Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1904 — The Blazed Trail [ARTICLE]

The Blazed Trail

By STEWART EDWARD WHITE

SYNOPSIS OP PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. Chapter I—Morrison A Daly, lumbermen on the Sagauaw waters of Michigun, drive a hard bargain with Radway, a contractor. II and lll—Harry Thorpe, having left his dependent sister Helen, at service, tries for work at Morrison A Daly's, fails and takes a job at choring until he can go to Radway’s camp. IV—Thorpe at Radway’s making lumber road. The men attempt hazing. Thorpe puts on the gloves and knocks out the champion. V and Vl—Radway running behind owing to slack management. Thorpe a "swamper.’’ Death of his chum, Paul. The men “chip in for the widow.” Kadway goes home for Christmas, leaving Dyer, the scaler, in charge. VII and Vlll—Long delay waiting for roads to freeze. Thorpe hurt and sent to Sisters’ hospital. Radway falls Thorpe out of work. IX—Thorpe demands pay of M. A D. for work done by Radway. The contract was illegal, and the firm have profited by the work done. M. AD. settle the account. X—Thorpe provides for Helen’s education and goes into the north woods to locate valuable tract. Makes a friend of Injun Charley and a Chicago boy tourist. Wallace Carpenter. XI and Xll—Wallace has capital and helps Thorpe buy land. Dyer, the old scaler for Radway, is out looking for land for M. A D. Thorpe goes to Detroit to head off his rivals’ laud purchase. XIII and XlV—Wallace sends telegraph order to Thorpe at the land office just in time to head off M. A D. iu a $30,000 purchase. M. A D. offer to buy. Thorpe won t sell. War declared. XV and XVl—Tim Shearer, former foreman for M. A D„ hires with Thorpe. Thorpe takes forcible possession of a dock M. A D. have built abutting his new purchase. The rival firms agree to work in harmony. XVII—M. A D. close a gate in the dam above Thorpe's logs. Thorpe puts out a sentinel with a Winchester. Mischief ends, but M. A D. bring two suits aginst Thorpe. XVIII, XIX, XXaua XXl—Thorpe has a poor case in court, blithe buys a government tract which M. A D. have robbed of timber, to play off against them. Wallace loses heavilv in speculation, and Thorpe's firm puts up $60,000 to save him. Five years pass, and Thorpe is bewitched by a dream girl. XXII and XXlll—Hilda Farrand reaches the woods with a party, including Wallace's sister. Hilda is an heiress, and Wallace urges Thorpe to win her. Love in the forest. Hilda saw Thorpe leave Detroit for the woods and always loved him. XXIV-Hilda asks Thorpe to spare the forest where they first met Its sale will save the sinking firm. "Nothing better than love." shesays. "Yes. the duty of success." Thorpe declares. They separate XXV. XXVI, XXVII. and XXVIII—WhiIe driving the logs down, stream the flood bursts. A dam has been blown up with dynamite. XXIX, XXX. and XXXl—lnjun Charlev trails the dynamiters. Radway prevents vengeance byThorpe's men.. Thorpe fears failure and thinks of Hilda's last words. The water rises and logs are held with difficulty. M, A I’, scheming to ruin Thorpe. Injun Charley on guard. _ __

CHAPTER XXXI.

