Bob and Welton descended. The train moved on, leaving them standing by the track.
The remains of the forest, overgrown with scrub oak and popple thickets pushed down to the right of way. A road, deep with mud and water, beginning at this point, plunged into the wilderness. That was all.
Welton thrust his hands in his pockets and splashed cheerfully into the ankle-deep mud. Bob shouldered his little bag and followed. Somehow he had vaguely expected some sort of conveyance.
"How far is it?" he asked.
"Oh, ten or twelve miles," said Welton.
Bob experienced a glow of grat.i.tude to the blithe Tommy Gould. What would he have done with that baggage out here in this lonesome wilderness of unbroken barrens and mud?
The day was beautiful, but the sun breaking through the skin of last night"s freezing, softened the ground until the going was literally ankle-deep in slush. Welton, despite his weight, tramped along cheerfully in the apparently careless indifference of the skilled woods walker. Bob followed, but he used more energy. He was infinitely the older man"s superior in muscle and endurance, yet he realized, with respect and admiration, that in a long or difficult day"s tramp through the woods Welton would probably hold him, step for step.
The road wound and changed direction entirely according to expedient. It was a "tote road" merely, cutting across these barrens by the directest possible route. Deep mire holes, roots of trees, an infrequent boulder, puddles and cruel ruts diversified the way. Occasional teeth-rattling stretches of "corduroy" led through a swamp.
"I don"t see how a team can haul a load over this!" Bob voiced his marvel, after a time.
"It don"t," said Welton. "The supplies are all hauled while the ground is frozen. A man goes by hand now."
In the swamps and bottom lands it was a case of slip, slide and wallow.
The going was trying on muscle and wind. To right and left stretched mazes of white popples and willows tangled with old berry vines and the abattis of the slashings. Water stood everywhere. To traverse that swamp a man would have to force his way by main strength through the thick growth, would have to balance on half-rotted trunks of trees, wade and stumble through pools of varying depths, crawl beneath or climb over all sorts of obstructions in the shape of uproots, spiky new growths, and old tree trunks. If he had a gun in his hands, he would furthermore be compelled, through all the vicissitudes of making his way, to hold it always at the balance ready for the snap shot. For a ruffed grouse is wary, and flies like a bullet for speed, and is up and gone almost before the roar of its wings has aroused the echoes. Through that veil of branches a man must shoot quickly, instinctively, from any one of the many positions in which the chance of the moment may have caught him.
Bob knew all about this sort of country, and his pulses quickened to the call of it.
"Many partridge?" he asked.
"Lots," replied Welton; "but the country"s too confounded big to hunt them in. Like to hunt?"
"Nothing better," said Bob.
After a time the road climbed out of the swamp into the hardwoods, full of warmth and light and new young green, and the voices of many creatures; with the soft, silent carpet of last autumn"s brown, the tiny patches of melting snow, and the pools with dead leaves sunk in them and clear surfaces over which was mirrored the flight of birds.
Welton puffed along steadily. He did not appear to talk much, and yet the sum of his information was considerable.
"That road," he said, pointing to a dim track, "goes down to Thompson"s.
He"s a settler. Lives on a little lake.
"There"s a deer," he remarked, "over in that thicket against the hill."
Bob looked closely, but could see nothing until the animal bounded away, waving the white flag of its tail.
"Settlers up here are a confounded nuisance," went on Welton after a while. "They"re always hollering for what they call their "rights." That generally means they try to hang up our drive. The average mossback"s a hard customer. I"d rather try to drive nails in a s...o...b..nk than tackle driving logs through a farm country. They never realize that we haven"t got time to talk it all out for a few weeks. There"s one old cuss now that"s making us trouble about the water. Don"t want to open up to give us a fair run through the sluices of his dam. Don"t seem to realize that when we start to go out, we"ve got to go out in a _hurry_, spite o" h.e.l.l and low water."
He went on, in his good-natured, unexcited fashion, to inveigh against the obstinacy of any and all mossbacks. There was no bitterness in it, merely a marvel over an inexplicable, natural phenomenon.
"Suppose you _didn"t_ get all the logs out this year," asked Bob, at length. "Of course it would be a nuisance; but couldn"t you get them next year?"
"That"s the trouble," Welton explained. "If you leave them over the summer, borers get into them, and they"re about a total loss. No, my son, when you start to take out logs in this country, you"ve got to _take them out!_"
"That"s what I"m going in here for now," he explained, after a moment.
"This Cedar Branch is an odd job we had to take over from another firm.
It is an unimproved river, and difficult to drive, and just lined with mossbacks. The crew is a mixed bunch--some old men, some young toughs.
They"re a hard crowd, and one not like the men on the main drive. It really needs either Tally or me up here; but we can"t get away for this little proposition. He"s got Darrell in charge. Darrell"s a good man on a big job. Then he feels his responsibility, keeps sober and drives his men well. But I"m scared he won"t take this little drive serious. If he gets one drink in him, it"s all off!"
"I shouldn"t think it would pay to put such a man in charge," said Bob, more as the most obvious remark than from any knowledge or conviction.
"Wouldn"t you?" Welton"s eyes twinkled. "Well, son, after you"ve knocked around a while you"ll find that every man is good for something somewhere. Only you can"t put a square peg in a round hole."
"How much longer will the high water last?" asked Bob.
"Hard to say."
"Well, I hope you get the logs out," Bob ventured.
"Sure we"ll get them out!" replied Welton confidently. "We"ll get them out if we have to go spit in the creek!" With which remark the subject was considered closed.
About four o"clock of the afternoon they came out on a low bluff overlooking a bottom land through which flowed a little stream twenty-five or thirty feet across.
"That"s the Cedar Branch," said Welton, "and I reckon that"s one of the camps up where you see that smoke."
They deserted the road and made their way through a fringe of thin brush to the smoke. Bob saw two big tents, a smouldering fire surrounded by high frames on which hung a few drying clothes, a rough table, and a cooking fire over which bubbled tremendous kettles and fifty-pound lard tins suspended from a rack. A man sat on a cracker box reading a fragment of newspaper. A boy of sixteen squatted by the fire.
This man looked up and nodded, as Welton and his companion approached.
"Where"s the drive, doctor?" asked the lumberman.
"This is the jam camp," replied the cook. "The jam"s upstream a mile or so. Rear"s back by Thompson"s somewheres."
"Is there a jam in the river?" asked Bob with interest. "I"d like to see it."
"There"s a dozen a day, probably," replied Welton; "but in this case he just means the head of the drive. We call that the "jam.""
"I suppose Darrell"s at the rear?" Welton asked the cook.
"Yep," replied that individual, rising to peer into one of his cavernous cooking utensils.
"Who"s in charge here?"
"La.r.s.en"
"H"m," said Welton. "Well," he added to himself, "he"s slow, safe and sure, anyway."
He led the way to one of the tents and pulled aside the flap. The ground inside was covered by a welter of tumbled blankets and clothes.
"Nice tidy housekeeping," he grinned at Bob. He picked out two of the best blankets and took them outside where he hung them on a bush and beat them vigorously.
"There," he concluded, "now they"re ours."
"What about the fellows who had "em before?" inquired Bob.