,” explained Bub.

“All right. I shall be with you,” promised Stanley.

“I snum! but that feller’s got nerve,” admired Bub, as Stanley swung away. “He almost makes me believe he can do it. He’s a good feller and I must try to learn to talk as he does.”

CHAPTER FOUR

OFF FOR THE WOODS

Despite his promise to Bub, Stanley had but a hazy idea how he was to overcome Abner’s opposition and participate in the trip north. When he went to sleep he had only planned to steal away and follow the party till they got far on their way and then boldly join them. When he awoke in the morning he remembered that much of the trip would be made by water and he realized there would be hardly a possibility of his crossing Umbagog lake, following Rapid river, conquering the long stretches of Molechunkamunk and Mooselucmaguntic lakes in the Rangeley chain and arriving at the mouth of the Kennebago river in time to keep abreast of the cruisers. Too proud to confess defeat to the still sleeping Bub, he quietly rose and stole down stairs.

He had begun with the loading gang with much elation; now he loathed it all. But how to win Abner’s consent? Long and hard he weighed this problem, his gaze vacantly fixed on the North. The woods and waters up there ​seemed to call him in every murmur of the scattered pines near the edge of the settlement. He had yet to learn that these solitary monarchs were left undisturbed because they were already doomed by “red rot,” or cancer, and were unfit for lumber. He only knew the gentle song sung by their boughs was pleading with him to penetrate the fastness of the big woods and seldom-visited streams and lakes.

“If I only knew a little of what Bub knows,” he regretted. This in itself was a goodly sign, for by temperament Stanley was inclined to be overbearing.

Then the bell summoned him to breakfast. He ate scarcely anything, but did not know that Abner had observed his lack of appetite and had applauded it. Nor did he attempt to engage the cruiser in conversation, being now convinced that all entreaty would be useless. As a result he entered upon his dreary task sore at heart and oblivious of all about him.

“Say, Rusty,” broke in White, the boss, “could you find it convenient to wake up and do as told?”

“I beg pardon, Mr. White, I fear my poor wits were wool-gathering,” confessed Stanley.

“All right; you’re honest, anyway,” chuckled White. “Run down to the mill and ask ​McPherson if I’m to keep on with the lumber. And, say, don’t run, walk. Take your time.” The last was occasioned by the tired look about the youth’s eyes. The boss interpreted his haggard expression as being the result of physical exhaustion.

Stanley bowed and hastened to the mill. As he entered he was sorry to see Abner and Bub talking with Hatton. The sight of his room-mate recalled to his mind what he must miss, and for the moment he was selfish enough to envy the happy faced fellow. Then, ashamed of this selfish emotion, he turned to leave and, was only restrained by a glimpse of McPherson coming towards him, walking through a storm of sawdust.

As he waited, his eyes always returning to the bowed form of Abner, the latter backed away from Hatton, and catching his heel on the end of a board started to fall backward. Before he realized his own action, Stanley had leaped forward and had hurled the cruiser violently forward, causing him to bump into Hatton.

“What in sin—” Abner began to protest, when he stopped, his wrinkled face turning white.

He pointed a trembling hand at a small saw, ​revolving silently, and Hatton nodded his head to show that he understood. If it had not been for Stanley he would have fallen upon this and death must have been the result. Bub, quick of eye, pointed to Stanley’s sleeve, where the sharp teeth had slit the cloth like a razor. Actuated by one impulse the group moved for the door, where Stanley delivered his message to McPherson.

As he was about to return to his work Abner stayed his steps, saying, “Why ain’t ye gittin’ ready to start with us? We won’t wait a second for ye; not by a long chalk.”

“Do you mean I can go?” asked Stanley, hardly believing his senses.

“No, he does not,” quickly broke in Hatton. “He feels obliged to you for pushing him off the saw. That’s natural. But anyone would have done the same. Hardly a day goes by but what some man lends a hand to prevent injury to another. That’s all in a day’s work. But you can’t make the wood trip. Go back to your work.”

“If ye could only see it plain to let him come,” pleaded Abner.

“No, sirreel There’s too much at stake to risk a misfire just to please a homeless boy. He obtained work in the kitchen and got into a ​fight. McPherson interceded and I allowed him to stay. Now he wants to jump that job, it seems. By the time you struck Kennebago stream he would be wanting to return.”

“I’d never want to turn back,” cried Stanley. “I’d die first.”

“Which would inconvenience Whitten. Return to the gang, or get your time,” coldly directed Hatton.

Stanley’s eyes filled and his heart seemed as if it would burst. Then he wheeled and walked back to the manager, his face strained and his eyes feverish. “If I can give you one practical idea which you will adopt, will you let me make the cruise?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

Hatton’s first impulse was to repulse him harshly; but he changed his mind and in a sneering tone replied, “If you can give any idea that I will adopt you may make the trip. If you don’t give me such an idea you take your time and hunt a new job. I can’t afford to have young men around of your importance. You must make good your bluff, or clear out. What is this wonderful idea of yours?”

“Ever since Bub pitched into me last night for not using my eyes and brains, even in loading pulp and lumber, I’ve been thinking and ​thinking; so if the idea is any good a part of the credit is due to him—”

“Leave out all this explanation. What is the idea?” barked Hatton.

“It’s this,” desperately replied Stanley; “pipe the pulp to the paper mill instead of pressing it out in squares and sending it by cars.”

Hatton stood rigid, his eyes blazing and boring into Stanley’s flushed face.

“It struck me as practical,” cried Stanley, believing his last chance to be gone, including an opportunity of earning a bed and board. “They sluice logs from Peppercorn to Richardson lake. Even a six feet drop, the men tell me, is sufficient in a mile sluiceway. It’s a sharp grade to the paper mills below. You’d only have to be careful that there were no pockets for the pulp to settle in and harden. It seemed to me that it would be considerably cheaper than hiring men to press and load and transport and unload the pulp.”

“When did you think of that scheme?” asked Hatton in a low voice, never removing his searching gaze.

“This morning, while waiting for the seven o’clock whistle. I was hating the work, to be honest, and wondering how it could be done ​away with,” mumbled Stanley, shifting uneasily from foot to foot.

“And that is your idea?” continued Hatton in the same voice.

“Yes; I know it isn’t much. It seemed a good one when I first thought of it,” surrendered Stanley. “But I can see now that if it were any good a man of your experience would have thought of it. So, I’ll get my time and quit. Good-by, Bub.” And he turned aside as he extended his hand; for he had grown to love Bub without knowing it, and he feared that tears would fill his eyes and cause him to appear unmanly.

“McPherson,” called Hatton loudly. “Put another man on the loading gang in place of Reddy. He’s going north on the cruise. And, McPherson, send the surveyor up to the office and get me figures on a couple of miles of sewer pipe. Hope you have a good trip, Whitten. Don’t come back unless you win out.”

Neither of the astounded trio could believe his ears. Hatton had nearly gained his office before a word was said, and then Abner yelled, “Wal, I vum!”

“Why, Stan, it means you’re going!” fairly screamed Bub, as the true situation finally filtered through his head.

​“Are you sure?” gasped Stanley.

“Of course he’s sure, ye young inventor,” heartily assured Abner. “Pipe line for pulp. Pulp pipe line. Who’d a thought it? And all out of his own head! And the boss never thought of it. Bet he gits a letter of thanks and a raise in pay for his ‘idea.’ Wal, wal, wal.”

“Stanley, I take it all back,” said Bub in an awed voice. “To think of your going to work and thinking that out all alone. What I told you someone had told me, but you make an entirely new thought.”

“I never would have thought of it if you hadn’t dinged into me so and if Abner hadn’t refused to take me along,” reminded the happy youth.

“Stop talking and git ready. The gas boat is waiting at the landing,” commanded Abner, once again assuming the role of timber cruiser.

The delighted youths sprinted to the boarding house where Bub’s slender outfit was ready to be strapped on his back.

“I’ve got some extra blankets,” bubbled Bub. “That’s all you need till we strike the Kennebago wangan. There you’ll be outfitted like the rest of us. This is going to be a very lively trip, my son.”

​“It can’t be too lively for me,” joyously proclaimed Stanley.

“It can for me,” soberly declared Bub. “I’ve been in the woods lots of times, and when you git way in things seem different. I shouldn’t be surprised if you had some of the starch taken out of your courage before you see the mills again.”

“Pooh, pooh,” belittled Stanley. “We’re four and need not be afraid of anything. I say, Abner, why do we carry so many rifles? I thought game was protected at this time of year.”

“Some critters are never protected by game laws,” grimly replied Abner.

“Bears and panthers?” hazarded Stanley.

“The bears won’t hurt us, I guess. And what ye call panther is at the worst the Canadian lynx, that only fights men when cornered. But there is other critters I won’t mention and hope we won’t meet. Here comes Noisy Charlie, on time to a second as usual.”

This was the guide, an Indian. He had been nicknamed “Noisy” because it was seldom one heard him speak. The lumber men thought it a good jest to represent him to strangers as being loquacious.

“This young man goes with us, Charlie,” ​informed Abner as the Indian took the lead, walking with long strides.

A guttural sound was the only acknowledgment Charlie made. The others seemed infected by his silence and hardly a word was spoken till the wharf was reached. Then Abner gave sharp commands and the motor boat was headed for Rapid river.

But youth will have its way and before the little craft had chugged a mile on its course Stanley and Bub were evidencing their high spirits by a rapid fire of questions and jokes. Even Abner melted a bit beneath their sallies, while Charlie expanded his nostrils and stared dreamily at the hill covered shores.

“Why do you start so early on a cruise?” asked Stanley, now hungry for information.

“Leaves ain’t out and we can see better,” mumbled Abner.

“I’ve been out on the crust. That’s lots of fun,” cried Bub.

“Crust no good,” muttered Charlie. “Deer hear; no shoot.”

“Eating’s more necessary than good walking,” agreed Abner, smacking his thin lips at the mention of venison.

In a short time Rapid river was reached. Here the boat was abandoned. A three mile ​tramp brought the party to a second motor boat belonging to the company. This boat made the entire trip through the great lakes to the mouth of the Kennebago, where the four landed and struck into a tote road.

“I thought we were to make the trip by canoe,” remarked Stanley, beginning to feel a bit disappointed.

“Think canoes grow on bushes?” quietly asked Abner. “Ain’t gitting sick of the job so quick, be ye?”

“O no, indeed,” hastily replied Stanley.

“We’ll walk about a mile and then we’ll strike the wangan and our eighteen foot canoe,” whispered Bub. “Want to go on ahead? I’ll show you a good trick. Can I show Stanley my crow trick?” The last to Abner.

“Wal, I don’t know as we’ll have time,” Abner was beginning to refuse when Charlie grunted, “Good trick. Make fool of crow.”

“Go ahead, but don’t git lost,” warned Abner.

Bub sprang ahead, closely followed by Stanley. Making a sharp detour to the left he forced his way some distance through the rank growth till he came to the edge of a bog, or swamp. Here he stationed Stanley in some bushes, and warning him to keep perfectly ​quiet, took up a position at the foot of a scraggly pine. First he drew his coat collar up over his head and thrust his hands into his pockets. Then he began making a choking sound, a most alarming noise to Stanley. Almost as soon as Bub began his vocal efforts a crow cawed excitedly from the other side of the swamp. The cry was taken up and repeated from all points of the compass, and to Stanley’s great amazement a score of black winged investigators swept into the small clearing. Stanley rubbed his eyes in wonderment to see the crows circle about the bowed figure and then fiercely assail it. More came, and more, until the air was black with them. Stanley estimated that fully two hundred were buffeting and pecking at Bub’s silent form. And the choking sound continued. The crows now seemed like demons, red of eye and bristling of feather. Their harsh, discordant voices seemed fairly to scream as they renewed their attacks.

Then Stanley received his second surprise. Bub beat a hand against his leg and hooted like an owl. Instantly every crow turned in flight and faded from view like so many black shadows.

“But what does it all mean?” begged ​Stanley, as Bub proudly arranged his collar and left the tree.

“The choking sound was a young crow being choked to death,” he explained. “The minute a crow heard it he gave the signal and the warning was cawed from crow to crow. ‘Come-and-bring-help,’ was what the first feller said. The next came on the jump, sending back word over his shoulder. If I’d kept on I’d had every crow in the plantation here.”

“But why did they leave?” puzzled Stanley.

“Why, when I slapped my leg they thought it was the flap of a wing. Then I hooted like an owl and they felt sure Mister Owl was in their midst. Funny thing, a crow is mighty curious and smart, but they are easily fooled. They know when a man has a gun and all that. But they ain’t learned that owls hunt at night. Queer, eh?”

“What’s that?” whispered Stanley, nervously clutching his companion’s arm and pointing into the underbrush. “I saw something move.”

For an answer Bub picked up a stick and threw it into the thicket. Then he dashed forward, only to soon return carrying in his arms a stupid looking fowl, dark of body and barred with darker colors.

​“It’s a booby,” he explained, holding the bird out at arm’s length and surveying it critically. “It’s a wonder he ever grows up. He won’t run when you throw things at him. He’s simply stupid. That’s why they call him booby. He’s really a Canadian grouse. Up here they’re called spruce partridge. They’re good to eat, but taste a little strong. Go it!” And he tossed the bird from him. With a low squawk it ambled leisurely into the bushes.

“This life is great,” cried Stanley, enthusiastically, throwing back his shoulders and breathing deep and long.

“We haven’t started yet,” smiled Bub. “It’s been easy going so far; but wait. My, but it’s getting late. We must hurry.”

“There is nothing to hurt us, is there?” asked Stanley, quickening his pace.

“N-o,” replied Bub, “but there are easier things than tote roads to follow, once the sun gits down. And when it’s dark up here, it’s real dark; none of your village darkness, but so black you can’t cut it with a knife.”

“Here’s the road,” cried Stanley, his voice much relieved.

“But not our road,” corrected Bub. “That was made last year. It leads in where we came from. This is ours dead ahead. See how it’s ​filling up with alders and willers and shad-bushes.”

“You’ve been over it before,” observed Stanley.

“No,” said Bub, “My first trip.”

“How do you know it then?”

“I know we should go north and that this is the old tote road. One on the other side just like it. Leads up to the lake. The bushes don’t fool me ’cause I can see the old timbers left from the first swamping. Now we come to a bit of corduroy road—or poles laid across.”

“Kind of tough walking,” muttered Stanley, as a limb sprang back and left a livid welt across his forehead.

“O this ain’t bad,” encouraged Bub. “See, here’s where Abner and Charlie went through and Abner got into the muck. See, here’s where he slipped off the ends of the poles. Some bad places in here, too. A little later we might find some snakes.”

“Don’t regret their absence on my account,” shuddered Stanley. “It’s getting cold.”

“The nights are pretty cold up here way into June or July,” comforted Bub. “Push on faster. When the sun goes behind that mountain it’s going to be some dark in this neighborhood.”

​Even as he spoke the shadows began to filter through the swamp and in what seemed to Stanley to be an exceedingly short space of time Bub ahead was but a blur.

“Don’t hustle so,” cried Stanley. “I’m not used to this work. Guess I’ve lost both of my eyes.”

“Hold your head down,” warned Bub, pausing.

“What if we get lost?” asked Stanley in a hushed voice.

“Camp and build two fires near together. Two smokes means ‘lost’ to Abner and me. I’m glad you spoke of it,” said Bub.

The next few rods were covered in silence, and as the two came to a rest Stanley leaped frantically into the air, crying out in inarticulate horror, as a loud “Wish-h-h” hissed at his heels.

“What—what was it?” he half sobbed, crowding close to Bub.

That young gentleman laughed until too weak to laugh longer. Then he pounded Stanley on the back until the latter threatened to get angry.

“O Stanley, Stanley! You’ll finish me yet. I never knew you were a record breaker on jumping. What did you think that was?”

​“It sounded like a cat spitting, only more dangerous,” sullenly replied Stanley.

“It was a little brown thrasher. She use to scare me before I knew. Really, old feller, if you could have seen—Ha! ha!”

“Quit it! Let’s be moving,” grumbled Stanley.

This admonition was timely, as the shadows now were very thick and the crude traces of the tote road were rapidly being blotted from the view of even the keen-eyed Bub.

“I think we are about there,” Bub was saying, when right beside them the night was made hideous with notes of wrath. The uproar consisted of snarling and growling, ranging from a bass to a shrill key, and each note a menace.

Even Bub lost his composure and with a frightened ejaculation jumped ahead. Stanley kept at his heels, his heart beating wildly.

“Sprint!” hoarsely directed Bub, as they reached a clear space and beheld the light of the wangan twinkling ahead.

“What was it?” cried Stanley, his breath coming in great lumps.

“Slow down; here’s the men,” panted Bub.

“What you two running for?” demanded Abner as he came up to the exhausted youths.

​“Only a little race,” replied Bub, speaking with difficulty.

“White face,” said Noisy Charlie as they entered into the rays of the kerosene lamp.

“I vum! but ye look as if ye’d seen a ghost. What was it?” asked Abner.

“O nothing,” mumbled Stanley.

“Be ye goin’ to speak out, or not?” bellowed Abner, striding toward them.

“It was a couple of lucerfees,” confessed Bub.