CARFENTER and lAfl Hamilton, the journalist, seat■1 1 ed against the sun warmed ZmmJ bench of Mrs. Hathaway’s boarding house, commented on the band as it stumbled into the washroom. Their conversation was Interrupted by the approach of Thorpe and Big Jimko. The former looked twenty years older after his winter. His eye was dull, his shoulders drooped, his gait was inelastic. The whole bearing of the man was that of one weary to the bone. “I’ve got something here to show you, Harry!" cried Wallace Carpenter, waving a newspaper. "It was a great drive, and here's something to remember it by.” “All right, Wallace, by and by,” replied Thorpe dully. "I’m dead. I’m going to turn in for awhile. I need sleep more than anything else.” He passed through the little passage into the "parlor bedroom,” which Mrs. Hathaway always kept In readiness for members of tbe firm. There he fell heavily asleep almost before his body had met the bed. In the long dining room the river men consumed a belated dinner. They had no comments to make. It was over. The two on the veranda smoked. To the right, at the end of the sawdust street, the mill sang its varying and lulling keys. The odor of fresh sawed pinejjerfuiued the air. Not a hundred yards away the river slipped silently to the distant blue Superior, escaping between the slanting stone filled cribs which held back the logs. Down the south and west the huge thunder heads gathered and flashed and grumbled, as they had done every afternoon for days. "Qtleer thing.” commented Hamilton finally, “these cold streaks iu the air. They are just as distinct as though they had partitions around them.” “Queer climate anyway,” agreed Carpenter. Excepting always for the mill, the little settlement appeared asleep. The main booms were quite deserted. After a\vhil#llamilton noticed something. “Look here, Carpenter,” said he. “What’s happening out there? Have some of your confounded logs sunk, or what? There don’t seem to be near so many of them somehow.” “No; it Isn't that,” proffered Carpenter after a moment’s scrutiny. "There are just as many logs, but they are getting separated a little -so you can ■ee the open water between them.” “Guesq you’re right. Say, look here, I believe that the river is rising.” “Nonsense! We haven’t had any rain.” “She’s rising Just the same. You see that spile over there near the left hand crib? Well, I sat on the boom this morning watching the crew, and I whittled the spile with my knife. You can see the marks from here. I cut the thing about two feet above tbe water. Look at it now.” ‘‘She’s pretty near the water line, that’s right,” admitted Carpenter. About an hour later the younger man In his turn made a discovery. “She’s been rising right along,” he submitted. “Your marks are nearer the water, and,-do you know, I believe the logs are beginning to feel it See, they’ve closed up the little openings between them, and they are beginning to crowd down to the lower end of the pond.” “I don't know anything about this

Business,” hazarded tbe journalist, “but I should think there was a good deal of pressure on that same lower end. By Jove, look here! See those logs up-end. I believe you’re going to have a Jam right here in your own booms.” “I don’t know,” hesitated Wallace. “I never heard of its happening.” “You’d better let some one know.” “I hate to bother Harry or any of the river men. I’ll just step down to the mill. Muson—he’s our mill foreman—he’ll know.” Mason came to the edge of the high trestle and took one look. “Jumping fishhooks!” he cried. “Why, the river’s up six inches and still a-comin’! Here you, Tom!” he called to one of the yard hands. “You tell Solly to get steam on that tug double quick and have Dave hustle together his driver crew!” “What are you going to do?” asked Wallace. “I got to strengthen the booms,” explained the mill foreman. “We’ll drive Borne plies across the cribs.” “Is there any danger?” “Oh, no. The river would have to rise a good deal higher than she Is now to make current enough to hurt. They’ve had a hard rain up above. This will go down in a few hours.” After a time the tug puffed up to the booms, escorting the pile driver. The latter towed a little raft of long, sharpened piles, which it at once began to drive in such positions as would most effectually strengthen the booms. In the meantime the thunder heads had slyly climbed the heavens, so that a sudden deluge of rain surprised the workmen. For an hour it poured down In torrents, then settled to a steady gray beat. Immediately the aspect had changed. Solly, the tug captain, looked at his mooring hawsers and then at the nearest crib.

“She’s riz two Inches in th’ last two hours.” he announced, “and she’s runnin’ like a mill race.” Solly w’as a typical north country tug captain, short and broad, with a brown, clear face and the steadiest and calmest of steel blue eyes. "When she begins to feel th’ pressure behind,” he went on, "there’s goin’ to be trouble.” Toward dusk she began to feel that pressure. Through the rainy twilight the logs could be seen raising their ghostly arms of protest. Slowly, without tumult, the jam formed. In the rear they pressed in, were sucked under in the swift water and came to rest at the bottom of the river. The current of the river began to protest, pressing its hydraulics through the narrowing crevices. The situation demanded attention.

