The marsh received first attention.There the restless snow drifted uneasily before the wind.Nearly every day the road had to be plowed, and the sprinklers followed the teams almost constantly.
Often it was bitter cold, but no one dared to suggest to the determined jobber that it might be better to remain indoors.The men knew as well as he that the heavy February snows would block traffic beyond hope of extrication.
As it was, several times an especially heavy fall clogged the way.
The snow-plow, even with extra teams, could hardly force its path through.Men with shovels helped.Often but a few loads a day, and they small, could be forced to the banks by the utmost exertions of the entire crew.Esprit de corps awoke.The men sprang to their tasks with alacrity, gave more than an hour's exertion to each of the twenty-four, took a pride in repulsing the assaults of the great enemy, whom they personified under the generic "She." Mike McGovern raked up a saint somewhere whom he apostrophized in a personal and familiar manner.
He hit his head against an overhanging branch.
"You're a nice wan, now ain't ye?" he cried angrily at the unfortunate guardian of his soul."Dom if Oi don't quit ye!
Ye see!"
"Be the gate of Hivin!" he shouted, when he opened the door of mornings and discovered another six inches of snow, "Ye're a burrd! If Oi couldn't make out to be more of a saint than that, Oi'd quit the biznis! Move yor pull, an' get us some dacint weather! Ye awt t' be road monkeyin' on th' golden streets, thot's what ye awt to be doin'!"Jackson Hines was righteously indignant, but with the shrewdness of the old man, put the blame partly where it belonged.
"I ain't sayin'," he observed judicially, "that this weather ain't hell.It's hell and repeat.But a man sort've got to expec' weather.
He looks for it, and he oughta be ready for it.The trouble is we got behind Christmas.It's that Dyer.He's about as mean as they make 'em.The only reason he didn't die long ago is becuz th'
Devil's thought him too mean to pay any 'tention to.If ever he should die an' go to Heaven he'd pry up th' golden streets an' use the infernal pit for a smelter."With this magnificent bit of invective, Jackson seized a lantern and stumped out to see that the teamsters fed their horses properly.
"Didn't know you were a miner, Jackson," called Thorpe, laughing.
"Young feller," replied Jackson at the door, "it's a lot easier to tell what I AIN'T been."So floundering, battling, making a little progress every day, the strife continued.
One morning in February, Thorpe was helping load a big butt log.
He was engaged in "sending up"; that is, he was one of the two men who stand at either side of the skids to help the ascending log keep straight and true to its bed on the pile.His assistant's end caught on a sliver, ground for a second, and slipped back.Thus the log ran slanting across the skids instead of perpendicular to them.
To rectify the fault, Thorpe dug his cant-hook into the timber and threw his weight on the stock.He hoped in this manner to check correspondingly the ascent of his end.In other words, he took the place, on his side, of the preventing sliver, so equalizing the pressure and forcing the timber to its proper position.Instead of rolling, the log slid.The stock of the cant-hook was jerked from his hands.He fell back, and the cant-hook, after clinging for a moment to the rough bark, snapped down and hit him a crushing blow on the top of the head.
Had a less experienced man than Jim Gladys been stationed at the other end, Thorpe's life would have ended there.A shout of surprise or horror would have stopped the horse pulling on the decking chain; the heavy stick would have slid back on the prostrate young man, who would have thereupon been ground to atoms as he lay.With the utmost coolness Gladys swarmed the slanting face of the load; interposed the length of his cant-hook stock between the log and it; held it exactly long enough to straighten the timber, but not so long as to crush his own head and arm; and ducked, just as the great piece of wood rumbled over the end of the skids and dropped with a thud into the place Norton, the "top" man, had prepared for it.
It was a fine deed, quickly thought, quickly dared.No one saw it.
Jim Gladys was a hero, but a hero without an audience.
They took Thorpe up and carried him in, just as they had carried Hank Paul before.Men who had not spoken a dozen words to him in as many days gathered his few belongings and stuffed them awkwardly into his satchel.Jackson Hines prepared the bed of straw and warm blankets in the bottom of the sleigh that was to take him out.
"He would have made a good boss," said the old fellow."He's a hard man to nick."Thorpe was carried in from the front, and the battle went on without him.
Chapter XII
Thorpe never knew how carefully he was carried to camp, nor how tenderly the tote teamster drove his hay-couched burden to Beeson Lake.He had no consciousness of the jolting train, in the baggage car of which Jimmy, the little brakeman, and Bud, and the baggage man spread blankets, and altogether put themselves to a great deal of trouble.When finally he came to himself, he was in a long, bright, clean room, and the sunset was throwing splashes of light on the ceiling over his head.
He watched them idly for a time; then turned on his pillow.At once he perceived a long, double row of clean white-painted iron beds, on which lay or sat figures of men.Other figures, of women, glided here and there noiselessly.They wore long, spreading dove-gray clothes, with a starched white kerchief drawn over the shoulders and across the breast.Their heads were quaintly white-garbed in stiff winglike coifs, fitting close about the oval of the face.
Then Thorpe sighed comfortably, and closed his eyes and blessed the chance that he had bought a hospital ticket of the agent who had visited camp the month before.For these were Sisters, and the young man lay in the Hospital of St.Mary.