“And they were right at our heels,” added Stanley.

Abner reached for his rifle, but Noisy Charlie stayed him by asking, “Make sound like this?” And the youths jumped convulsively from the open doorway and wheeled about with their eyes filled with horror. But Charlie was the author of the alarm.

“It was just like that,” said Bub.

“Two foxes fighting,” said Charlie, his lips twitching for a second. “Face red now.” Stanley and Bub retired to the shadows.

CHAPTER FIVE

AN UNWELCOME VISITOR

In the morning the boys had an opportunity to examine the wangan. It was an old story to Bub, yet he took a delight in pointing out things to Stanley.

“The stock is low now ’cause it’s coming on summer. Next fall all these shelves will be filled. For the next month a few crews will cut and peel poplar. Has to be cut and peeled in June, you know; but we don’t go in very strong for it,” explained Bub.

The outfit consisted of an eighteen foot canoe, weighing about seventy-five pounds and four big calf-skin knapsacks. The latter were capable of holding some three bushels, but Abner divided up the supplies so that he and Charlie carried seventy-five pounds each while Stanley and Bub were required to carry about fifty each. As the canoe was to be used whenever possible and as the frequency of the streams, ponds and lakes permitted of navigation for a large part of the way the packs were only carried when falls and other obstructions ​necessitated leaving the water, or when trips inland were made.

The supplies, Stanley noticed, were limited to salt pork, potatoes, bacon and flour, salt and coffee and a generous supply of tobacco.

“Our bill of fare will get a bit monotonous,” whispered Stanley as he took his place in the middle of the canoe.

“You’ll find it tastes mighty good, and when we add a trout or a partridge you’ll say it’s the best you ever ate,” declared Bub. “Trust Abner to keep in supplies.”

“Where will We camp?” inquired Stanley, hungry for information and beginning to feel that he was a veteran woodsman.

“Where’d ye advise?” drawled Abner, who overheard the query.

Not to be caught Stanley took his time in surveying the rugged landscape. The black growth, or cedar and tamarack in the lowlands extending up to the spruce and fir, was interspersed at intervals by hardwood ridges. Near the banks of the stream patches of ghostly birch grew tall and slim.

“Well,” he finally decided, “I’d go up between those two hills and camp on some high, dry spot.”

​Charlie made a sound in his throat and dug viciously with his paddle, while Abner in a voice trembling with impatience, asked “Why?”

“For two things,” replied Stanley, now confident he was answering correctly. “I’d camp where I could get a fine view of the mountains to the west and northwest and where I wouldn’t get cold from sleeping near the water.”

“By jing! if we was nearer the mills I’d go back and jump on that there saw and tell ’em to keep ye chained,” exploded Abner.

“Good!” endorsed Charlie.

“Why! what have I said now?” cried Stanley.

“What are we out here for?” rebuked Abner, resting his paddle. “Are we here for views, or timber? Why do we foller the streams? It’s because the timber has got to come down the streams. I’m surprised at ye. It don’t seem as if ye’d live long enough to yard so much ignorance.”

“Good talk,” muttered Charlie.

“We camp on streams ’cause the timber must come to the streams,” added Abner. “Try and remember that. It ain’t no good to find spruce if ye can’t git it out.”

“Then I’d camp under those birches on the ​bank and have them cut and shipped down to the lake the first thing,” Stanley sought to mollify.

Charlie’s moosehide moccasin beat an angry tattoo.

“Keep it up and you’ll go overboard,” groaned Bub, under his breath.

“Is it possible!” murmured Abner, appealing to the back of Charlie’s head. “To think of Abner Whitten taking a younker out in the woods who don’t even know that birch can’t be floated down stream. Why in sin do ye s’pose them birch has been left?” he continued, now raising his voice. Then before Stanley could attempt to reply he ran on, “It’s because they ain’t near a railroad and because they can’t go in the drive. Ye can tow ’em across a lake, but ye can’t drive ’em. They’re too heavy.”

“I see,” mumbled Stanley, hanging his head.

“Don’t see,” corrected Charlie, shaking his head sorrowfully.

“Ye right, Charlie; he don’t see nothing,” cried Abner, to whom the youth’s lack of knowledge seemed incredible.

“He saw a saw,” meekly reminded Bub.

Abner half opened his month, then swallowed convulsively. “I beg yer pardon, young man. ​There’s a first time to everything. Mebbe ye’ll larn a few things after a while.”

“Why don’t you tell him that maple and beech won’t go in a drive any more’n birch will?” indignantly demanded Bub. “You’re the worst man to pick on a feller that I ever see.”

“I’ll tan your jacket some day,” mildly promised Abner, lighting his pipe. Then kindly, “What Bub says is correct, of course; only I s’posed everyone knew it. Very little maple and beech are cut up here and it’s only a doller’n half stumpage.”

“I don’t know what that means,” desperately confessed Stanley.

“It means ye can go in and out all you want and pay only a doller'n half a cord. Stumpage means the value of the timber as it grows,” patiently explained Abner.

“Boy learn when old man,” grunted Charlie. “Carry ’round falls.”

Thus far the four had been paddling through dead water, but now the guide’s keen ears caught the sound of falling water, although it was some time before the voyagers came to the obstruction. It was Stanley’s first experience in making a “carry” and he dimly realized that life in the woods might under ​certain conditions have its physical drawbacks. Not only the packs and rifles had to be toted for a considerable distance, but the canoe also, of course. Above the falls Abner and Charlie put aside the paddle and poled up the swift water.

Then came more “carries,” around rapids, called “rips” by Bub, around big trees that had fallen out into the stream.

It was when about to enter Kennebago lake that Stanley received a second lesson in wood life. The canoe was floating idly near a broad expanse of bog when there sounded a cry that was suggestive of the cackling of a hen. In the domestic environment of the farmyard Stanley would have paid no heed, but out here, with no signs of human habitations to break the monotony of woods and water, the noise caused him to start nervously.

The others in the canoe lifted their heads quickly on having heard it, Bub being unusually grave of face. Stanley, with Abner’s sarcasm fresh in mind, did not venture to seek information. He thought Charlie quickened his stroke and from this decided there must be a danger signal in the harsh note. From the tail of his eye he observed that Abner was gazing apprehensively towards the bog, and he wished that he might be given a paddle and be allowed to ​aid in some degree in making from the shore. He also wished that Charlie would turn out into the open lake and not hold a parallel course. But he said nothing. If danger confronted them he would prove he could meet it in a manly fashion.

Then the paddles were held motionless and the two men and Bub seemed to be listening intently. The strain was beginning to tell on Stanley when the cackle exploded right at his side, and with a half smothered cry he started to his feet.

“Sit down! Squat!” thundered Abner, as the canoe tipped to a dangerous angle.

“What—what was it?” whispered Stanley, staring at the water and discovering nothing.

“Mebbe bear,” said Charlie.

“Keep still,” commanded Abner, as the sound again rose from the side of the canoe and Stanley was about to capsize the craft.

The sight of Bub, trailing his paddle, overcome by laughter assured Stanley there could be no danger and he grinned sheepishly.

“O my son!” feebly exclaimed Bub, “we knew you’d do it. The minute I heard it I knew you’d git anxious if we kept quiet and sort of sober. What a treat you’re going to be to me.”

​“I’m through being nervous,” muttered Stanley. “If a panther leaps into the canoe I won’t stir a peg.”

“Wal, ye come near dumping us just ’cause of a water bird,” chuckled Abner. “If anyone but Charlie was forward we’d been in the lake. That’s one reason I made ye lash everything tight this morning. If we didn’t git dumped in swift water I figgered on your doing it in still.”

“But where is it? I heard it at my elbow?” puzzled Stanley, now intent only on satisfying his curiosity.

Bub caught his arm and pointed to a speck on the water. “There it is,” he informed. “It’s a water bird, called the pied billed grebe. It swims under water with just its nostrils out. I used to take city fellers out just to see them fidget. Always strike ’em near bogs. If a city chap is alone he’ll think he’s haunted and will hike into camp pale as a ghost.”

On making camp that night Stanley went with Bub without knowing the programme. Under Bub’s direction he cut a quantity of long poles and carried them to where a giant boulder presented a perpendicular face.

“Just the rock I wanted,” cried Bub.

“Why?” vacantly inquired Stanley.

​“Watch and learn, my son,” advised Bub. He then placed a long pole between the crotches of two convenient saplings at a distance of about three feet from the face of the rock. “This is the front of the leanto,” he explained, rapidly laying the poles from this support to the ground.

“But you can’t see anything,” protested Stanley, deciding the structure to be very impractical.

“I’m building this to sleep in,” reminded Bub. “There you are; ten feet from opening to the back, ten feet wide and eight feet high. Now when we build a fire against the rock the heat will be reflected onto us as we sleep, and we’ll be snug as bears in a holler tree. Now cut some more poles as the ground is rough and Abner always wants it poled up even, with the slant towards the fire. While you’re doing that I’ll fix the roof.”

Catching the idea Stanley soon secured a second bundle of poles and without being instructed skillfully arranged them in the leanto.

“Good work,” applauded Bub. “You can do things all right once you’ve been shown. Now watch me lay these spruce boughs, tips down. It’s wonderful how few boughs will make a leanto waterproof. Pine boughs are ​even better. And there we have a right angle triangle of a house, with the roof as the hypothenuse.”

“But it’s warm enough to sleep out of doors,” said Stanley.

“You’ve been hustling,” smiled Bub. “Wait till the sun goes down. The nights are cold up here and you’ll like your blankets. Charlie will do the squaw work and keep the fire going through the night, but you and I will git the wood. He’ll want the sticks six or eight feet long. Then we’ll have to git some boughs for the floor.”

Charlie and Abner now appeared, the former carrying two partridge, while Abner had a string of trout.

“I thought it was against the law to kill birds,” innocently observed Stanley. “And, say, I didn’t hear any gun.”

“Bird try to bite; I kill um,” gravely informed Charlie.

Abner smiled dryly and said, “We’ll have the trout to-night and the birds to-morrow for breakfast.” Saying this he quickly cut the fish down the back, cleaned them and arranged them in a common bread toaster. Slices of salt pork were also added.

​Stanley was keenly interested in observing how Charlie prepared the birds. Cleaning them with incredible quickness he brought from the shore a mass of clay and without removing the feathers placed the clay about the birds until each was a huge moist ball. Before so enveloping them he filled them with a dressing made of bread and onions, several of the latter being brought for this purpose.

“Who do you expect to eat that mess?” asked Stanley, turning up his nose in disgust.

“I will if I git to it first,” assured Bub.

“Bah! it’s all clay. I’m not a clay eater.”

“No one will make ye eat it,” said Abner. “I’ll eat yer share.”

After the evening meal the two men smoked in silence for a short time and then knocking out their pipes into the carefully arranged fire they proceeded to turn in between the blankets, lying with their feet to the blaze.

“It’s too early for bed,” whispered Stanley.

“You’ll git use to going to bed early up here,” explained Bub. “It’s impossible to sleep after sun-up. Minute it begins to git light seems if you must be up and hustling.”

It was Stanley’s first night in a leanto. The ​wangan had furnished a roof; now he was in the open and was about to learn his first experience in night sounds.

Charlie and Abner were breathing heavily when close at hand rang out a murderous shriek. Appalling in its menace to ignorant ears it was small wonder that Stanley gave a frightened gasp and flopped over between Abner and Bub.

“Git off of me,” groaned Abner. “What’s the matter with ye?”

“Didn’t you hear it?” asked Stanley, his heart thumping loudly.

“Great horned owl,” sleepily informed Bub. “Shut up.” Bub might have added that it was perhaps the wildest cry in nature in this region where the flora and fauna of the south meet the Hudsonian and Canadian animate and inanimate life, and resulting in a wonderful variety. But Bub was too sleepy and Stanley crept back to his place on the outside, still nervous from the shock.

Then it seemed as if the entire night was filled with blood-curdling threats. To the nerve tingling cry of the owl were added the blood chilling scream of the Canadian lynx, called the lucerfee, the explosive “qua!” of the “qua bird,” or black crowned night heron, and ​the hideous voice of the old squaw duck, sometimes styled the “soap-bubble” bird from its rapidly repeated “a-wa-wa-wa-wa.” Each of these unfamiliar voices contained a horrible threat to the untutored youth, and only by a great effort did he keep from crying aloud. Overhead a Wilson snipe was giving its weird wing sound of “hoo-hoo-hoo” in a whistling note.

“There is something about to attack us,” he finally cried out, unable to control himself as a heavy step sounded near his head.

“Consarn it! can’t ye keep quiet?” angrily cried Abner. “Think I’m going to set up nights with ye?”

“But I tell you, some big creature is just outside,” insisted Stanley.

“Porcupine,” quietly explained Charlie.

“Yas, it’s a porcupine,” growled Abner. “It walks heavy and sounds like a bear, but it ain’t. Now go to sleep.”

“Hark,” was Stanley’s reply. “Can’t you hear it? Two men talking in the woods.” As he paused there came a muffled note, indeed resembling the voices of two men conversing in low tones.

“That’s a coon,” impatiently informed Abner.

​“Please quit, Stan,” begged Bub. “I want to go to sleep.”

“Yas, git to sleep,” commanded Abner. “And when ye hear a sound of some one scolding under their breath don’t rouse me up by jumping onto my chest. For it won’t be nothing but a skunk. And if ye hear a pumping sound, don’t grab for a rifle, for it’ll be the ‘stakedriver,’ or bittern. If ye hear a o—hoo it’s a black bear, but he won’t bother us. And I guess that’s about all ye’ll be afraid of to-night. Now, keep shut.”

“I’m going out and down to the water,” said Stanley, quietly.

“Why?” gasped Abner, sitting up.

“Because I’m afraid,” confessed Stanley.

“Him good boy,” remarked Charlie as before he could be prevented, Stanley disappeared in the darkness.

“Blame it all!” growled Abner. “Whoever see such a feller? S’pose one of us must go fetch him back. He’ll either go insane, or git lost.”

“Wait. I git him by’mby,” said Charlie.

In the meantime Stanley cautiously felt his way down to the water’s edge, palpitating in every nerve. He was trying to punish himself for entertaining any sensation of fear; and the ​sweat stood thick on his forehead as he advanced. Abner said it was a coon; his nerves told him it was two men talking in stealthy voices, probably talking, about him. He dropped to the ground as the great horned owl sounded its terrible cry above his head.

But as he steeled his courage and doggedly advanced he became conscious of a new note, a note of sweetness and love. It was the night flight song of the woodcock, only he gave credit to three birds for the music. First came the beautiful twitter as the bird rose in huge spirals into the evening sky; then in descending flowed the pure strains of a canary, quickly followed by a slightly nasal, clarionet-like “b-z-z.”

He forgot the possible o-hoo of the bear and the hoot-owl’s similar call. The barking of a fox passed unnoted and the trilling, booming chorus near at hand was unheard; for now the beautiful night sounds were flooding him with a wonderful melody and the harsher notes were as if they never had been. Out somewhere in the darkness the O1d Ben Peabody bird, or white-throated sparrow, was vying with the Phoebe bird, and waves of music rippled across the lake and smothered the bog in harmony.

But the sweetest of all was the good-night song of the hermit thrush. It came in a lull, ​as if in the evening’s programme a place of honor had been reserved for this incomparable songster. Stanley’s eyes filled with tears as the sad, sweet notes were poured forth. It seemed as if the singer were telling about other days, when all was pure and true, and a shadow of homesickness fell upon the youth as he sought to interpret the song.

With bowed head he stumbled along the bank and without any particular purpose groped his way back to the lean-to.

Charlie was re-arranging the fire, seemingly; in reality about to set forth in quest of the wanderer.

“Git nerve back?” asked Charlie, gently.

“I heard the most beautiful song,” cried Stanley. “It will ring in my ears at night-fall, so long as I live, I hope.”

“See bear? See panther?” gravely inquired the guide.

“No; I saw nothing. I was so absorbed with my music that I nearly broke my neck tripping over the canoe. When I fell my hand fortunately struck the paddle and I saved myself.”

Noisy Charlie straightened with the lithe ease and quickness of a panther and picked up his rifle. Abner, too, seemed electrified and ​rose quickly if awkwardly and reached for his firearm. To Stanley’s further surprise Bub rolled over and seized his weapon.

“What’s the matter?” whispered Stanley.

“Don’t you see; you found a canoe with paddles. It’s someone snooping ’round to do us dirt. If it was a friend he’d come up to the fire and take pot luck,” rapidly explained Bub, examining his rifle.

“Why! it was our canoe, I supposed,” muttered Stanley.

Bub, despite his excitement, found time to smile whimsically. “We brought our paddles up here. You lugged ’em,” he reminded.

“All stay here. I go,” harshly commanded Charlie.

“The Injun has the best head for this sort of thing,” murmured Abner, lying flat and pushing his rifle ahead of him.

Stanley rubbed his eyes in fresh wonder; Noisy Charlie had vanished. One moment he was one of the group; the next he was gone. And no sound betrayed the course of his going.

Then with staccato sharpness and abruptness came the report of a rifle, followed by several more.

​“By jing! they’ve jumped him!” cried Abner, rising to his feet.