A breeze began to pull offshore in the body of rain. Little by little it increased, sending the water by in gusts, ruffling the already hurrying river into greater haste, raising far from the shore dimly perceived whiteeaps. Between the roaring of the wind, the dash of rain and the rush of the stream men had to shout to make themselves heard.

"Guess you’d better rout out the boss,” screamed Solly to Wallace Carpenter. "This water’s cornin’ up an inch an hour right along. When she backs up once she'll push this jam out sure.”

Wallace ran to the boarding house and roused his partner from a heavy sleep. The latter understood the situation at a word. While dressing he explained to the younger man wherein lay the danger. "If the jam breaks once,” said he, “nothing top of earth can prevent it from going out into the lake, and there it ’ll scatter heaven knows where. Once scattered it is practically a total loss.” They felt blindly through the rain in the direction of the lights on the tug and pile driver. Shearer, the water dripping from his flaxen, mustache, joined them like a shadow. .At the river he announced his opinion. "We oan hold her all right,” he assured them. "It ’ll take a few more piles, but by morning the storm ’ll be over, and she’ll begin to go down again.” The three picked, their way over the creaking, swaying timber. But when they reached the pile driver they found trouble afoot The crew had mutinied and refused longer to drive piles under the face of the Jam. “If she breaks away she's going to bury us,” said they. “She won’t break,” snapped Shearer. “Get to work.” “It’s dangerous,” they objected sullenly. “You get off this driver!” shouted Solly. “Go over and lie down in a ten acre lot and see If you fgel safe there!” He drove them ashore with a storm of profanity and a multitude of kicks, his steel blue eyes blazing. “There’s nothing for it but to get the boys out again,” said Tim. “I kinder hate to do It.” But when the Fighting Forty, half asleep but dauntless, took charge of the driver a catastrophe made itself known. One of she ejected men had tripped the lifting chain of the hammer after another had knocked away tbe heavy preventing block, and so the hammer had fallen into the river and was lost. None other was to be had. The pile driver was nseless. A dozen men were at once dispatched

for casles,~chalns arid wire ropes from the supply at the warehouse. “It’s part of the same trick,” said Thorpe grimly. “Those fellows have their men everywhere among us. I don’t know whom to trust.” "You think It’s Morrison & Daly?” queried Carpenter, astonished. “Think? I know It. They know as well as you dr I that if we save these logs we’ll win out in the Stock Exchange, and they’re not such fools as to let us save them if it can be helped.” “What are you going to do now?” “The only thing there Is to be done. We’ll string heavy booms chained together between the cribs and then trust to heaven they’ll hold. I think we can hold the jam. The water will begin to flow over the bank before long, so there won’t be much increase of pressure over what we have now, and as there won’t be any shock to withstand I think our heavy booms will do the business.” He turned to direct the boring of some long boom logs in preparation for the chains. Suddenly he whirled agajn to Wallace with sb strange an expression in his face that tbe youug mAn almost cried out. The uncertain light of the lanterns showed dimly the streaks of rain across bis countenance, and his eye flared with a look almost of panic. “I never thought of it,” he said In a low voice. “Fool that I am! I don’t see how I missed it Wallace, don’t you see what those devils will do next?" “No. What do you mean?” gasped the younger man. “There are 12,000,000 feet of logs up river in Sadler & Smith’s drive. Don’t you see what they’ll do?” “No. I don’t believe”— “Just as soon as they find out that the river is booming and that we are going to have a hard time to hold our jam, they’ll let loose those 12,000,000 on us. They’ll break the jam or dynamite it, or something. And let me tell you that a very few logs hitting the tail of our jam will start the whole shooting match so that no power on earth can stop it.” “I don’t imagine they’d think of doing that,” began Wallace by way Of assurance.

