“who is that man?” asked the boys, as they returned to their supper.
“steve anderson, the camp foreman,” replied peleg.
“but jonson was a great deal the bigger,” declared ted.
“sartain, but without the heart. steve has the heart, his muscles are steel, and every lumberjack west of the rockies knows it. there ain’t a foreman from british columby to ole mex can git so much work outen his men, and never have no shootin’, as steve.”
“and he’s jest as kind as he is brave,” added jennie. “he never goes to the city that he don’t bring me back suthin’, candy or a dress.”
“i should think you would rather have books in a lonesome place like this,” observed phil.
“i would, only,” and the girl flushed, “i can’t read.”
in amazement the young homesteaders looked at jennie, for, though they had heard of people who could not read or write, she was the first one they had ever seen.
“then i’ll teach you,” said ted, impulsively.
“honest?” and jennie’s face shone with delight.
“we’ll begin this very night.”
“i’m afraid we can’t.”
“why?”
“because i haven’t any books.” then her face brightened as an idea came to her and she said:
“perhaps steve has one he’ll lend me.”
“you need not bother to ask him, i have plenty,” smiled ted. “now let’s hurry up with the dishes, so we can begin.”
neither jennie nor her father would listen to their guests helping in such work, however, and the boys passed through the store with peleg and seated themselves on the steps while the storekeeper filled his pipe and smoked.
“it was kind in you to take jennie’s part, but i wouldn’t do it again,” he observed.
“why not?” asked phil and ted, almost in the same breath.
“because you ain’t big enough to back it up. if it hadn’t been for steve, i don’t know what would have happened. i was getting my gun, but if you’d mixed it, ’twould have been hard work telling which was which to shoot.”
“there wouldn’t have been any need to use it,” said the same quiet voice that had terminated the threatened trouble in the store.
“you back, steve? i ain’t heered any train,” declared peleg.
“i sent the jacks down on the engine with jim.” then, with the freedom of the woods, he turned to the boys. “so long as you looked jonson in the eye, you had him. he saw you had the heart to face him and it funked him. men like him are more animal than human, and i suppose you know that if you ever get into a tight place with an animal, the thing to do is to stare it straight in the eyes.”
“will that work with b’ars, steve?” inquired the storekeeper.
“sure, even with grizzlies. but you must keep perfectly still. once you move, you’ve got to act lively. you chaps going to be here long?”
“several days,” replied phil.
“they’re friends of si. come in on 64,” explained peleg.
“and our name is porter; that’s phil and i am ted,” supplemented the latter.
“glad to know you, especially after this evening. if you have time, you must come up to camp, if you’d like to see how we get out logs in washington.”
“indeed we should,” exclaimed both boys.
“then why not go up with me in the morning?”
eagerly the young homesteaders accepted the invitation, and after talking awhile, ted went into the store to instruct jennie in the mysteries of the alphabet, while the foreman went to his cabin, promising to call for them at five in the morning.
“what’s that, a fog-horn?” cried ted, rousing suddenly from his sleep at a series of staccato toots.
“we’re not on the admiral now, stupid! i should think you would know that from the bed,” returned his brother.
“then what was it i heard?”
before phil could express an opinion, there came a timid knocking at their door, and jennie called:
“breakfast is ready and steve is waiting for you on the engine.”
“that is your fog-horn,” phil flashed at his brother; then asked: “why didn’t you call us before?”
“i did, sir, twice.”
“guess this bed isn’t so hard, after all,” commented ted.
“are you up now, mr. porters?” inquired the girl.
“we are,” chorused the boys, and in quick order they descended to the kitchen, ate their breakfasts, and boarded the engine.
“hang on tight, this is no ordinary roadbed,” cautioned the foreman, as the engineer pulled open the throttle. and the young homesteaders soon learned that he spoke the truth.
more like a dory at the mercy of a high sea than a locomotive did the engine seem as it pitched and tossed over the rails, first one side, then the other, sinking sharply, in many cases taking a curve before it righted itself.
“how in the world can you pull a train over this track?” phil asked the engineer, as the locomotive struck a comparatively level stretch.
“this is nothing, what, steve?” grinned the man at the throttle.
“not for us, jim.” then, turning to his guests, the foreman continued: “we can’t take the time to lay much of a roadbed, we move too often. we’ve only been hauling over this course two days, and tomorrow will see us through with it.”