“Let us run to the rescue,” said Stanley, his teeth chattering even as he was willing to advance.

“Ye two keep quiet and stay here. If they nailed him Charlie don’t need any help. If they missed him he’ll take care of hisself.”

“They missed him,” murmured Bub. “Someone fired at him and he returned the compliment.”

As he finished Charlie stood with them again, coming as silently as he had gone.

“Big Nick,” he quietly informed. “Come to kill canoe, stop trip. I fool him. He shoot. I shoot. He gone.”

“Was he alone?” queried Abner anxiously.

“Alone here. Friends near,” replied Charlie. “Big canoe. Friends bring him most here. Come rest alone. Go now to find friends. Bad place to have boys. Go to sleep now.” And calmly returning to his blanket he quickly fell asleep. Abner followed his example, but Bub and Stanley remained awake for more than an hour, conversing in quivering whispers.

“There’s going to be trouble,” declared Stanley for the twentieth time.

​“Charlie ain’t talked as much in years as he has to-night,” said Bub. “My son, you wanted things exciting. I’m sorry to say you’re going to have your wish.”

CHAPTER SIX

LEFT ALONE

When Stanley opened his eyes next morning he was surprised to behold the two men and Bub up and busy about the fire.

“We let you sleep this morning, but hereafter you must be stirring at sun-up,” informed Bub, sternly.

“Very well,” said Stanley, meekly. “Now I’m awake, what shall I do?”

“Eat,” said Charlie, his eyes glittering as he pawed from the coals two blackened balls that once were moist clay.

“Thank you; but I prefer salt pork, or bacon and a cup of coffee,” replied Stanley, wrinkling up his nose as he recalled the guide’s preparation of the birds.

“A cup of coffee, please,” mimicked Bub, daintily switching to the coffee—pot and filling a tin dipper. “Wait a moment and I’ll git you a fresh napkin.”

“Stop kidding,” said Stanley shortly. “I meant a dipper—Why!”

The exclamation was evoked by Charlie’s ​breaking open the clay balls and exposing the grouse cooked to a turn with all the feathers adhering to the clay, leaving the flesh as smooth and clean as if it had been carefully plucked. And the odor was very pleasing.

“Fix some salt pork and taters for the younker, Charlie,” ordered Abner. “He don’t care for fowl.”

“I—I beg your pardon, Mr. Whitten, and yours, Charlie,” stuttered Stanley. “But I’ve changed my mind. I’ll have some of the bird.”

“You should say what you mean at the goin,” rebuked Abner, eying the breakfast gloomily as he feared there would not be enough to go around. However, when he fell to he ate but little, and Bub winked luxuriously at Stanley.

“Hurry up. Time to go,” said Charlie, sententiously, beginning to pack the knapsacks.

“Where are we bound for?” eagerly asked Stanley, recalling the excitement of the night before.

“Ye and Bub will go to a place we have picked out for ye. Ye are to stay there till me and Charlie call for ye,” said Abner.

“Where is it?” asked Bub, showing no surprise.

“Charlie will show ye the trail,” replied ​Abner. “He did a little cruising this morning before ye woke up. It’s a small deserted shack. Big Nick has been stopping there, but he’s far away by this time. We’re going to follow him.”

“He won’t come back and find us, will he?” anxiously inquired Stanley.

“No; and if he does it’s Bub he’ll be looking for,” cynically reminded Abner. “If it had been Bub instead of ye a mooning down by the water last night he’d met with some trouble, I’m a thinking.”

“I ain’t afraid of any half-breed,” said Bub stoutly.

“Boy foolish,” observed Charlie.

“Wal, I guess there’ll be no danger,” slowly decided Abner. “Not so much as if ye was with us. We’ll be between ye and Nick and we’re sartain he won’t beat back. He knows Charlie would pick up his trail this morning and by this time he’s on his way to join them that hired him.”

“Who hired him?” cried Bub, his mouth opening in curiosity.

“Never ye mind; leave that for yer elders and betters,” discouraged Abner. “He never come here and tried to spoil our canoe of his own idee. Someone put him up to it. Of ​course, he’s glad to pay off any scores he thinks he owes the company, but he’d never monkey ’round Charlie’s camp less there was a jug of rum and a few dollars in it for pay. I don’t give a rap about finding him; I’m only anxious to find them he’s going to report to.”

Stanley felt but little confidence as the two men made ready to leave, but Bub displayed no loss of spirits. “See that bunch of red spruce?” shortly inquired Abner, pointing, as Stanley thought, in a very indefinite manner.

Bub did not suspend his shrill whistling, but nodded cheerfully.

“When ye strike it ye’ll find a back-blaze to the north. The way is so plain you can’t get lost. Two miles will fetch ye to the shack. It must have been put up in the old days when they was cutting the old-growth. Ah, them was the days,” and Abner sighed as he contrasted the giants of his boyhood, when one spruce might scale more than fifteen hundred feet, with the logs of today.

“All right,” said Bub. “Grab your duffle, Stan, and we’ll be moving. So long, folks.”

Stanley had expected a different parting, a shaking of hands, a show of regret, and for the moment he felt hurt at the curtness of their leave taking. Charlie gave them no heed ​whatever, while Abner, returning to his task of rolling his blankets merely nodded his head in dismissal.

Bub shrewdly diagnosed his companion’s emotions and smiled whimsically. “Not strong on sentiment, eh?” he grinned. “You’ll git used to that, my son. Once, when I was green, I got mad with Abner up north of Parmachena and quit him in the night. I was lost for three days, but at last saw his smoke and got to him. I didn’t even have matches and couldn’t make my two smokes. When I staggered into the clearing he was smoking his pipe. All he said was, ‘Guess we need a little more wood, Bub.’ Never mentioned my running away to this day.”

“That sounds very harsh,” condemned Stanley. “When folks part in the city they’re civilized enough to shake hands and say ‘good-by.’”

Bub fired up at that. “And I guess one of them city folks will quit his work and go out and hunt up a stranger, or tramp through the woods, or paddle down a river for a doctor, if a neighbor’s sick, eh? As for being harsh, there never was a minute Abner couldn’t put his hand on me. He knew I wouldn’t starve for a day or so and he let me have my sulks ​out. If your city friends was so mighty nice to you why did you quit ’em? Why didn’t you git one of them to find you a job?”

Stanley’s face drew down piteously and his lips trembled as he struggled to frame some reply. In a second warm-hearted Bub had seized his hand and was crying, “I’m a brute, Stan. Just kindly give me a few kicks. But you riled me by knocking the wood-folks. We ain’t got time for sentiment. It don’t mean we don’t feel it, but it doesn’t fit in with the rough life of the woods. Say you forgive me; for I’m mighty glad no one got you a job in the city and kept you from coming up here.”

“It’s all right, Bub,” said Stanley, winking his eyes rapidly. “It hurt because there’s lots of truth in it. I had to come up here to get a chance.”

“Now, here’s the spruce and here’s the trail,” cried Bub, wishing to divert Stanley’s moody thoughts.

“Trail?” blankly repeated Stanley, staring about. “I don’t even see a path.”

Bub’s fresh laughter rang out loudly, causing two gossiping crows on a dead pine to scold furiously. “Why, you poor innocent! Did you expect to find a road? There’s a trail dead ahead.”

​“I see nothing, not the sign of a foot-print,” stubbornly insisted Stanley.

“If there was a path you wouldn’t need a blaze,” explained Bub, still hugely amused. “Now, look. See anything on the trees?”

“You mean the trees with pieces chipped out of the bark?”

“Sure! that’s just what I mean. See, you can count a dozen of ’em, all in a line. As we go on we’ll find more. As long as you pass blazed trees you know you are following the trail,” encouraged Bub.

“So, whoever came this way first stopped and made those marks?” inquired Stanley, much interested.

“No, he made ’em when coming back,” returned Bub.

“I admit my ignorance; why try to fool me all the time?” reproached Stanley, sternly.

“Ha! ha! You’re an awfully good feller, Stan; but you’re funny. Now wait; I’m not fooling you. When the man came in here he wanted to find his way out, didn’t he?”

Stanley relaxed his lips and nodded, albeit a bit coldly.

“So, as he passed a tree he chipped the side he would see when coming out. Take this tree; look on the other side. See; he made that ​blaze going in. Now after he got in and decided he would want to come again, to build the shack, or for any other purpose, he followed his trail back and chipped the trees on the side we now see.”

“But why didn’t he chip, or blaze both sides when going in?” asked Stanley, his brows frowning.

“Because he did not know when he went in if he would ever come this way again. If he wanted to come back this way he made his back-blaze. That would lead him out. But he wouldn’t spend time blazing both sides till he knew if he wanted to go over that trail again.”

“What did he make the trail for; a road?”

“O no. When you blaze for a road you blaze a tree on each side of where you want the road to go,” answered Bub.

“Well,” decided Stanley, “I can see how Abner and Charlie have an easy time following the half-breed.”

“Stanley, you don’t mean that! It’s too good to be true,” roared Bub, now convulsed with mirth.

“Say, Bub Thomas, we’ve been good friends, but you annoy me,” exclaimed Stanley. “What have I said that is so amusing?”

“I must laugh if you kill me,”'sobbed Bub. ​“The idea of Big Nick, in trying to git away, stopping to kindly blaze trees to show his pursuers where he is bound for!”

“I’ll admit, it does sound rather silly,” conceded Stanley. “Yet Abner said they would find his trail.”

“My dear boy, he meant that Charlie would find a foot-print, the mark of the canoe against the shore, a broken branch, a stone turned over, and the like. He meant that Charlie would see signs of Nick’s flight where you and I would see nothing.”

“Then all trails are not like this and a road trail?”

“I should say not. Say a man wants to hide something in the big woods; or wants to keep secret a pocket where he is gitting amethysts and tourmalines and the like, he makes a trail no one else can find. Once I found a runaway hive of bees and knew the hollow tree was about filled with honey. I wanted to wait till it got cool in the fall, when the bees would be numb and not wanting to sting me. So I took some reindeer lichen and fixed a trailer here and there on a tree. Some of it took root and grew; some died, but retained its color, and no one would imagine it meant anything. And I got the honey.”

​“Bub, you’re a wonder,” admired Stanley, eying his shorter companion with a feeling of awe. “I suppose you’ll be studying up something entirely new in trails before long?”

“I have already,” replied Bub, complacently. “I got the idea from a piece of orange peel.”

“Why! how could you?” cried Stanley.

“City chap hired me to take him out trout fishing. He took an orange along and as he ate it he threw away the skin. I noticed that a bit of that peeling stuck out in the landscape like a sore thumb. I never saw a color that would beat it. If the peeling fell orange side up you couldn’t go anywhere near it without noticing it. It’s about the only thing I ever saw in the color line that seemed to jar with nature. So, I told Abner that if we could have some paraffine chalk, orange color, we could save blazing trees, save the bark as well as time, and have a trail you could never miss. The paraffine wouldn’t wash out. Then on ledges and rocks, where you have to depend on small piles of rocks, it would be just the thing to make your trail with. They have it at the wangan in red and yellow for marking lumber, but them colors won’t do. I want an orange.”

​“I wish I knew what you do,” sighed Stanley. “You are ahead of me in books, even.”

“O no I ain’t; and I guess I’ll never git so I can talk properly,” lamented Bub so dolefully that Stanley burst into a laugh.

“Here we are at a stream and—beaver, by jinks! What do you think of that for logging, my son?” And Bub danced enthusiastically along the bank of a sixteen-foot stream.

“Where’s the beaver?” asked Stanley, peering about.

“The beaver went into hiding long before we got here,” said Bub. “But that is their dam.” And he pointed to an embankment, made of clay and timbers, extending across the stream, the concave side being upstream. “Now follow me and we’ll find their run-ways, or sluice-ways.”

Stanley followed him across, walking on the dam, and soon was gazing at little smooth paths leading up the bank.

“There’s six of ’em,” counted Bub. “See their timber.” And he indicated several neat piles of sticks, measuring from four to six feet in length and from two to four inches in diameter. “I tell you, the beaver is a mighty cute feller. And he knows the lumber game better than we do.”

​“But why does he do it?” queried Stanley, studying the little piles almost incredulously.

“He lumbers because he’s a fisherman. He builds this dam to hold back the fish. I take off my hat to the beaver,” declared Bub.

“I supposed all the beaver were killed off,” said Stanley.

“Hardly; it was for trapping them that Big Nick lost his license. Besides beaver, we could catch otter, sable, mink, ermine—which is really a small weasel—and the fisher.”

Stanley drank this in with avidity and begged his companion to wait a while on the bank and see if some of the little loggers wouldn’t put in an appearance.

Bub smiled. “We’ll see no beaver, but no reason why we shouldn’t loaf a bit. Almost sure to be something coming here. Only, you must keep quiet and motionless.”

An hour’s silence, however, revealed no new secret of the wood, except as a loon tried for a trout and failed and laughed hideously at the youths when they jeered him.

0n the rest of the journey, taken leisurely, Bub pointed out a kingbird successfully attacking a hawk and several woodpeckers telegraphing to their mates on the surface of dead trees.

​Just before they emerged into a clearing Bub seized Stanley’s wrist and gently drew him back beneath a low growing pine. “It’s something big,” he whispered, holding his rifle in readiness.

“It’s a bear,” trembled Stanley, as a huge form crackled towards them through the underbrush.

“No, sirree! It’s a twelve-hundred-pound moose,” cried Bub under his breath. “See; he’s got only one antler. T’other one has been knocked off. He’ll lose the other one soon.”

The moose at this point, turned sharply and bounded away. “They are never dangerous except in the fall,” announced Stanley.

“Wrong, my son; that moose there might have charged us. You can never tell what a moose will do. I’ve been treed four times by one, and I’d rather have a bear after me any time. A moose is the only thing I’m really afraid of in the woods. No—I’ll take that back. Take a three-hundred-pound buck, and he’d be a big one at that weight, and when he’s wounded he’s a tough customer to meet. He’ll fight to the last drop of blood in his body.”

The shack bore evidences of being recently occupied and Bub’s eyes wandered often to the edge of the woods as he realized that Big Nick ​had just left the place and had a score to settle with him. He kept his rifle near at hand whenever leaving the shack.

An old Franklin stove, heavily rusted and broken in several places, did for a fireplace and Stanley added to his small store of wood-craft when he came to build the fire.

“Want to burn us out?” asked Bub, as his friend stooped and placed new fuel on the blaze.

“You said it was all right for me to build a fire here,” remonstrated Stanley.

“I forgot you are new,” apologized Bub. “But that cedar and hemlock will send sparks flying every which way. Git some beech, or maple, or pine. The pine will smoke, but it won’t spark.”

“It doesn’t seem that I can do anything right,” said Stanley.

“Not the first time,” readily agreed Bub.

“Is there anything hemlock is good for?” sarcastically inquired Stanley, throwing the offending wood aside.

“Sure,” gravely returned Bub, refusing to detect any irony. “The bark is used in tanneries. In the old days they chopped down hemlock and after peeling it they’d leave it to rot in the woods. Big trees, too. Nowadays ​they saw them into boards and city people buy them, believing they’re spruce or some other kind.”

“Bub,” cried Stanley despairingly, “is there anything about the woods you don’t know?”

“What! me? I mean—I!” exclaimed Bub in genuine amazement. “Why, my son, I know nothing about the woods. I’m simply trying to learn.”

“Then what chance do I have to master that information?” asked Stanley.

“Not a chance in the world to master it,” quickly replied Bub, now speaking earnestly. “In the first place you are not cut out for a woodsman. You must be born here to really know the timber business. You might handle the office end, but I doubt that. You’re not cut out for this sort of thing. You’ll pick up a lots—lots what I tell you. Your suggestion to Hatton about the pipe line was a dandy; I’d never had brains enough to think of it in a million years. But you’re not the simon pure article as a woodsman. But cheer up, there’s lots drawing good salaries who don’t know the game any better than you will after you’ve served your time at it.” The last was meant to soothe Stanley, who did not relish his plain speaking.

​“Perhaps I made a mistake coming up here,” he bitterly remarked.

“Not a bit,” cried Bub, clapping his shoulder. “Don’t git huffy because I tell you what I believe to be true. You needed to come here. But you are the type that goes back to town and makes a record. You needed to come here to fill out that scrawny frame of yours. Once you’ve done that you’ll make your way almost anywhere.”

“Some time I’ll tell you more about myself,” Stanley slowly began, when Bub interrupted him curtly:

“I haven’t asked you to tell anything about yourself. Nor am I a bit curious. I took you to be a bang-up good fellow—notice, I am saying fellow instead of feller—I know you are that kind of fellow. Now let’s forget all about everything but something to eat. Git out that open bake sheet and I’ll show you how to make real bread. Then we’ll catch some trout and have a snack.”

Bub’s idea of a snack was a meal sufficiently hearty even to satisfy the fears of an Abner Whitten.

That night, after everything had been put in shape, the two remained seated before the fire for more than an hour, loath to go to sleep. ​The fresh boughs in the corner invited slumber, but both missed Abner and Charlie. Ordinarily Bub would have thought nothing of living alone in the woods for an indefinite period of time. But now he felt a strange sensation of uneasiness. He almost wished he was in the open with only his blanket for protection.