“Think of It! You don’t know them. They’ve thought of everything. You don’t know that man Daly. Ask Tim. He'll tell you.” “Well, the”— “I’ve got to send a man up there ! right away. Perhaps we can get there |in time to head them off. They have : to send their man over”— He cast his eye rapidly over the men. “I don’t know just who so send. There isn’t a good enough woodsman in the lot to make Siseoe Falls through the woods a night like this. The river trail is too long, and a cut through the woods is blind.” With infinite difficulty and caution they reached the shore. Across the ! gleaming logs shone dimly the lanterns at the scene of work, ghostly through the rain. Beyond, on either side, lay impenetrable, drenched darkness racked by the wind. "I wouldn’t want to tackle it,” panted Thorpe. “If it wasn’t for that ■ cursed tote road between Sadler & Smith’s I wouldn’t worry. It's just too easy for them.” Behind them the jam cracked and shrieked and groaned. Occasionally was heard beneath the sharper noises a dull boom as one of the heavy timbers, forced by the pressure from its resting place, shot into the air and fell j back on the bristling surface. “Tim Shearer might do It,” suggested Thorpe, “but I hate to spare him.” * He picked his rifle from its rack and thrust the magazine full of cartridges. “Come on, Wallace,” said he. “We’ll hunt him up.” They stepped again into the shriek and roar of the storm, bending their I heads to its power, but indifferent to ! the rain. The sawdust street was satj urated like a sponge. They could feel i the quick water rise about the pressure ; at their feet. From the invisible houses they heard a steady monotone of flowing from the roofs. Far ahead, dim in | the mist, sprayed the light of lanterns. | Suddenly Thorpe felt a touch on his , arm. Faintly he perceived at his elbow a face from which the water streamed. “Injun Charily!” he cried. “The very man!”

CHAPTER XXXII.

EAriDLY Thorpe explained what was to be done and thrust his rifle into the Indian’s hands. The latter listened in silence and stolidity, then turned and without a word departed swiftly iu the darkness. The two white men stood a minute attentive. Nothing was to be heard but tbe steady beat of rain and the roaring of the wind. Near the bank of tbe river they encountered a man visible only as an uncertain black outline against the glow of the lanterns beyond. Thorpe, stopping him, found Big Junko. “This is no time to quit,” said Thorpe sharply. "I ain’t quittin’,” replied Big Junko. “Where are you going, then?” Junko was partially and stammeringly unresponsive. “Looks bad,” commented Thorpe. “You’d better get back to your Job.” “Yes,” agreed Junko helplessly. In tbe momentary slack tide of work tbe giant bad conceived the Idea of searching out the driver crew for purposes of pugilistic vengeance. Thorpe’s suspicions stung him, but his simple miiid could see no direct way to explanation. All night long in the chill of a spring ralp and wind storm the Fighting Forty and certain of the mill crew gave themselves to the labor of connecting the slanting stone cribs so strongly by means of heavy timbers chained end to end that the pressure of a break In tbe jam might not sweep aside the defenses. Wallace Carpenter, Shorty, the chore boy u and Andersen, the barn boss,

picked" a dangerous passage tack - and forth carrying palls of red hot coffee which Mrs. Hathaway constantly prepared. The cold water numbed the men’s bands. With difficulty could they manipulate the heavy chains through Jhe auger boles; with pain they twisted knots, bored holes. They did not complain. Behind them the Jam quivered perilously near the bursting point. From It shrieked aloud the demons of pressure. Steadily the river rose an Inch an hour. The key might snap at any given moment, they conld not tell, and with the rush they knew very well that themselves, the tug and the disabled pile driver would be swept from existence. The worst of it was that tbe blackness shrouded their experience Into uselessness. They were utterly unable to tell by the ordinary visual symptoms bow near the Jam might be to collapse. However, they persisted, as the old time rivers man always does, so that when dawn appeared the barrier was continuous and assured. Although tbe pressure of the river had already forced the logs against the defenses, the latter hejd the strain well. (TO BE CONTINUED.)