“my eye! but it must use up a lot of rails to change so often,” commented ted.
“it would if we didn’t move them with us. as fast as we finish one course, we pull up the track and lay it in a different direction. that’s why it doesn’t pay to spend much time over the roadbed. but, as jim says, this course is nothing. in some places the inclines are so steep that we are obliged to use cog-wheel tracks. when we stop, you can look at the cog-wheels under the engine. all our cars are equipped with them. they hold the train on the track, no matter how sharp the grade, or steep the pitch.”
three piercing blasts from the whistle drowned the comment on phil’s lips, and with a grinding of brakes, the engine stopped.
“that’s the camp,” announced steve, nodding toward half a dozen cabins from which men of all sizes and descriptions were pouring, ready to begin their day’s work.
“there’s the black swede,” suddenly exclaimed ted, who had been watching the lumber-jacks as they emerged from their log houses. “i’d recognize him anywhere.”
“i thought he’d be here, but i wanted to make sure,” smiled the foreman. “jim, run up the branches and pick up your train. if we are not here when you are ready, don’t wait. we’ll walk; the boys can see more.” and descending from the engine, steve and his young guests set off among the huge tree stumps.
“how many ‘branches’ do you have?” inquired phil.
“four, two on each side. in that way we can clear a tract two thousand feet wide and four thousand feet long with each course of track.”
“what’s that? it sounds like the whir of an airship?” suddenly asked the younger boy.
“that’s the drums unwinding the cables.”
“cables?” exclaimed both young homesteaders, together.
“exactly. we haul the logs by cable, they are too big to handle in any other way. but you will see how it’s done in a few minutes.” for several rods the trio advanced in silence, when they were halted by a lusty “stand clear!”
“tree falling,” explained the foreman, and with his words there sounded a creaking and snapping, then a sharp crackling followed quickly by a mighty crash, as an enormous tree fell to the earth with a shock that made the ground tremble.
“we’ll go on now,” said steve, and in a few minutes they were in sight of the tree just felled, a monster some hundred and twenty feet long and fifteen feet through the butt.
already the lumberjacks were swarming like ants about it, some sawing the trunk into thirty-foot lengths, others trimming off branches.
“why, there’s a platform around that stump,” observed phil, in surprise.
“that is for the sawyers. it would take too long to chop these trees down, so we saw them.”
“but why build a platform? why not stand on the ground?” inquired the boy.
“because the bases of these trees are often rotted so that the timber is worthless for five, sometimes ten, feet,” explained the foreman.
“oh, look, there comes the cable,” cried ted, pointing to where several men were pulling on a lead-wire to which was attached a three-inch twisted steel rope.
quickly the jacks seized the cable and made it fast to a log near the tree just felled.
“ready?” called one of them.
“ready!” replied the others.
putting a tin whistle to his lips, the first man blew three times. from the distance came an answering toot, followed by the mighty whirring. with a sharp hum the cable tightened, and then the huge log, weighing many tons, started through the woods, hurdling everything in its path as it was drawn along with irresistible power.
“we’ll follow the log,” said steve, but so fast did it travel that the boys were obliged to trot to keep pace with it.
after scrambling along for some seven hundred feet, the young homesteaders beheld a donkey engine, puffing, snorting, and rocking on its skids from the exertion, close beside a spur of track upon which stood several flat cars.
when the log was abreast of one of them, the hauling cable was released. others were adjusted, again the “donkey” puffed, and the section of tree trunk was pulled aboard.
“only think of bringing in a log from where that one lay and loading it on a car without a man’s lifting a pound!” exclaimed phil. “wouldn’t it make the eastern lumbermen open their eyes, though! there, you know, mr. anderson, the logs are handled by hand and horses in the woods.”
“we couldn’t afford to do that here, it would take too many men and too much time. but if you think it would surprise them to see how we handle logs, what would they say when they saw our donkey load itself?”
“there is a limit even to our credulity, mr. anderson,” smiled ted.
“but i’m telling you the truth. you notice the ends of the donkey’s skids are hewed like sled-runners, don’t you?”
“yes.”
“well, that’s so the engine can be pulled along. we simply hitch the cables to trees, the drums wind up, and the donkey pulls itself over the ground. when it is opposite the car on which it is to be loaded, we readjust the cables around other trees and it pulls itself aboard.”
“it’s wonderful,” exclaimed ted. “you westerners can certainly show the rest of the country how to do things in a big way.”