Finally, in an effort to cast off the spell he boisterously challenged, “I’ll dare you to go out doors.”

“It is very dark outside,” countered Stanley.

“You don’t dare go out and walk around the shack.”

“But what good will it do? There are bears about here. There are rocks and stumps and it is very dark. It is more comfortable in here.”

“I dare you to go,” persisted Bub. “You don’t dare to and I do.”

“Now I haven’t admitted I do not dare go,” slowly replied Stanley, smiling in deep amusement at Bub’s persistence. “I simply say I do not want to go. You say you dare to; you are on record as daring to. So, go ahead.”

Bub grinned ruefully, but did not hesitate to rise and reach for his rifle.

​“If there is nothing to harm you and you are not afraid, why take the gun?” asked Stanley.

Bub dropped the rifle and slowly opened the door. It was very black outside. As he hesitated a mouse scampered across the log over his head, and with a startled exclamation he slammed the door and leaped back into the room.

Stanley gave way to a hearty burst of laughter, it being about the first time he had found an opportunity to smile at Bub’s expense.

“Hush, my son,” finally Bub quieted, raising a hand. “I don’t blame you for laughing. The mouse made a fool of me; but I’ve felt uneasy all the evening. My daring you was merely to find an excuse for us to leave here. Now, listen; I’ll hear it again soon. Hark! there!”

“A whistle,” whispered Stanley.

“Another whistle,” muttered Bub, reaching for his rifle.

“Something in the woods, a bird, probably,” suggested Stanley, his wrists developing “goose-flesh.”

“It’s two men signaling to each other,” murmured Bub. “They think we are here for the night. We’ll make our exit through the window.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

A NARROW ESCAPE

Bub was half way through the small window when Stanley caught him by the leg and pulled him back and relieved him of his rifle.

“We remain here,” he announced.

“Let me go! I must git out! I’ll face "em in the open, but won’t be cooped up in here!” cried Bub in a frenzy.

Stanley shifted his hold to Bub’s shoulder, saying, “Abner said we were to stay here till he came back. Here we stay.”

“Don’t you hear them?” whispered Bub, his eyes gleaming with fear. “Don’t you remember how Big Nick hates me? I must escape from here, Stanley. Let me go.”

“This is our place,” slowly replied Stanley, passing around his companion so as to block the window. “Abner said stick to the shack. I can be of little help in the woods, but I’ve got brains enough to obey orders.”

“I tell you, Big Nick will kill me,” cried Bub.

“Then he’ll kill me,” stoutly returned ​Stanley. “For your fight is my fight and I’m sticking by you.”

Bub eyed him in growing amazement. Heretofore he had been the leader, almost paternal in his care of the stranger from the city. Now even in his perturbation, he began to realize that they had changed places and Stanley had become the leader. For the first time he noted that Stanley’s lean frame had taken on folds of muscle, and, while yet slim of build, presented the picture of glowing health. The blue eyes, too, had a new light, hard as steel, yet clear as crystal. Then the wailing whistle was repeated and Bub was again overwhelmed by a sense of fear.

“I’m going out that winder!” he snarled, violently endeavoring to break clear of the iron-like grip.

But Stanley’s experience in handling lumber and loading wet pulp squares had made his hands so many hooks of steel and with a grim smile he pressed Bub into a corner and held him powerless.

“Now you listen to me, Mr. Thomas. We are going to obey orders if we die doing it,” gritted Stanley in a low voice. “You can take the lead. at all other times, but not just now. For the next few hours I’m the boss.”

​“Let me alone! Git away from me,” hoarsely commanded Bub, struggling in vain.

“Yes, I’ll leave you alone now,” said Stanley, stepping back. “For I know you are mad clear through and wouldn’t leave here if a dozen tigers were about to enter the room. After you’ve cooled off a bit you’ll thank me.”

Bub set his jaw and picked up his rifle, his eyes flaming. As Stanley had said, he was ugly from top to toe and no number of Big Nicks could frighten him. He had been the victim of a spasmodic fear; and he was all the more angry to know he had given way to the emotion and had appeared something of a coward in Stanley’s eyes. This very realization also caused him to feel resentment towards his companion.

Stanley, on his part, seeing that he won his point quickly subsided into his usual self and studied Bub anxiously. He knew Bub’s feelings were hurt and he was only desirous of renewing their old friendship.

To accomplish this he counterfeited a feeling he did not feel and coldly reminded, “I’m waiting to be thanked. I said to-morrow. I’ve changed my mind. You may thank me now.”

Bub glowered at him for a moment, then as the whistle sounded nearer he sighed in relief ​and the old sweet smile illumined his face. “Forgive me, Stanley. I was mad clear through at you. But it’s all gone now. It’s all gone because we are about to have a bully good fight and I shall have a chance to show you I am no coward. Keep back in the corner. This is my row and I’ll go through with it alone.”

“You know that is impossible,” calmly said Stanley, clasping the other’s hand. His face was pale and he believed he was about to face a desperate situation, but there was no tremor in his hands, no unsteadiness in his voice. “I told you back at the mills that your troubles were mine, just as you made my troubles yours.”

“Well, they’ll have a fine time gitting in here,” decided Bub, half grinning. “What a ninny I was to try to git outside where Nick would have run me down in five minutes.”

Rap! rap! rap! and the door shook.

“I’m going to shoot,” cried Bub, throwing forward the rifle.

“Charlie,” informed a guttural voice.

“Be careful, ye young tyke,” bellowed Abner. “Ye shoot me and I’ll skin ye alive.”

With a hysterical laugh Bub dropped the ​rifle and sank to the floor. It was Stanley who unfastened the bar and greeted the two men.

“What ye think ye’re doing?” rebuked Abner, picking up the rifle and standing it in the corner. “Want to murder us?”

“One boy afraid,” said Charlie, rearranging the fire.

“I’ll admit I was quite frightened,” generously said Stanley.

“He wasn’t,” doggedly denied Bub. “I was scared out of my boots and wanted to climb through the winder. I thought it was Big Nick and his gang. Stanley kept me here against my will. Said it was orders and he’d obey if he was killed.”

“Good for him,” cried Abner.

“Both good boys. Good for boy to git big scare,” added Charlie, over his shoulder.

“Wal, I’m sorry Bub couldn’t take our word for it that we’d keep between him and Nick,” said Abner.

“Boy fool to leave cabin. Boy wise to be scared,” said Charlie.

“We didn’t expect you to-night,” defended Stanley. “We both thought it was an enemy.”

“We followed Big Nick nearly to Cupsuptic river and felt sure he was headed for the ​tangled swamps about Weasel Pond. Guess he won’t trouble us for a while,” explained Abner, his tongue beginning to loosen as Charlie deftly prepared fresh coffee and a spider of potato and bacon.

“Then he’s gone for good,” gladly exclaimed Stanley.

“Looks that way,” said Abner.

“No gone. Come back, by’mby,” declared Charlie.

“What did you find?” asked Bub, now eager for details.

“Wal,” slowly began Abner; “we found that the Nace gang has cut the public lot in Bill town. They burned it over, but they couldn’t cover up the stumps. Guess Nick was trying to keep us from drifting in there.”

“Can you prove it against Nace?” asked Bub, his eyes lighting.

“Not very well unless I can find his men. It was cut years ago. He probably got his men up Megantic lake way in Canada and took care to git only Frenchmen who couldn’t talk English. After they finished he hustled them across the border. If I could find some of ’em and take ’em up there it could be proved so close that he’d compromise before he’d stand a lawsuit.”

​“How much did he git out of it?” asked the practical Bub.

“From a hurried look at the stumps I estimated the stumpage to have been worth some twelve thousand dollars. Nace is so tied up in politics he couldn’t afford any big scandal this fall when some of his gang is up for election.”

“But how could you tell it was a public lot, and what does that mean?” was Stanley’s double-barreled question.

“I usually have my pocket maps with me,” dryly replied Abner, helping himself generously to potato and bacon.

“And a public lot is a lot given a plantation by the state for school purposes,” completed Bub. “Guess there’s more ’n one such lot that has been raided in the last twenty years.”

“Hard work to see line,” gravely suggested Charlie, but with a humorous twinkle in his small black eyes.

“Guess they found the line after making the cut,” sourly replied Abner. “At first sight you’d say it was an old burn. But just take a walk around and there are the charred stumps of old growth. Don’t doubt he cleaned up fully twelve. thousand, figgering on eight dollars a thousand which he didn’t pay.”

​“How’d you suppose they first noticed the burn?” Bub slyly asked of Stanley.

“By the stumps and blackened ground, of course,” replied Stanley.

“Wrong, my son,” chuckled Bub. “They first came upon a thicket of grey birch and poplar and knew it covered a burn.”

Stanley looked questioningly at Abner, who nodded between mouthfuls. And Bub continued, “After the burn the birch and poplar was about the only thing that would grow in the soil. Up they come and shade it all over. Then the ground gits moist enough for spruce and up comes the spruce in time.”

“But what about the birch and poplar? Is there room for all?” asked Stanley.

“Birch and poplar grow fast and die quick,” replied Bub. “That’s why nature selects ’em to prepare the ground for the more valuable spruce.”

“What do we do next, Mr. Whitten?” inquired Stanley.

“Always perlite when ye want to learn the company’s secrets,” sniffed Abner, pushing back his tin plate. “But I've no objection to saying we’ll cruise the east cant of Mt. Jim.”

“Can’t what?” asked Stanley.

“He means jog, innocent,” explained Bub.

​“A jog?” repeated Stanley, with no intelligence in his voice.

“Can’t ye learn nothing?” complained Abner. “A cant is a watershed. Part of our timber up north will go down Dead river to the Kennebec and part will follow the west cant and go down the Kennebago.”

“Sleep now,” advised Charlie, rolling himself in his blanket and dropping off at once. The others followed his example and this night Stanley slept soundly.

In the morning Charlie prepared the breakfast as usual and then stalked into the woods. “After fish?” inquired Stanley.

“No, he’s going back to Rangeley,” informed Bub.

“When did Abner tell you?” wondered Stanley.

“He didn’t tell me,” snickered Bub. “Don’t you see Charlie has his rifle and blankets?”

“He’s going to deliver a message to the wangan man,” supplemented Abner. “I want Hatton to know about the cut on the public lot in Bill town. He’ll send men up here to carefully estimate the stumpage. While they are doing that and attracting Nace’s attention we’ll slip over and look at our lines; or rather, ​try to find our lost line, run more’n a century ago.”

“When do we start?” asked Stanley.

“We’ll cruise Mt. Jim till Charlie gits back, then we’ll push right through,” said Abner.

Both the boys missed Charlie keenly; Stanley more than Bub, perhaps, as it was his first experience in the woods. He had learned to depend upon the silent Indian and feel no apprehension while near him. Abner, too, missed him, but in a different way. He missed the cooking. He did not take kindly to what he and Bub called “squaw” work.

On the first day after Charlie’s departure Abner was content to remain in camp, preparing the packs and studying his maps. This allowed the boys considerable leisure and resulted in Stanley learning a valuable lesson.

He had wandered about a half a mile from the shack and had succeeded in seeing a lynx chasing a rabbit and this incited a conviction that he was rapidly becoming a woodsman, Bub’s discouraging opinion to the contrary. Near the base of a towering ledge, carpeted in front with dead trees, blown down from their meager root-hold, he came upon a low dark opening. He might have passed it if not for a strange whimpering, whining noise.

​He smiled as he remembered his first experience with forest sounds and unhesitatingly approached the spot. What was his surprise and joy to see inside the hollow rock two little balls of fur. His bosom swelled as he pictured Bub’s envy of and Abner’s pleasure at his woodsmanship. Just what they were he was undecided. He observed the eyes, barely open, were like little blueberries, and the pointed nose caused him to suspect they were coons. For Bub in describing that animal had sketched out on birch bark his portrait. And yet they were different.

“Probably lots of kinds of coons,” he murmured. “They’re awfully cunning, anyway, and I’ll take them where they’ll be warmer.”

He had proceeded only a few rods in the direction of the camp, however, when he was startled by a snarling roar behind him. He wheeled and beheld a large, gaunt black bear making towards him with unsuspecting swiftness. For a second he was paralyzed; the next found him running for life over the prostrate tree trunks and rocks with the lumbering brute behind him growling in fury and gaining fast. He dared not look back, for fear of tripping and falling and could only gauge the distance ​

He dared not look back

​between him and his pursuer by the increased volume of the animal’s rage.

Nor did he drop his prizes. Even in his frantic haste to escape he told himself it would be cruel to drop the warm little bunches of fur for the bear to destroy. But as he reached the edge of a denser growth, consisting of alders and young birch he found it necessary to abandon one of the babies. With a pang of regret he stooped low and gently dropped it. His throat was parched and burning from the unaccustomed exertion, but he maintained his pace till he found a small opening in the thicket that promised easier traveling.

Plunging into this he was dismayed to come upon a small stream which he must cross. He feared it marked the beginning of a swamp and that on softer footing he would lose headway. Behind him, now much nearer, thundered his implacable foe. With a groan of despair he dropped the other infant and with both arms free cleared the brook, slipped on the further side, regained his balance, and with the hot breath of his Nemesis almost at his back made a heart breaking effort to increase his lead.

On and on with the enraged grumble ever drawing nearer he raced, clearing obstacles in a manner that would have won him much ​applause on a hurdle track. But at last exhausted nature rebelled, and with a low moan of despair he fell over to the ground, face downward.

Then he believed it was all over as the bushes crackled behind him. He turned his head and to his great joy beheld Abner.

“O Mr. Whitten, look out!” he gasped. “It was chasing me. It’s upon us.”

“If I had a good ash stick I’d larrup ye so’s ye ’d remember it to yer dying day,” cried Abner, his voice choking with anger. “Of all the trying simpletons I ever met ye are the worst. Git up and see if ye can drag yerself back to the camp.”

Painfully Stanley struggled to his feet, casting a frightened glance over his shoulder. The cruiser’s stormy reproach sounded very sweet in his ears. He was saved.

“Where is it?” he whispered, keeping close to Abner’s side.

“It’s toting its cubs back to the den,” gruffly replied Abner.

“What was it, a bear?”

“It was a bear,” exploded Abner. “Now what did ye mean by snooping around her den and stealing her newborn cubs?”

“Were they her cubs?” asked Stanley. “I ​thought she’d kill them if I dropped them. I thought they were some kind of a coon.”

“I might have suspected it,” cried Abner. “If there is room to make a fool mistake I guess ye can be trusted to come along and take advantage of the opportunity.”

“I thought you’d like them,” meekly apologized Stanley.

This but added fresh fuel to Abner’s wrath, and he exclaimed, “What in tarnation should I want two bear cubs fer?”

“I supposed you’d like to have them to keep and make pets of,” politely responded Stanley.

Abner stopped short in his tracks and wheeling Stanley about grimly inquired, “Young man, where’ll ye have yer body shipped when some fool monkey-shine like this results in yer death?”

“I’m sorry,” mumbled Stanley. “I didn’t mean any harm. And I’m awfully obliged to you for saving my life.”

“Ye can thank yer stars that I was on the ridge and see ye start to run. Even then ye’d been mauled to death and me too, prob’ly, if the bear hadn’t give up the chase to go back to her cubs; fer I didn’t have any gun.”

“Please don’t shoot her,” pleaded Stanley. ​“She isn’t to blame and the babies need her. But I’m awful thankful to you.”

“Drop that,” tartly commanded Abner. “I owed ye that one for pushing me away from the saw. But remember this, I sha’n’t always be handy to pull ye free of danger. I don’t see where ye got together so much ignorance.” And he rubbed his brow in perplexity.

“Nor do I,” sighed Stanley. Then brightening and his eyes dancing with mischief as the shack dawned in sight, “But could you take the elevated at Franklin Square, go to Second Avenue, make Union Square and catch the uptown express in the subway?”

Abner paused and scratched his head thoughtfully. “I’ve been on the Magalloway hundreds and hundreds of times and have camped several times on the ’Sipoway. But I never did any cruising along the Subway. But I’ll say this, that even if I was a stranger in them parts I wouldn’t go to stealing cubs or interfering with a man’s logs and making a fool of myself. I’d just set tight and wait till I learned the ropes. That’s what I expect ye to do up here.”

Stanley suppressed a smile at Abner’s interpretation of New York’s underground railroad, but was satisfied to drop the question. Abner ​was not, it seems, for on meeting Bub he told him all about it, adding much of detail that was strange to Stanley.

“Won’t Charlie be tickled to hear it,” cried Bub, smacking his lips. “To think of a man taking his life in his hands—and getting away with it.”

“Please don’t tell him,” begged Stanley. “Abner won’t and I don’t want him to think any worse of me. Goodness knows my mistakes have given him a very poor opinion of me already.”

“I’ll keep a close mouth,” grinned Bub. “But you’re wrong about Charlie. He admires you for your greenness. He says he never saw anyone who could make so many mistakes in so short a time. You’re a revelation to him.”

“Let him be content with what he already knows,” urged Stanley.

Bub nodded good-naturedly and caught up his rifle.

