Tom Broadhead and Henry Paul picked out a tremendous pine which they determined to throw across a little open space in proximity to the travoy road.One stood to right, the other to left, and alternately their axes bit deep.It was a beautiful sight this, of experts wielding their tools.The craft of the woodsman means incidentally such a free swing of the shoulders and hips, such a directness of stroke as the blade of one sinks accurately in the gash made by the other, that one never tires of watching the grace of it.Tom glanced up as a sailor looks aloft.
"She'll do, Hank," he said.
The two then with a dozen half clips of the ax, removed the inequalities of the bark from the saw's path.The long, flexible ribbon of steel began to sing, bending so adaptably to the hands and motions of the men manipulating, that it did not seem possible so mobile an instrument could cut the rough pine.In a moment the song changed timbre.Without a word the men straightened their backs.Tom flirted along the blade a thin stream of kerosene oil from a bottle in his hip pocket, and the sawyers again bent to their work, swaying back and forth rhythmically, their muscles rippling under the texture of their woolens like those of a panther under its skin.The outer edge of the saw-blade disappeared.
"Better wedge her, Tom," advised Hank.
They paused while, with a heavy sledge, Tom drove a triangle of steel into the crack made by the sawing.This prevented the weight of the tree from pinching the saw, which is a ruin at once to the instrument and the temper of the filer.Then the rhythmical z-z-z!
z-z-z! again took up its song.
When the trunk was nearly severed, Tom drove another and thicker wedge.
"Timber!" hallooed Hank in a long-drawn melodious call that melted through the woods into the distance.The swampers ceased work and withdrew to safety.
But the tree stood obstinately upright.So the saw leaped back and forth a few strokes more.
"Crack!" called the tree.
Hank coolly unhooked his saw handle, and Tom drew the blade through and out the other side.
The tree shivered, then leaded ever so slightly from the perpendicular, then fell, at first gently, afterwards with a crescendo rush, tearing through the branches of other trees, bending the small timber, breaking the smallest, and at last hitting with a tremendous crash and bang which filled the air with a fog of small twigs, needles, and the powder of snow, that settled but slowly.There is nothing more impressive than this rush of a pine top, excepting it be a charge of cavalry or the fall of Niagara.Old woodsmen sometimes shout aloud with the mere excitement into which it lifts them.
Then the swampers, who had by now finished the travoy road, trimmed the prostrate trunk clear of all protuberances.It required fairly skillful ax work.The branches had to be shaved close and clear, and at the same time the trunk must not be gashed.And often a man was forced to wield his instrument from a constrained position.
The chopped branches and limbs had now to be dragged clear and piled.While this was being finished, Tom and Hank marked off and sawed the log lengths, paying due attention to the necessity of avoiding knots, forks, and rotten places.Thus some of the logs were eighteen, some sixteen, or fourteen, and some only twelve feet in length.
Next appeared the teamsters with their little wooden sledges, their steel chains, and their tongs.They had been helping the skidders to place the parallel and level beams, or skids, on which the logs were to be piled by the side of the road.The tree which Tom and Hank had just felled lay up a gentle slope from the new travoy road, so little Fabian Laveque, the teamster, clamped the bite of his tongs to the end of the largest, or butt, log.
"Allez, Molly!" he cried.
The horse, huge, elephantine, her head down, nose close to her chest, intelligently spying her steps, moved.The log half rolled over, slid three feet, and menaced a stump.
"Gee!" cried Laveque.
Molly stepped twice directly sideways, planted her fore foot on a root she had seen, and pulled sharply.The end of the log slid around the stump.
"Allez!" commanded Laveque.
And Molly started gingerly down the hill.She pulled the timber, heavy as an iron safe, here and there through the brush, missing no steps, making no false moves, backing, and finally getting out of the way of an unexpected roll with the ease and intelligence of Laveque himself.In five minutes the burden lay by the travoy road.
In two minutes more one end of it had been rolled on the little flat wooden sledge and, the other end dragging, it was winding majestically down through the ancient forest.The little Frenchman stood high on the forward end.Molly stepped ahead carefully, with the strange intelligence of the logger's horse.Through the tall, straight, decorative trunks of trees the little convoy moved with the massive pomp of a dead warrior's cortege.And little Fabian Laveque, singing, a midget in the vastness, typified the indomitable spirit of these conquerors of a wilderness.
When Molly and Fabian had travoyed the log to the skidway, they drew it with a bump across the two parallel skids, and left it there to be rolled to the top of the pile.
Then Mike McGovern and Bob Stratton and Jim Gladys took charge of it.Mike and Bob were running the cant-hooks, while Jim stood on top of the great pile of logs already decked.A slender, pliable steel chain, like a gray snake, ran over the top of the pile and disappeared through a pulley to an invisible horse,--Jenny, the mate of Molly.Jim threw the end of this chain down.Bob passed it over and under the log and returned it to Jim, who reached down after it with the hook of his implement.Thus the stick of timber rested in a long loop, one end of which led to the invisible horse, and the other Jim made fast to the top of the pile.He did so by jamming into another log the steel swamp-hook with which the chain was armed.When all was made fast, the horse started.