Abner raised his brows in mute inquiry. “Going after the bear,” informed Bub.

Stanley glanced at Abner, his eyes pleading.

Abner cleared his throat and diverted his eyes as he shortly said, “Guess I need ye ​’round here. Let the bear go. When I want her killed, I’ll do it myself.”

“But you promised me I should shoot the next one,” reminded Bub, much surprised.

“I know, I know. And so ye shall when we git one that’s ready to be shot,” testily replied Abner. “But it seems yer friend has struck up a friendship with this partic’lar bear and wants her let alone. He’s so fond of her he goes over and visits when he oughter be catching trout fer supper.”

“If you’d seen the cubs,” cried Stanley. “Why, Bub, they are the cutest little things you ever imagined. Abner promised he wouldn’t harm the mother as the cubs need her. She has done nothing a human mother wouldn’t have done. I am the one in fault.”

“Of course if you put it that way I’ll have to let her go,” sighed Bub. “But bear pelts are worth something, Mister Malcolm.”

“And I’ll make it up to you at double the value of her pelt,” eagerly promised Stanley.

Bub grinned and Abner winked slowly. Stanley flushed to his ears and mumbled, “I forgot. It may be some time before I can square it off.”

“That’s better,” said Abner. “Never promise what ye can’t do.”

​Bub, relenting and wishing to spare his friend, began asking a volley of questions as to what would be the morrow’s programme.

“We’ll start at sun-up and make the east jog of Mt. Jim,” said Abner. “Don’t know how long we’ll stay there. Ordinarily I could put three weeks in to profit in making that particular cant; but as things be I shall put in a day or two, drop in to see the fire warden on top of Hood mountain and then go on north to where the real business awaits me. It all depends on how soon Charlie overtakes us.”

“Can he find us?” incredulously inquired Stanley.

“He can,” was Abner’s dry response. “If we kept going three hundred miles up north of Quebec where they’re putting in big pulp mills Charlie would follow close enough to cook our second supper, I guess. I vum! I wish he was here now to fix them fish.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

OFF FOR MT. JIM

Abner led the way next morning, the two boys keeping some twenty feet behind him. The canoe had been concealed where it would be safe from thievish hands and Stanley was now called upon to carry a heavy pack over exceedingly rough ground.

“I’m glad Big Nick has left us in peace,” he confided to Bub, as he tried to imitate his friend’s easy gait.

“Abner said that to make us feel comfortable in our minds,” informed Bub. “Big Nick is ahead somewhere and that’s why Charlie was sent back. If we had only Mt. Jim to do Charlie would have stuck along with us and held Nick off. But there’s something important afoot and Abner can’t waste time on Jim. I figure our trip there is largely a bluff, just to mislead the enemy and that Abner doesn’t want to run any risk of being interrupted in the really important work. If Charlie gits word through, some of the poplar peelers will ​be hustled up here to cover our retreat and act as reinforcements, you see.”

“How far could we go in a straight line and not leave the woods?” asked Stanley, curiously.

“Way up into Canada, and then some,” returned Bub. “About two—thirds of Maine is wilderness land, you know.”

“Will it ever give out?”

“If they don’t follow the example set by our company it will,” he assured. “Our company cuts, so as to make a perpetual investment, taking so many feet a year and above a certain size. Of course we have to cut smaller stuff then they did in the old days, when one giant pine might in falling spoil what to-day would be a half a dozen rattling good trees. If they begin on Mt. Jim this winter it may take anywhere up to ten years to finish it, according to how Abner finds the timber to run. Then in twenty—five years more it will be good cutting again. But we won’t butcher any and everything the way some operators do. Take an individual and he figures he has but one chance at the woods and he intends to get—notice I say ‘get’ instead of ‘git’—his and let the next generation go without. Our company is in business to stay. A hundred years from now ​the company expects to be engaged in lumbering. And each year sees the timber run into more money. Why, we have one section, a square mile, you know, that was bought in thirty or forty years ago for thirty-five thousand dollars. Abner says the company has refused a million for it since. Some increase, eh?”

“So, some of the operators cut clean, eh?” mused Stanley.

“Do they cut clean?” cried Bub. “Well, I guess they do. I remember being in Windy Peters’ place up near Jackman just after he’d finished cutting on Jim Rawlins’ cant. Rawlins is a land-owner and sells his stumpage to operators. It seems Peters made a clean sweep. Well, Rawlins come in, as smooth as could be, smiling and hand shaking and Peters watching him out the corner of his eye. The first thing Rawlins said was, ‘You’ve always used me well, Peters, and I want to be square with you. Now I ain’t any objections to your taking a crew and some bush hooks and going over on that cant and getting the rest of the timber.’ Meaning, of course, Windy Peters had taken everything but the bushes.”

Stanley’s lesson was here interrupted by ​Abner, who halted at the foot of a hard wood ridge and stared off to the northwest.

“He’s watching the smoke and trying to figure it out,” whispered Bub as the two youths came up.

“I see no smoke,” said Stanley, gazing in vain.

“It’s just a yellow haze, but it’s plain,” said Bub.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s Big Nick,” muttered Abner. Then seeing the youths he frowned, “Don’t either of you wander away from camp tonight. I don’t like that smoke.”

“Big Nick?” inquired Stanley, his hands tightening.

“He’s there, like enough, but he never built the fire. There’s someone with him who started a blaze when he wasn’t ’round to stop it. It died down mighty quick, as if he’d arrived and put it out. Besides, Nick would use wood that wouldn’t give off any smoke. That feller used pine.”

For the next few miles the trio remained silent. Stanley’s gaze was ever focused on the point where his companions had made out the tell-tale smoke and his nerves were keyed up to a high tension as Abner continued to hold his course. As they mounted the ridge and ​caught the summit breeze he could see nothing but dark green woodlands stretching to the horizon. The breeze continually rustled the bare branches of the maple and beech, for as yet the belated season had allowed but a few leaves to gladden the deciduous trees, and ever sang gently through the boughs of the evergreens. There was no trace of human habitation, not even a solitary camp, and it seemed as if the three must be alone, surrounded by primeval solitude. And yet somewhere in the northwest was a desperate man, possibly more than one, intent on an evil purpose.

As these thoughts raced through Stanley’s mind and as his nerves responded to the suggestion he found himself becoming timid. The danger crept nearer until the immediate boundaries of their course impressed him as containing a hidden foe. A squirrel, suddenly scolding the passersby, gave a prickly sensation to his skin and he started involuntarily.

Abner read his fears and quietly drawled, “Don’t git scared. We’ve got plenty of leeway. Once we reach the tap of the ridge we’ll swing due north. That’s Jim over there.” And he pointed to the rounded top of a distant mountain, masked in the dark verdure of spruce and pine.

​“Funny how spruce will grow almost anywhere,” continued Abner, as if talking to himself. “Ye’ll find it where ye’d swear a root couldn’t git a hold.”

“How could you get them down from up there?” asked Stanley, to whom the rugged slopes appeared to be inaccessible to man.

“That’s easy. Sluice ’em down. All ye got to do is to git them started and stand from under. We won’t have to use a boss except in yarding them down below. Loon River winds around the eastern slope, so it makes it pretty convenient. ”

Among Abner’s other assets was an ability to always find a spring when the hour came to stop and lunch. This in itself impressed Stanley as being marvelous.

“Time to eat,” announced Abner, throwing down his pack. “See if there ain’t a spring under that ledge. Two years ago I remember of finding one there.”

“Here it is,” called out Bub. “Clear and full.”

“And if we could put a railroad through up here, build a big hotel and charge five cents a glass people would say it was the best water in the world,” sniffed Abner. “Well, it is good water. Did ye know, sonny, that Maine is ​simply peppered with lakes and streams, more so than any other similar area in the United States? That’s what gives ye the woods.”

Stanley nodded absent-mindedly, for he was engaged in idly lighting some dead leaves under a huge maple. To his great amazement he found himself whirled from his play by one sweep of Abner’s powerful arm. Before he could recover his balance Bub dashed by him and in passing gave him a push that sent him headlong into a clump of cedar bushes.

“Say, what do you two mean?” he demanded, crawling forth, his eyes flashing. For he believed the man and youth were suddenly taken insane.

“Hump yerself!” bawled Abner, laying onto the creeping fringe of fire with a bough hurriedly torn from a spruce. “Lend a hand here or I’ll leave ye to shift for yerself.”

“Come on,” barked Bub, his face strained with wrath and fear.

“You’ll answer for that Bub Thomas,” Stanley choked, overcome by the realization that his supposed friend had placed a hand on him in anger.

“I’ll tend to ye soon ’s I have time,” panted Abner, moving about like a madman.

Not till then did Stanley realize the two were ​fighting as he had never seen men fight before to put out the blaze he had so thoughtlessly started.

With an ashamed face he followed their example, stamping and beating the little red tongues that glided here and there like so many serpents. No sooner was one spot extinguished before a patch of red bloomed in another place. The danger zone apparently was the point where the hardwood trees met the black growth. Here it was that Abner fought the hardest. Once the flames entered the tinder like carpet under the spruce and fir no human agency could stop it from spreading along the base of the ridge.

Tearing off a second bough Stanley sprinted to the spring and plunged them into the water. Then he joined Abner and was gratified to find he could kill more fire with one sweep of his weapon than the cruiser could with several blows of his. So fiercely did they labor that at the end of a few minutes only a smoking, blackened area was left to testify to their danger.

“Whew!” gasped Abner, sinking down on the dead cinders and breathing heavily.

“That’s why I pushed you,” choked Bub, following Abner’s example.

​“Ordinary man would have clipped ye good and hard,” added Abner. “What possessed ye to do it?”

Stanley, his cheeks two coals, hung his head in dejection. “If there’s a high cliff handy I guess you’d better shove me off,” he muttered. “I was simply curious to see if the leaves were dry enough to burn.”

“Any other experiments ye’d like to try?” asked Abner.

Stanley shook his head. “I’m sorry. Seems as if all I’ve said on this trip is that ‘I’m sorry’ for one thing or another.”

“Can ye think of any more breaks he can make, Bub?” queried Abner anxiously.

Bub gravely shook his head. “The only thing I can think of is to let him carry the rifle and observe if he looks down the muzzle to see if it’s loaded.”

“I don’t blame you two,” cried Stanley. “I ought to have stayed at the mills. I’m not fit to be out alone. Of course I had no idea that I couldn’t stamp out the blaze in a second. It seemed impossible that it could get beyond my control.”

Abner slowly rose to a sitting posture and not unkindly said, “Younker, I ain’t going to jaw ye; ’cause it’s too serious. I’d carry on ​like all tarnation if it didn’t amount to much, but this is too serious. Now let’s profit by it by making it a lesson to ye. Of all things a man should be careful of in the woods is fire, especially in May and in the fall. Last year a couple of city chaps went out trout fishing at about this time of year. They built a campfire and then left it. Within three days nearly forty square miles of timber had burned. All the timbering operations throughout the years had just made some little open patches on them ridges. Now they are swept clean as a hound’s tooth, except where a dead pine remains standing, a roost for crows.”

“And that’s why the state has fire wardens stationed on all these mountains,” added Bub. “What Abner tells you is just one sample. Every spring and fall the sky is heavy with smoke from burning timber. We lose more lumber by fire every year than is cut by man, I guess.”

“Have ye noticed that I ain’t been smoking since we struck the woods?” asked Abner. Then without waiting for a reply he explained, “It’s because I am afraid of fire, as careful and experienced as I am.”

“I’ve learned my lesson,” humbly assured Stanley. Then with an irrepressible glint of ​curiosity in his downcast eyes, “But what if it had got beyond our control for the moment, what would we have done?”

“Wal,” said Abner deliberately, “if it really was beyond our control we’d camped here and taken a nap.”

Bub nodded his head in affirmation, but Stanley could hardly believe the statement.

“It’s like this,” explained Abner; “you fight a fire in the early morning. The minute the fire warden on Hood mountain saw the smoke he’d telephone across to Crooked Hill and then it would be sent north and south and east and west. In each case the warden would call help, and when he asks help to fight a fire every mill owner and operator called upon must send crews. Some sixty or a hundred men would be rushed in here.

“Then they would organize and fight the fire in front, beginning at 3 o’clock in the morning, say, when the blaze is smouldering. The fire always grows with the sun and the wind and the fire-fighting day ends at 10 or 11 o’clock a. m. Then the men go to sleep and rest up for the next morning. If the case is desperate back fires are set at night.”

“That means the men in front set a fire and so control it that it can only spread towards ​the fire they’re fighting,” explained Bub. “When the two fires meet the blaze is all over.”

“Thank heavens, no damage has been done,” fervently cried Stanley.

“A cent would pay for all the stumpage spoiled by this fire,” agreed Abner, gravely, “but—”

“But what?” prompted Stanley as the old man paused.

“Wal, I might as well say it, as Bub is thinking it now. We’ve told Big Nick about what he wants to know. He’s seen the smoke and knows I’ve got some younkers along, for he’d never give me credit with starting a smoke, let alone a blaze.”

Stanley’s face lengthened. “Mr. Whitten, it seems I have been criminally negligent. I must undo the mischief insofar as I can.”

“Ye’ve been a derned little fool,” agreed Abner. “About the other thing I’ll hold back my opinion till I know what it means.”

Stanley reached forward and clasped Bub’s hand warmly, much to that youth’s bewilderment. “I’m almost too tired to shake hands,” repelled Bub, who began to fear Stanley was not sufficiently impressed with his lesson.

​“I know,” mumbled Stanley, moving away. “Don’t fear that I’ll start another blaze.”

“Don’t bear down too hard on him, Bub,” cautioned Abner. “He didn’t mean nothing and he took his medicine like a man. After all, who’s afraid of Big Nick?”

“I love Stanley,” replied Bub simply, “but it’s time he got some sense. He needs to be jolted a bit to cure him of doing the wrong thing at the right time.”

“I know,” mused Abner, “but he had a strange look on his face I didn’t like. Better coddle him up a bit.”

“I’ll call him back and shake hands over again,” cried the warm hearted youth, rising and looking after Stanley. “Why! Abner, I don’t see him. He can’t be lost. Hi! Stanley! Come here! We want you,” he loudly called.

A lone crow mocked him from a distance, but there was no other response. Again he called, but Stanley gave no answer.

By this time Abner was on his feet, keenly gazing down the slope. “After him!” he suddenly shouted. “He’s making towards Big Nick’s camp. He’s trying to square himself by finding Nick and saying he’s lost and a denying that we’re in the woods. Run! run! ​That’s why he shook hands with ye. Ding his young pelt! Git him. Fetch him back, or I’ll larrup ye.”

Long before he had finished Bub was flying like a deer down the rough way, ever watching for the movement of the bushes and underbrush ahead and below him. A dry sob clutched his throat as he ran on and remembered how he had disdained Stanley’s silent farewell. That the youth would ever use such heroic means to make good his fault had not entered Bub’s imagination. Eminently practical himself he was not prepared to understand an emotional nature.

Stanley did not know he was pursued until Bub came close upon him in a diminutive clearing. “Hold on, Stan. Come back,” gasped Bub.

“Go back yourself. I’ll be along soon,” replied Stanley, lowering his eyes.

“You’ll come now,” cried Bub, springing forward and clutching his arm.

It was in vain Stanley sought to shake him off. “Let me go, Bub. Let me go,” he gritted. “I know what I’m doing. Go back.”

“Sure, we’re both going back,” panted Bub, increasing the pressure of his grasp. “It’s no use, Stan; you were the stronger in camp, ​because you were in the right. But now I can handle a dozen like you. Come on, you proud child.” And he yanked with renewed energy.

“Hold him till I git there,” called Abner’s voice; “Oughter be ashamed to make a old man hurry.”

The last was a crafty appeal, for Stanley immediately ceased struggling and went limp. “I’ll go back, Bub,” he said.

“Your word is good as a million feet of old growth pine, my son,” panted Bub, gladly relinquishing his hold.

Abner stopped running when he saw the two walking towards him. When they joined him he was gravely studying the geological formation of the outcropping ledge.

“See that spruce cling to them rocks,” he admired, as if nothing had happened. “Ye wouldn’t s’pose there’d be room for a tooth pick to git a hold there, would ye? I s’pose the birds scatter most of the seeds of things that grow and it’s a case of git along, and make the best of the world ye find yerself in, eh?”

Stanley and Bub, arm and arm, proceeded slowly back to the camp, paying no attention to the old man’s prattle, while he talked incessantly, endeavoring to restore harmony of thought.

​“Here’s the fly agaric,” he babbled. “It’s one of the two poisonous specimens of mushrooms found in Maine. Take it in July and August when the fly is cutting up something disagreeable and put it in water and it’ll kill ’em off. Ye’ll notice the stem is white and a foot tall, with a creamy yaller cap on top. And the cap is spattered with little scales. They say a Czar of Russia once was killed by eating these.”

Still Stanley and Bub sat side by side, looking at their feet and apparently not hearing him.

Coughing loudly to arouse interest he continued, “And here is the only other poisonous specimen. I don’t know the foreign name, but we call it the ‘Death Cup.’ Pure satiny white. Ain’t it a beauty? There’s no cure for the man who eats it.”

The two youths might have been figures of marble, so motionless did they remain.

“Ahem!” sounded Abner desperately. “Have a few of these snow berries. They have a taste of wintergreen and are s’posed to be a little extry.”

Receiving no recognition Abner hurled the berries from him and threw his hat on the ground. “If I’ve got to be in the woods with ​a pack of dummies I might as well be alone,” he cried.

With one impulse the youths burst into laughter and as quickly rose and shook the old man warmly by the hand.

“Now if ye’ll kindly cut out this gossiping we’ll go to the foot of old Jim and camp for the night,” Abner growled, once the sunshine returned.

CHAPTER NINE

BIG NICK PAYS HIS COMPLIMENTS

The camp was pitched that night at the foot of Mt. Jim, the leanto being put up as before.When Stanley was informed that Kennebago lake was eighteen hundred feet above sea level and the ponds now about them were more than two thousand feet he began to understand why the nights were cold and a fire was necessary.

Abner’s preliminary preparations for cruising the east cant of the mountain, or the Dead river watershed, puzzled while interesting Stanley. With the early morning sun the old man produced somewhere from his big knapsack a pair of powerful field glasses and spent some minutes in studying the dark heights above him.

Fascinated, yet diffident, Stanley stood at his elbow, his lips repeatedly framing unspoken questions.

At last Abner lowered his glasses and demanded, “Wal, why don’t ye do it?”

“Do what?” stammered Stanley.

​“Ask some fool questions,” replied Abner, his eyes reflecting his good humor.

“I will,” said Stanley. “What are you looking for, bears?”

“Not being out for bears I’m not looking fer ’em,” replied Abner. “But I’ll add that bear hunters often use glasses when they want one of the varmints. The first to do it was laughed at by the o1d hunters, but soon the veterans found it was a great saving of time to sweep the ridges of a mountain with a good glass before climbing up its sides in search of bruin. But I was trying to pick out the ridge we will follow. I guess I’ve got it now.”

Bub already had prepared the breakfast and after this was eaten he packed up a parcel of food and strapped his blankets.

“Shall we stay all night on the mountain?” inquired Stanley.

“We’ll go prepared to,” said Abner. “It’ll be easier than coming back here. I sha’n’t put in much time on this cant, just waiting for Charlie to overtake us. Now if we’re ready we’ll start.” And picking up his rifle he led the way towards the mountain.

To Stanley he seemed to proceed with no purpose, winding in and out, turning first to the left and then to the right. But had the ​youth been stationed in one of the seventy-foot spruces now beginning to line their course he would have observed that the woodsman always turned back towards a certain point and that his detours were made to avoid embarrassing obstacles, such as ledges and windfalls.

Abner paused and pointed to one of the latter and remarked, “That’s the trap that catches the green hunter. See how the wind some time has torn through here, laying the trees flat like nine pins. The swath is a clean cut one, ye’ll notice, and the boughs and trunks make a pretty high fence. When ye try to climb over it ye’ll find it mighty rough going. Then comes the green hunter and makes the attempt. His rifle he drags behind him, a limb catches the trigger. Bang! and he’s shot and sinks down between the trunks and boughs and a searching party may crawl oyer him, or pass within ten feet of him, and never suspect where his body lies. He’s simply marked as disappearing.”

On reaching the mountain proper Stanley turned to look down the course they had ascended thus far. To his surprise he could not observe any particular ascent. There was nothing to show they had climbed a foot, and ​yet he was muscle-sore from ever plunging upward.

“We are just about to start in,” dryly informed Abner, catching and reading the youth’s surprised expression. “That’s why it’s easy for a man new to the woods to git lost. Every time he turns around he finds the scenery has shifted. When ye start out in the woods always take notice of yer general direction, and first look behind ye and mark the hills and mountains. Of course ye should carry a map such as the government survey turns out. Then, if the country is new to ye, ye should occasionally climb a tree and look back as well as ahead. Each time ye do it the back trails seem changed. A humped back mountain becomes round and the next time it may look square, according to yer angle. But it’s always yer mountain if ye don’t let it git away from ye. See that sharp pointed feller over there? It’s about six miles. Could ye make it to-day if there wasn’t any unusual obstacles in the way?”

“Certainly,” replied Stanley. “I would only have to keep this mountain at my back and my eyes fixed on the one in front.”

Abner chuckled. “The chances are ye would wind up on Round mountain. For after ye’d ​gone a half a mile the mountain behind ye, or this one would look entirely different and over its shoulder ye’d see another mountain and then When ye’d face to the front ye’d find someone had sneaked in more mountains, and if ye didn’t pay attention to the sun and got to turning round ye’d soon find a dozen mountains to choose from—and ye’d always choose the wrong one.”

“But not if you had one of the maps you spoke of,” reminded Stanley, smiling confidently.

“The map is good as far as it goes,” warned Abner, “but it’s drawn on a big scale. Say ye had one of the Rangeleys and started from Umbagog, intending to skirt Moose mountain and strike Upper Dam. Then, say ye veered off to the northwest a few miles and got off the map. Ye wouldn’t know where ye was. Ye might blunder ’round a couple of days trying to git back onto the map. Now, give me the hatchet, Bub.”

Bub, who had been an amused listener to this dialogue, passed over the small tool and Stanley was interested to note that Abner was making a back-blaze as they ascended a ridge.

After the veteran had chipped some half a dozen trees in passing the youth could not ​restrain himself from inquiring, “Do we follow this ridge to the top?”

“I was waiting for that,” chuckled Abner, blazing another tree. “No, not to the top, but as far as we go. Now, ask again.”

“Well, I did want to know why you do it, seeing how plain the way is. All you have to do is to keep the black growth in front of you. On each side it is light and one would have to be a blind man to leave the ridge. It would be like quitting the peak of a roof. Couldn’t you find your way up without the blaze?”

“Land of sin,” cried Abner, “I’d hoped better of ye. Can’t ye see I am making a back blaze? No one coming up the mountain can see these signs. They’re to be used when we come down, if we want to come this way.”

“But if you make a blaze at the stopping point and find that point when you want to return all you’ve got to do is to descend,” insisted Stanley, believing he must be right.

Abner sighed in despair. “Ever come down a strange mountain covered with timber?” he asked.

Stanley replied in the negative and the cruiser continued, “Then never try it unless ye’ve back-blazed; that is, don’t try it unless ye’ve got lots of time to spare and grub to eat. ​For when ye start to come down ye’ve got an entirely different mountain. Instead of having it open on the sides and the black growth or ledges ahead, to show the slope of the ridge, you have it all open in front and on the sides and ye only know ye are going down. And ye’d prob’ly find yerself on the other side of the mountain when ye reached the foot. Look behind ye and tell me where we come from?”

Stanley did as directed and confidently pointed in the wrong direction. It was difficult for Bub to make him believe he was mistaken.

While Bub was climbing a tree Abner volunteered the information that the townships in this particular range were designated by letters or figures or names. “This is Jim, town 3, Range 1,” he said. “Hi, Bub, what do ye see?”

“There’s an old burn down to the northeast, just a sea of grey birch and poplar.”

“That’s right,” mused Abner, studying the map. “Come down and we’ll see if we can’t start in here.”

In what seemed to Stanley to be an exceedingly short space of time Bub gave a whoop and Abner in joining him, explained over his shoulder, “He’s found the monument.”

This boundary marking Stanley learned was ​a cedar post, surrounded by small rocks, while in a thirty foot circle the trees had been blazed.

“The section line runs north and we should find a cedar post every one-fourth mile,” said Bub, as Abner plunged into the tangle. “Each post is blazed, of course and it is easy work making the trip around the second, outside the work of walking.”

“It’s easy work when the line is marked as it was run,” grumbled Abner. “But if the posts have been shifted, or the monuments destroyed ye sometimes find yerself in court with a lawsuit going ag’in ye.”

But no such drawback was encountered on this cant and after a weary tramp Abner said he was prepared to “make stands.”

“Make stands,” muttered Stanley, casting his eyes about. “Where are your tools? And what would you do with the stands after you’ve made them?”

“You’re the only one of your kind, Stan,” screamed Bub, dropping on a lichen-covered rock the better to indulge in mirth.

“But that’s what he said,” remonstrated Stanley, gazing after Abner, who was striding away with long methodical steps.

“Let’s follow him and see how his carpenter work progresses,” snickered Bub, rising.

​Stanley, still puzzled, willingly fell in behind Bub and soon came up with Abner, who stood with head uplifted and slowly revolving on his heel.

He gave no sign of seeing the youths, but muttering to himself started away at a hurried pace, only to slow down to the long mechanical stride. Then again did he look over their heads and moving his lips begin to slowly turn about as he had before.

“Bub,” whispered Stanley, “this is becoming serious. Is he crazy, or is he looking for timber to make into stands?”

Bub’s eyes were watery and he placed a finger on his lips to impose silence. Abner shot one frowning glance at the boy’s mischievous face and shaking his head and grumbling led on into the forest. For some half a dozen times he went through his peculiar movements and each time did Stanley find his curiosity increasing as well as his fears.

Finally Abner returned to the starting point and peeling a piece of bark from a birch began figuring rapidly.

Finishing he raised his head and pursed his lips in satisfaction. “It will average five thousand to a stand right here. The first fifty trees will figger that easy,” he informed. ​“Down below in the big stuff it will go better. It’s safe to say there’s six million in the section.”

“Will you reckon in all the six-inch stuff?” asked Bub, casting a critical eye about.

“We’ll have to, but on the other side we’ll take nothing under ten or eleven inches.”

“All of which is Greek to me,” broke in Stanley. “I know you mean you’ll take everything down to a six-inch diameter here, but why here and not on the west cant?”

“That’s the most intelligent question ye’ve asked in an hour,” encouraged Abner. “We’ll take it down to six inches here because it isn’t firmly rooted and in case of fire it’s poorly protected. Take it on the other cant, that'll go down Kennebago stream, and a fire wouldn’t have so much of a chance. Then again, the timber over there is in good ground and is firmly rooted. Over here we’ll snake out everything that will go into pulp. In thirty years from now the west cant will be good cutting again; this won’t be. Shows the difference between careful and wasteful lumbering.”

“And how about the next section?” eagerly inquired Bub.

“It won’t go more’n three million if it does ​that,” regretted Abner. “I’ll say that, and I haven’t made a single stand there yet. I won’t tackle it now, but when I do it’ll take a day or two more’n this did and it’ll run under three million. We’ll find a lot of ledge and a sheer drop into a hog.”

Stanley pressed his lips firmly, as he screwed up his courage and then said, “Mr. Whitten, are you now ready to tell me about these stands?”

Bub exploded and Abner even was forced to admire, “I’ll say this fer ye, ye’re like a bull pup when it comes to hanging on. I was wondering if I’d sidetracked ye. Wal, when I paced off some seventy-five feet in a straight line and stopped and swung my eye ’round in a circle, the same having the distance paced as the radius, I was counting the sizeable trees in that circle. I was making a stand. I was gitting an idea how the timber ran. I took a sparsely growing lot and then a thick growth. Sometimes, if it runs even, five or six stands will tell the story. But if I had time I’d make five times that many on this piece, it being uneven. Of course you divided the total estimate by the number of stands, remember yer acreage and there ye have yer section. I’ve seen men that could estimate a section down to a ​foot of timber—that is, almost.” And Abner chuckled softly over Stanley’s wonderment.

“He’s trying to have some fun with you,” whispered Bub.

“I’m glad of it,” smiled Stanley. “I’m sure I’ve bothered him enough.”

“That is all past now,” warmly declared Bub. “You’re breaking in fine. The bear and the fire told rather against you, but it might have happened to any fellow. I’m positive that for the rest of the jaunt you’ll be more help than you are bother.”

“Thank you,” murmured Stanley, a bit downcast. “But I didn’t know I had been so much of a bother outside of one or two mistakes. I’ve certainly kept up with you and you’ve lost no time on account of me.”

Bub eyed him doubtfully; then frankly said, “I guess you can stand the truth, Stan. If we hadn’t been holding back for Noisy Charlie you’d been a brake on us. Why, my son, if Abner and I were in a hurry to get anywhere how long do you suppose you could keep up with us? Abner is past middle age by quite a lot, but he can walk a moose to death. You’ve picked up weight and hardened your muscles; on the loading gang you probably could give me a tight rub. But when it comes to cruising ​you’ve simply got to learn it, my son. And we’d leave you so far behind you’d think you started out alone. Fortunately we are not in a hurry.”

“Is it possible, Bub?” cried Stanley, his eyes wide open.

“It is,” solemnly assured Bub. “When we start off just watch how Abner seems to take it easy but still gets over the ground, favoring himself at every step and never wasting a step. Don’t watch me, watch him. I’m more wasteful of my strength. Don’t you know that you often have to trot a few steps to get up with us?”

“Yes, that is so,” slowly admitted Stanley. “I’d not thought of it before, but I remember now you two were always just a bit ahead. I’ll watch Abner and profit by it.”

The object of the last remark now called them to join him, announcing it was time to return. “We’ll go back to camp.” Then to Stanley, “It’ll give ye a chance to pick up our back trail and see how easy it is to go down the mountain the way ye come up.”

Stanley smiled good naturedly and cheerfully replied, “No, Mr. Whitten, it will allow me a chance to learn something that is best learned by experience.”

​“Stop that mistering me,” grumbled Abner, yet much pleased with Stanley’s frank admission. “Mebbe we can teach ye something after all. Seems if he was improving, Bub.”

“He picks up every minute,” heartily cried Bub, glad to give his friend a boost. “Now for the homeward trail.”

Stanley happened to be the first to find the end of the blaze and as he gazed down the slope he was amazed. It did not seem possible that the white spots on the trees could indicate the path they made in ascending. Where was the ridge they had so easily traversed? Gone. Aside from the blazed trail there was nothing to indicate Where they should descend. What seemed to be a ridge led off at different places and split up into other ridges, any of which might be the right one so far as Stanley could determine. It was all open before them; in coming up they had had the black growth to aim at.

“It beats me,” he cried, rubbing his head in perplexity.

“Turn ’round and look back,” suggested Abner.

He did so. “Why, it’s our ridge; the way is perfectly plain,” he cried. And he wheeled quickly as if expecting to catch the ledge as ​obviously extending downward. Again it had vanished.

“It is so plain to ascend that you are not blazing the lower side of the trees,” he remarked, on noticing Abner’s hatchet thrust in his belt.

“That’s it,” confirmed Abner. “When we git to the bottom I’ll leave a mark to show me what ridge to take.”

“If you don’t cruise the next section you can’t cut it this fall,” said Stanley.

“Time enough to cut it in the next few years,” replied Abner. “If it wan’t fer fires and windfalls I’d let this go over several years. As it is we’ve got to begin gitting it out. If it wan’t that important I’d not bother with it on this trip.”

“It has only taken a day,” reminded Stanley.

“But I ain’t made my estimates on how much equipment we’ll need, or how many hosses and men we’ll need; or how much can be-cut without crowding the Kennebec mills too hard. A cruiser has to keep all those things in mind. What the boss wants to know first is, How big a camp is necessary?”

“This is the end of the trail, and here is the ledge I stood on when you told me to ​look across country,” proudly announced Stanley.

As Abner paused beside him, gazing out over the spruce and sprinkle of birch, Bub alarmed them by crying, “See, Abner! Look! The smoke!”

“Our camp fire,” said Stanley, not catching the import of Bub’s excitement.

Abner whipped out his glasses and gazed earnestly for a minute.

“You’re overlooking,” cried Bub, throwing forward his rifle. “Look right down below us. See that movement in the bushes? It’s Big Nick following our trail.”

Almost as he finished there came a whip-like report down below the ledge and Bub’s hair was fanned by the passing of a bullet.

“Shoot! shoot!” yelled Abner, as a figure of a man, bowed over as it made away, met their eyes. With one accord Bub and the cruiser threw up their rifles and pulled the trigger. But no cartridge exploded. Frantically working the levers the two tried again.

“Not a shot in either gun,” foamed Abner.

“Great Scott!” faltered Stanley. “I forgot to load them after cleaning them.”

Abner had no time for words. Throwing aside his rifle he sprang forward.

​“He’s going to set a back fire,” cried Bub. “Nick has started his at the edge of the swamp, intending to burn up the mountain, not only destroying our timber but our lives. Git busy over by that boulder and start a blaze. For your life don’t let it eat up the mountain.”

It was now near sun-down and the wind fortunately had died out. From the swamp the frightened chorus of animal voices began to be heard, while rabbits, squirrels and several lynx dashed into view, the hunting instinct in the cats and the fear in the others all being lost in the greater fear of that terrible thing—fire.

As Stanley struck his match a noble buck swiftly passed near him, trying to circle the mountain and find water.

Thus the three men worked, trampling and beating out the tongues that sought to creep upward; and meanwhile the yellow cloud in front grew taller and was often punctuated with pillars of red.

“Look out for the ends!” roared Abner, as their efforts finally resulted in a racing streak of opposing flames that promised to rescue them from their pen.

This advice was timely. If the back fire was allowed to creep about the base of the ​mountain it would eat upward and end in raging at their backs.

Fortunately for them the swamp land in front was crescent in shape, its horns reaching almost to the ledges. The back fire quickly reached the half-breed’s conflagration and died down and the ends of the fiery menace were quickly subdued.

“Boys,” Abner panted; “ye’ve had a mighty narrer escape. If it comes nat’ral to ye to say prayers at night, ye’d better throw in a few thanks fer to-day. I’m going to fer one. But by jing! I’d had that Nick if I’d had a bullet. The sight was just between his shoulders.”

“Would you have killed him?” cried Stanley in a horrified voice.

“Would I have killed him?” roared Abner. Then speaking very daintily, “O no. I’d write a letter to the city and ask them to send up a policeman to arrest him for burning me up.” Then exploding again, “Why, younker, do ye s’pose there’s a man in the woods but what would shoot him down like a mad wolf if he caught him trying to burn up timber, let alone trying to burn up men?”

“Well, he failed and I’m glad you didn’t kill him,” said Stanley.

​

Thus the three worked, trampling and beating

See page 163

​“So am I,” grinned Bub through his mask of ashes and smoke. “It will give him another chance to build fires and shoot me.”

“Let us hope he’ll be defeated without any of us killing him,” said Stanley. “Of course, if it came to choosing between him and either of you I’d shoot him myself.”

“Ye’ll do mighty little shooting if ye keep the guns unloaded,” reminded Abner.

“Well, if we ain’t in a pickle,” half-sobbed Bub, glancing quickly and fearfully about.

“What d’ye mean? Speak out!” demanded Abner, shaking him by the collar.

“Don’t you see! Nick has been to our camp. Of course he stole everything he could lay his hands to, including our ammunition. We haven’t a single shot to defend ourselves with. He can pick us off one at a time and run no chance of being hurt. He knows we haven’t any bullets, by our not shooting him.”

Crack! again sounded the whip-like report, and Abner’s hat leaped from his head.

Crack! sounded the half-breed’s rifle for the third time and Stanley felt something caress his hair with a whining noise.

CHAPTER TEN

THE PURSUIT

Pulling his young companions from the danger zone on the ledge Abner led the way to the northeast, taking great care to keep under cover.

“It’s no use scouting for ammunition at the camp,” he said. “For if that devil didn’t take all the cartridges they’ve been destroyed by the fire. Lucky we took our blankets and some grub, else we’d sleep pretty cold to-night.”

“Where are we aiming for?” asked Bub, his good-natured face new pale with fear as he remembered Wilson’s warning at the mills—that if Big Nick ever caught him in the woods, where every man was a law unto himself, he would even all scores.

“I want to fetch up Hood Mountain,” said Abner. “The fire warden will have ammunition and once we git that we’ll turn the tables on Mister Nick. But be careful to keep covered. And you,” to Stanley, “do as I do and bend low. If that varmint sees a bush move he’ll plug away at it.”

​“Will he follow us?” whispered Stanley, to whom such cold-blooded behavior seemed impossible even in Big Nick.

“Ain’t he tried to kill each of us so far?” returned Abner, talking between his teeth.

“He’ll chase us as long as there is light to follow our trail,” panted Bub. “I wish we could strike some ledge where we’d leave no trail.”

“We can’t take to a ledge till we git a lead on him,” said Abner.

“It is hard work for me to believe he is so bloodthirsty,” declared Stanley, straightening to relieve his cramped muscles. As if to assure him to the contrary a bullet whistled close to his side.

“Keep down and sprint!” commanded Abner, his eyes flaming in helpless anger. “That butcher will chase us till we strike the warden’s. Don’t ye understand his life may be at stake as well as ourn? He intended to have the fire burn us up together with the timber. We didn’t camp up there as he expected when he found we’d taken our blankets and feed. We came back before he got things going nicely and discovered him. Then he knew that once we got clear of the woods and told how he set a fire there wouldn’t be a hand in ​northern Maine but what would be against him, except as ye allow fer Nace and his gang, what’s urging him on in his deviltry. He’d got to stop us testifying agin him; else someone up here would shoot him on sight, or he’d be taken to the settlement and given a long term of years. He must kill us or always keep in hiding. And he knows the Great Northern Lumber and Paper company has a long arm and will spend no end of money to trail him even to Alberta. It’s our lives or his life or freedom.”

As he flung this chilling information over his stooped shoulder he was rapidly taking a zig-zag course away from the mountain so that he might have more room for his fearful game of hide and seek. More than once as he softly sped along he cast a wistful gaze at the western horizon and prayed for night.

Thoroughly alarmed the two youths hung at his heels, darting along like so many shadows. And each knew that behind them, coming hardly less swiftly, was the bowed form of the half-breed hunter, only now he was hunting men. Far ahead, bathed in shifting shadows at its base, illumined by the setting sun at its top, rose Hood mountain. This was Abner’s objective point, but the three knew it could not ​be made that night, and each feared that their pursuer would anticipate their purpose and either overtake them or head them off. Again, he could strike his assassin’s blow from a distance. All he would need to complete his murderous purpose was a fleeting glimpse of them as they were forced to cross a clearing. It was to lessen his deadly range of view that Abner sought to take advantage of every natural cover and repeatedly warned his young companions to bend low in running.

Twilight now began to veil the forest with thin shadows and Abner sighed in half relief as he noted the gathering obscurity. They were moving noiselessly now and at a much slower pace. Occasionally some wild thing of the wood sounded a faint alarm as it scuttled away from the silent passerby, but beyond this and the natural calls of the evening woods, peace and quiet brooded over the little drama.

The hermit thrush sweetly began a plaintive recital, oblivious of the straining forms gliding by her little home, but Stanley this time had no room in his thoughts for admiration or reverie.

“Ding them birds!” hoarsely complained Abner as some member of the feathered family took fright at the incautious tread of Stanley ​and blundered away, leaving a trail of te11-tale sounds.

Somewhere in the rear rang out the clear report of the half-breed’s rifle as he caught the direction of the sound and fired on chance.

“Two can play at that game,” choked Bub, bending as he ran and picking up a rock. Saying this he paused only long enough to hurl the same far off to the right, where its crashing through a clump of trees deceived the half-breed into firing a shot in that direction.

“Ye can’t fool him twice that way,” informed Abner. “He knew the second he pulled the trigger that he’d been fooled. Now he’ll sprint a little to git nearer and end it.”

The last three words caused cold shivers to race up and down Stanley’s spine. He recalled Bub’s words, to the effect that they would find it exciting in the woods, and he regretted his boastful assertion that no situation could be too intense for him. The job with the loading gang appealed to him now as being exceedingly attractive and even the persecution of Gilvey was softened down to a mild annoyance. How secure had been the boarding-house, how kindly the daily associations at the mill.

“Bub” he groaned, “I’m scared about to death.”

​“I’m scareder than you are,” confessed Bub, with a painful catch in his voice.

“Stop chattering and save yer wind fer running,” commanded Abner, suddenly turning into some spruce and darting away at right angles.

For several minutes the three made good time, as the spruce was a portion of a mixed growth, one of those isolated islands of trees that had never known the blow of an axe. Despite the semi-darkness the fugitives could proceed at full speed, the aisles stretching roomy and clear before them. It had one drawback, however; it led towards the northern shoulder of Mt. Jim, and Abner did not care to be penned up against the mountain. Accordingly he soon turned again into the more tangled growth, where if the path was rougher and the pace slower it still allowed of progress in the right direction. If it had been any but Big Nick the veteran cruiser would have lost him long before this. But Nick, like Noisy Charlie, was not to be deceived by the ordinary deceptions of a woodsman and hounded his prey most skillfully.

“Can’t we stop and hide somewhere?” panted Stanley, his heart drumming painfully against his ribs.

​“Not yet,” replied Abner’s low voice. “We must take every advantage of the darkness. Even Old Nick, let alone his child in the rear, can’t foller us once it gits black. Thank the Lawd the moon won’t come up till about two o’clock in the morning and being a new one won’t give much light.”

A lynx screamed at Stanley’s right and with a smothered cry he leaped violently and with much noise from his course. Almost instantly the quietude of the forest was shattered by the menacing crack of the rifle.

“Do that once or twice more and we’ll stop running forever,” warned Abner, with a sob in his voice. “I heard that piece of lead.”

“We’ve lost all the ground we’d gained,” reproached Bub in a whimpering tone. “He’ll just cut right across and save all the twisting and turning we’ve made.”

“I was startled,” muttered Stanley, pressing a hand to his aching side.

“No matter what happens, ye’ve only got Nick to fear,” warned Abner.

“Let’s stop and hide and pounce upon him as he passes,” desperately suggested Stanley.

Bub exclaimed impatiently, “Do you suppose he’d pass? He’d stalk us as he would a deer and shoot us down from a distance. When we ​hide it must be where he won’t think of passing.”

“Now move slowly and quietly for yer lives,” cautioned Abner in a whisper. “Take hold of Bub’s hand so ye won’t stumble, Reddy, and lift yer feet clear of the ground.”

With this warning he began leading the way towards the west, moving with painful deliberation. Stanley, keyed up to the highest tension, suddenly found he had eyes in his feet and no dead limb, or stone, was disturbed by him as he crept along close to Bub.

“He’s making for the ledges,” murmured Bub.

It was still early evening, and, although the outlines of the surrounding mountains were plainly visible against the sky, darkness now completely smothered the lower stretches of woods and the trio had no fear of detection in walking upright. As Bub had surmised Abner was making for the heaped up boulders that marked the beginning of the mountain. Knowing that it would be impossible to proceed much farther without a breathing spell he selected this rough environment as affording the best hiding place and the most secure retreat if they should be discovered.

Now lichen covered rocks warned them they ​had reached the foundations of the gloomy heights above, and moving more by instinct than by any of his senses Abner twisted and turned among the ever growing boulders until he was brought up by a towering ledge. Skirting along the base of this he suddenly halted and breathed a deep sigh of relief.

“I’ve found what I expected, a small cave,” he whispered. “Now if there ain’t any of Stanley’s bears inside we’ll take a little rest. Both of ye stand in the opening, ’cause I’ve got to strike a light, if only for a second. And it won’t do to let Nick see a glimmer.”

Crowding close behind him to mask the twinkling point of flame the boys waited anxiously. Stanley firmly expected to hear a roar and be run down by an infuriated bear. Since his experience with the cubs he had associated all holes in rocks with gleaming eyes and infuriated black forms.

However, he was now destined to be gratefully disappointed, for immediately after the tiny scratching sound the match was extinguished and Abner invited, “Come in. He couldn’t git us in here in a million years. The passage turns almost at right angles and there’s just enough room for comfort.”

“Then we’ve beaten him,” joyously ​exclaimed Stanley, crowding forward and throwing himself on the rocky floor and indulging in the luxury of stretching out at full length.

“Not so loud and fast,” growled Abner. “He can’t git us in here, but if he knows we’re here we can’t git out. It’s like being cornered in a checker game, when ye have the double corner and t’other feller has a king and ye keep moving back and forth. Only, it’s worse, ’cause we’ve got to git out.”

“But why can’t we stay here till he gets tired, or believes we have escaped?” protested Stanley.

“Water,” briefly replied Abner.

“It’s only a matter of hours when you’d face all the Nicks in the woods for the sake of getting a drink,” supplemented Bub, gloomily.

“I was hoping we could remain,” lamented Stanley.

“We must dig out as soon as the moon rises. If Nick is as cute as I give credit fer being he’ll suspect some such trick and instead of trying to find us in the dark he’ll push right ahead to the foot of Hood Mountain and as soon as it begins to git light will beat back, trying to head us off.”

“Then we’ve let him get between us and our only place of refuge,” muttered Stanley.

​“We’ve had to step aside and let him git between and us and the fire warden’s, if that’s what ye mean,” mumbled Abner.

“I never expected to run into anything like this,” declared Stanley.

“My son, you mean you’ve found it exciting enough,” soberly suggested Bub.

“Why! it’s ridiculous,” complained Stanley. “It’s as bad as the old days of Indian warfare. We’ll be scalped the next thing we know.”

“It wouldn’t pay to bother with my head covering,” sourly returned Abner. “But scalping, or no scalping, I’m going to eat. Lawd! what fools we was we didn’t take along more grub.”

Bub unrolled the provisions and by the sense of touch alone enumerated, “Bread, bacon and coffee. We have no water to make coffee with and if we had we would not dare build a fire. I haven’t reached the point yet where I care for uncooked bacon. That brings us down to bread. What would you like for lunch, Mister Whitten?”

“Ye just stop that funning,” growled Abner. “To think of being chased and shot to pieces and not be allowed to eat.” '

“I’m waiting to take your order, Mister Whitten,” politely informed Bub.

​“Quit, or I’ll larrup ye,” angrily commanded Abner, to whom the need of food now outweighed all dangers. “Gimme a piece of bread.”

“And you, Mister Malcolm?” persisted Bub.

Despite his fears Stanley was forced to smile in a ghastly fashion and reached out a groping hand for his portion of the rations.

“We not only will be shot and die of thirst, but we’ll starve to death,” whispered Stanley to Bub between mouthfuls of the dry crust.

“No woodsman will starve in the woods,” returned Bub in an undertone. “That is, if he is allowed to forage for food. He might starve in the city if he didn’t have any money, but there’s always stuff to eat and keep alive on in the woods.”

“But what if he can’t kill any game or catch any fish?” moodily inquired Stanley.

“Then he can live on rock lichens, or reindeer lichens,” murmured Bub. “There’s lots of nourishment in them. One of the Arctic explorers saved his life by eating reindeer lichens; Franklin, I believe. You’ll find them everywhere in the woods. Rock lichens are on rocks of course. Funny how nature starts in the minute there’s a rock heap and tries to cover it up with lichens. Then after it’s ​covered up the mosses creep in and then after they’ve decayed enough you get a little soil and a bird drops a seed and up comes a tree. Then there’s roots and berries in their season, and, O lots of things a fellow can keep a-going on. As for water, a woodsman will find it almost anywhere and if he can’t he’ll use the Indian cucumber. I was lost a week upon the Musquacook once without any provisions, but I wagged along and didn’t lose any flesh to speak of. On the last day, I remember, I knocked over a booby—”

“Can’t ye find something besides partridge to gossip about?” groaned Abner. “I vum! to hear ye makes my mouth water so I fergit I’m thirsty. If I was back at the settlement I’d order a hundred dollars’ wurth of ham’n eggs.”

“I’d have a reg’lar hotel dinner,” enthusiastically declared Bub. “I’d start in with soup and fish and then have roast beef, rare, with green corn on the cob and all the fixings, same’s I had in Portland once, and at the end I’d call for pie and—”

“Quit it, ye young torment! Quit it, or I’ll lambast ye; I may be shot by Big Nick, but I vum! I won’t submit to being tortured by any younker.”

​“What was the hardest time you ever had, Abner?” mischievously asked Bub, nudging Stanley.

“It was when I had to make a soup out of a crow,” gloomily replied Abner. “Crows ain’t poison, but they was never intended fer polite fodder. The first day it tasted good, ’cause I was starving. But on the fourth day I begin to git weary of it. And on the fifth—Say, ye young scallywag, didn’t I tell ye up on the Allagash never to ask fer that yarn agin?”

“These rocks are getting hard,” remarked Stanley, now somewhat recovered from his recent exertions.

“Might be a good plan if ye’d spread down yer blankets,” sarcastically observed Abner. “I did.”

Stanley blushed under the cover of the darkness and silently unrolled his blankets. It had not occurred to him to soften his couch by their means.

“If you had a nice fat sandwich I wonder if you’d have to be told to eat it,” snickered Bub.

“I say, quit talking about food,” sternly commanded Abner. “I remember once I went to a circus in Bangor and the hotel people charged me seventy-five cents for a meal and I ​ate nothing but pertaters, and pertaters was then selling fer fifty cents a bushel. What d’ye think of that fer a swindle? I went to the feller behind the desk and told him I wanted enough pertaters to make up a bushel’n a half, seeing as how I’d paid seventy-five cents, and he only laffed at me. No circuses or hotels git any more of my money.”

Bub chuckled at Abner’s inability to abandon the very subject that tortured him to think of. Stanley, less mercurial than the other, remained silent, his thoughts running along the dramatic events of the last few hours. As silence fell on the trio each began to read the story told by the night sounds. To Stanley the chorus was more beautiful than ever, while the wilder and more unwholesome notes failed to incite the old fear. He passed over the shriek of the great horned owl with a frown, as he would try to ignore a discord in an otherwise sweet melody.

To Abner and Bub the night songs and voices were of practical worth. The lynx had missed his prey and was screaming in rage. The porcupine, fearless beneath his panoply of spears, was one of the few wood folks who did not bother to practice secrecy, and the sprawling step and crackling limbs emanated from his nocturnal prowlings and did not evidence the ​presence of a bear. The veteran and Bub interpreted each sound with mechanical ease. Then Abner, half rising, touched Bub lightly.

Bub returned the signal and held his breath.

“What do you hear?” murmured Stanley in Abner’s ear, his heart renewing its thumping as he sensed the others’ rigid apprehension.

“It’s what we don’t hear,” murmured Abner. “Be absolutely silent for yer life. Something has stopped the birds’ songs.”

Outside, the moon was beginning to scatter a faint glow over the scene. With a warning pressure for them to remain quiet Abner silently made his way to the opening. Then reaching back he touched Bub’s leg. The youth as noiselessly joined him. In front a huge rock out the sky-line. On top of this was the vague figure of a man.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

STANLEY MEETS THE ENEMY

For several moments the man and the youths remained motionless, their eyes focused on the grim silhouette. They had no doubt but what it was Big Nick, and a sinister phase of his pose was the manner in which he held his rifle, as if prepared to shoot at a second’s notice.

Gently edging backwards Abner indicated for the youths to follow him. Then he softly whispered, “In some way he is led to believe we turned in this direction. I had expected he’d make for the mountain and try to cut us off in the morning.”

“What are we to do?” murmured Bub, all of his good humor deserting him as he pictured the silent form on the rock.

“We’ll lie low for a bit, but we must git out of here before the moon crawls any higher,” replied Abner.

“Does he know we are near here?” asked Stanley, expecting every moment to have the half-breed creep into the narrow passage.

“He’s puzzled,” said Abner. “He doesn’t ​think we are where we can see him, else he wouldn’t stand up there on that rock. Yet he believes he is on our trail.”

Stanley’s teeth chattered at the boldness of his thought, and he said, “Let’s sneak out and get near enough to jump him. I’m tired of being chased as if I were a poor wild thing.”

“That’s it; let’s take the lead. He won’t be looking for it and we’ll never get a chance at him in the day time,” urged Bub, whose fears were driving him desperate.

“Younkers, I opine ye’ve got the right of it. It’s now or never,” agreed Abner, beginning to steal back to the opening.

But the first stealthy glimpse revealed the half-breed had disappeared. He might be within a few feet of the hiding place, but he was no longer on the rock.

“These ledges will be losing some of their darkness in a little while,” reminded Bub, to whom the faintly illumined rock piles appeared to be bathed in brightest light.

“And Big Nick can see like a cat in the night,” regretted Abner. “Yas, I guess we’d better be moving. For if he really believes we’re hid up ’round here he’ll stick till he starves us out. If we can git to the woods we ​can worm our way quite a distance before daylight.”

“Shall I lead the way?” asked Bub.

“No, sirree! Let yer Uncle Abner take the lead,” replied the veteran, slowly thrusting his head from the opening.

Fortunately the ledge at this point was overhanging and no rays of moonlight had succeeded as yet in penetrating to the mouth of the cave. But a few feet from the ledge was an open space of some fifty feet which must be crossed before the ink-like depths of the woods could be gained. The average man would have been able to see nothing in the gloom, but Abner knew Big Nick’s keen eyes would ferret them out in a twinkling of the eye should they move carelessly across this danger belt.

His instructions were few and emphatic. He was to lead off with Stanley second and Bub drawing up the rear. Each was to move in keeping with Abner’s cautious advance and at the slightest signal from him each was to remain motionless.

The fifty feet seemed to require a century to traverse in Stanley’s estimation. Once when about half way of the distance Abner touched Stanley’s head and came to a top. Stanley immediately repeated the signal to ​Bub, and the three might have been so many pieces of rock, scattered over the ledge. Stanley felt an almost irresistible impulse to yell out and make one try for the woods. A stick snapped on their immediate left and with painful carefulness Stanley turned his head. He was positive he could detect the glitter of the half-breed’s eyes and was as equally sure that they had been discovered. Still Abner made no move forward and Stanley next feared that the thumping of his heart would be heard by the enemy and betray their position. The glittering eyes, in the meanwhile, ascended a tree and the youth knew it was but some creature seeking a refuge like themselves, or else hunting victims like Big Nick.

A second stick snapped, ever so lightly and the three knew it must be Nick’s moccasined step. It evidenced one thing to Abner; the half-breed was abandoning some of his caution, evidently believing his prey was not in that vicinity. Then something like a shadow floated from the spruce, became fixed to the face of the ledge, remained immovable, then detached itself and stole forward.

With a shiver of relief Abner advanced a notch. If they had waited but a few moments they would have been penned up in the cave. ​Then the old man began to move more swiftly. He remembered their lunch. Should the half-breed enter their late hiding place he would be sure to discover the bread crumbs. It was absolutely necessary for the three to reach the shelter of the woods before their pursuer emerged from the cave.

The youths quickly caught the old man’s thought because of his haste to gain cover. Stanley figured it out only in a partial manner, but Bub was quick to weigh the situation. He pushed Stanley gently to indicate the need of speed, and then tapped him warningly, fearing the inexperience of his friend would divulge their presence. But for once Stanley made no blunders and followed Abner’s snake-like movements with the utmost care. Now the leader was half beneath the boughs of a spruce when Bub pressed Stanley’s leg as if to halt him. The signal was instantly telegraphed to Abner and the old man promptly abided by Bub’s judgment and became motionless. Bub had heard a pebble rattle behind him and knew it announced the approach of Nick.

Stanley’s heart pounded fiercely and his lungs seemed to be filled with fire. He sought to hold his breath and then was compelled to exhale. He was positive he had betrayed his ​friends to the common foe and hugged closer into the rock and awaited the fatal shot.

But nothing happened, and at last Bub gave the signal to advance, and with infinite care the last few feet were left behind and the three friends found themselves crouching in Stygian darkness.

“He knows we were here but a short time ago,” Abner whispered between the two bowed heads. “He knows we couldn’t have moved far without making a noise. Remember, a single sound will mean a shot. Now follow me.”

With the same deliberation Abner felt his way through the forest. Never once did his foot descend so that even Stanley behind him could hear it. Once their way was blocked by a mass of alders, and Abner retraced his steps towards the foe until both Stanley and Bub began to feel an icy tickling about the roots of the hair.

Fully a half an hour passed before Abner came to a halt and drew them close to him. “I think I heard a rustle off to the left. It might have been some bird, or animal, but I believe it is Nick. If so, he is moving parallel to us and will weave back and forth in an effort to cover considerable territory. I’d strike directly ​away from him if not for drawing away from Hood mountain. When morning breaks, as it will very soon, I want to be within reach of it. On the other hand, if we go straight ahead we stand a chance of his catching up with us.”

“I say go ahead,” whispered Bub.

“My vote is the same,” added Stanley.

“All right,” murmured Abner. “Ye have a say in it as much as I do. As there ain’t any best way it’s toss up a cent which is the best thing to do.”

“If worst comes to worst we could start a back fire and burn him out,” suggested Stanley.

“The very thing,” urged Bub, eagerly. “Once we put a wall of flame and smoke between us he will be so busy saving his own bacon that he won’t think of chasing us. Couldn’t it be done, Abner?”

“It might, if he didn’t shoot while we was starting it,” admitted Abner; “but these ain’t my trees to burn.”

“Surely you’d burn them to save our lives,” softly exclaimed Stanley.

“I’d burn every one in Maine to save the lives of ye two,” assured Abner. “But I wouldn’t burn ’em to save my own skin. I ain’t got no right to.”

​“Then you won’t burn them to save mine,” firmly declared Stanley.

“Nor mine,” cheerfully added Bub.

“I’d do it in a second to save ye, only I fear it wouldn’t work,” said Abner. “But let’s leave it be till we see where we’re at. See the East is beginning to show a streak of grey.”

“I can’t see it,” murmured Stanley.

“I can,” said Bub. “Soon you’ll hear some birds sound the first morning note. Then the whole chorus will break out, and then up comes the sun and along comes old Nick.”

The unexpected finale caused a flicker of a smile on Stanley’s set lips and he nodded approvingly at Bub’s undismayed spirit.

Very shortly the eastern horizon took on patches of grey in places, but so gradually that Stanley could not trace the change at first. Then without any warning a shaft of yellow shot through the somber mass and quickly became old gold, as if some giant smith were heating it red hot. Then a fan of glorious radiance flickered to the zenith and the sun was about to say “good morning.”

Taking advantage of the first streak of light Abner wheeled slowly about to get his bearings. He frowned at discovering he had ​wandered outside of his intended line of approach and must beat back would he reach the warden’s abode before nightfall.

“Why not let us separate, each making for the top of the mountain,” suggested Stanley, lowering his eyes.

“What is the matter?” asked Abner suspiciously.

“Why do you stand on one foot?” demanded Bub, giving him a twirl.

“By jing! he’s sprained his ankle and is trying to git us to go and quit him,” savagely announced Abner.

Stanley tried to defend himself, saying he knew he could make the mountain as quickly as either of the others, and concluded by declaring his ankle hurt him only a little. Abner apparently heard nothing that he said, but, forcing him to sit, quickly removed the high boot and examined the sore member. To his great joy he found it was only a minor strain and ripping a strip from his blanket soon had it bandaged in workman-like manner.

“There! that’ll last till we reach the warden’s if ye favor it,” pronounced Abner. “And don’t suggest any more of these self-sacrificing games agin. I expect ye two to stick by me and ye must expect us two to stand ​by ye; else there ain’t no truth in the woods and no good in a woodsman.”

“Lean on my shoulder as much as you can,” invited Bub. “Now let’s put the best foot forward.”

This time Abner made the youths lead the way while he brought up the rear. He knew the danger was behind them and he trusted to Bub to pick a quiet trail now that the morning light was filtering through the trees to help them. And as Bub had said the full galaxy of forest singers now, tuned up and broke into one marvelous harmony in which, unlike the evening festival, naught but love notes were heard.

But even with the dawning light the fugitives’ progress continued slow, Stanley’s ankle acting as a brake on their flight. Each knew that the half-breed was taking two steps to their one and must soon be abreast if not in advance of them. Once he reached high ground and scrutinized the low lands with his keen gaze he could not fail to detect their approach, while to intercept them would be an easy task.

The fatigue of the previous day and night was beginning to tell also on Abner’s hardy frame. The average man of his years would think only of taking his ease and it was a ​wonderful accomplishment in the city bred boy’s estimation that the veteran could so long defy exhaustion and set the pace for the elastic Bub. Incidentally, it was another lesson for him to ponder over—what nature can and will do for those who do not desert her.

As he became dulled to the danger ever dogging their heels Stanley found himself admiring the autumnal effect presented by the reddish glow on scattered maples, now half in bud. Isolated patches of hard wood trees were ever giving an atmosphere of October to the landscape, only to be contradicted at the next step by the delicate light green of birch and elm.

“Hi! go ’round the knoll; not up over it,” warned Abner in a low voice, as Bub was mechanically breasting a slight rise.

Bub blushed at the rebuke, for like Stanley his wits had been deadened by weariness and familiarity with the situation.

“I don’t think he’s behind us,” he feebly defended, but obeying the old man’s order.

“Wait a minute and we’ll try and find out,” muttered Abner, creeping to the top of the knoll and cautiously gaining a coign of vantage. After a few moments he softly invited, “Crawl up ’side of me, but keep low. Now ​watch that small opening back there and look sharp.”

The youths did as directed, the small area being dimly discernible. With straining eyes they looked, until Stanley could imagine all sorts of forms and figures crossing the little glade. Then all three were cast in a rigid mould as a dark blotch swiftly crept from cover to cover.

“Come,” said Abner briefly. “I was hoping he was farther to the west. In looking back I picked out that opening as the one spot where he might show up if he was directly behind us.”

Gritting his teeth Stanley sought to forget his lame ankle and resolutely accommodated his steps to the now rapid advance of his companions. Hood mountain seemed as far away as ever and the youth knew that under the most favorable circumstances its summit could not be conquered till afternoon.

“Let’s have a drink,” said Abner, leading the way to a bubbling stream.

Several precious minutes were spent in this refreshment but each felt new strength as he rose to continue the journey.

Then Stanley forgot about his ankle, his whole system seemed benumbed and he stalked ​along with the mechanical gait of an automaton. He gazed neither to the right or left, nor did he hear the matutinal chorus about him. It seemed as if he was walking in a dream, the forms of his two companions being vague and unreal. Nor did he sense any fear.

Abner was quick to observe his condition and nudged Bub slyly. So long as the youth could walk, so long would they lead him along, but the veteran cruiser had seen men walk like this before, after being lost in the woods, and he knew what the result must be.

It came suddenly. Stanley dropped in his tracks and while not unconscious was thoroughly indifferent to the pleadings of his friends.

For nearly an hour the three remained in the covert, waiting for him to emerge from his lethargy. Finally he seemed to sense that he was holding the others back, and, shaking himself, advised, “You two go on ahead. It’s the best thing for all of us. I’m done up and must rest. If you leave me you can make the warden’s in double quick time, procure some ammunition and come back for me. Nick couldn’t find me in a year. “I’ll just remain quiet and rest.”

​“We can’t leave you,” whimpered Bub.

“It’s the only way you can help me,” stoutly insisted Stanley.

Abner rubbed his chin thoughtfully and was silent for a few moments. Then to Bub’s surprise and Stanley’s joy he decided, “It’s the only thing to do. Nick will pass him by. We’ll blaze our trail with a little noise so he’ll follow us on the trot; then we’ll race him for the mountain. And once I git my hand on a cartridge—Wal!”

“Do you want my knife?” asked Bub, hungry to do something for Stanley.

“No; cut me a stout cudgel,” replied Stanley.

“I’ll fix ye a daisy,” said Abner, assailing an oak bough. This he deftly trimmed into a formidable club and then shaking Stanley’s hand turned abruptly away.

“I hate like sin to do it,” sobbed Bub. “Why can’t I stay with you?”

“No! no! If you would help, go,” urged Stanley. “If Nick caught a glimpse of Abner making it alone he would know we two were back here. If he sees the two he will take it for granted I am with you, or near you. Believe me, Bub, I run less danger than you do.”

A low whistle from Abner warned Bub he ​must be going, and silently wringing his friend by the hand he darted silently away.

Stanley’s resting place was an ideal one for concealment. A circle of stunted growth completely masked his bed of moss, and one might pass within two feet of him and not suspect his presence. With a sigh of relief he turned his back towards the rising sun and closed his eyes. He could not tell what aroused him; it could not have been a noise, he dreamily told himself, and yet some influence had jolted him from a dreamless slumber. As his wits cleared he was conscious of a feeling of fear. He remained motionless and sought to interpret it. He had read of people becoming uneasy when stared at by unseen eyes. It was like that, and yet different. He did not feel as if someone were watching him, but he did sense an immediate danger. His inner self had warned him to mount guard against some evil.

It seemed as it must be at his very side and it was with much quaking and apprehension that he slowly turned his head and swept the circuit of his small retreat. He was alone.

He sighed softly in relief and then began to believe that the danger must be just on the other side of the bushes. He even picked out the point from which the evil influence seemed ​to radiate, and with the utmost caution moved his head in that direction. The boughs effectually screened the outside world, except as his head, resting on the moss, allowed his feverish eyes to peer out beneath them. Within a few inches of his nose were a pair of moose-hide moccasins, but not like those worn by Noisy Charlie. As one fascinated he stared at the immovable footgear. Then he closed his eyes, fearing the impact of his gaze would arouse the owner of the feet into a realization that one of his intended victims was near.

There was something so sinister in the absolute quiet of the figure outside, something so animal—like in its suspicious rigidity, that Stanley knew the half-breed sensed his presence but did not know where to look for him. Something certainly had stayed his pursuit of Abner and Bub. Some sixth sense, perhaps possessed by aboriginal people as well as animals, was telling him he was not alone in that little space. And Stanley held his breath till it seemed his lungs would burst.

Possiby his deep exhalation might have revealed him to his enemy if the half-breed had not changed his position just as the pent-up air was released. Then the youth opened his eyes and gazed again. As Nick shifted his ​position Stanley could now see up to his waist, his view including the butt of the rifle resting under the right arm, as the barrel lay in the left hand, ready for instant use.

Edging back Stanley noiselessly rose to a sitting posture and grasped his club. As desperation gave him a false courage he found himself desiring to meet the climax and have it over with. He felt as if he must give a loud cry and spring forth and grapple with the bronzed figure. He mechanically recalled how in his childhood, when playing hide and seek, his nerves got the best of him in his hiding place and he would rush into the arms of the seeker before his retreat had been suspected. He felt the same impulse now and hit his lip in holding himself back.

At last as the tensity of waiting grew upon him he gradually rose to his feet, forced to stand only half erect that his head might escape the roof of his bower.

A furious anger began to fill his heart, incited by fear. He was like a lynx cornered, desperate enough to face any odds, and his fingers grew benumbed as they strained in clutching the cudgel.

Although his movements had made no noise that he could sense Nick whirled about quickly, ​his eyes flaming as they swept each bush and tree. Something was warning the half-breed that he, too, was in danger, and he raised the rifle to shoot.

With a wild desire to know the worst Stanley gently picked a pencil from his pocket and taking advantage of an opening in his roof flipped it upward and outward. In striking it made a slight sound, and as quick as a flash the half-breed fired in that direction.

With a maddened roar Stanley leaped from his hiding place and before the half-breed could shift his weapon the heavy club descended and knocked him staggering into the bushes. Then, yelling loud in his frenzy Stanley dashed away in the direction taken by his companions. It was not until he had covered a half a mile did he realize he had lost the opportunity of disarming his foe.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article  Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.