Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1904 — The Blazed Trail. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Blazed Trail.

By STEWART EDWARD WHITE

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. Chapter I—Morrison A Daiy, lumbermen on the Saganaw waters of Michigan, 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 Raqway’s making lumber road. The men attempt hazing. Thorpe puts on the gloves and kuocks out the champion. V and Vl—Radway running behind owiug to slack management. Thorpe a “swamper. Death of his chum, Paul. The men “chip in for the widow.” Radway 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 fails 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 laud. Dyer, the old scaler for Radway, is out looking for land for M. A D. Thorpe goes to Detroit to head off his rivals' land purchase. XIII and XlV—Wallace sends telegraph order to Thorpe at the land office just in time to head off M.A D. in a $30,000 purchase. M. A D. offer to buy. Thorpe won t sell. War declared. XV aud 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. XXand XXl—Thorpe has a poor case in court, but he 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 pnts 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 Tjfirty. 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.” shV says. “Yes, the duty of success.” Thorpe declares. Theyseparate 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 Charley trails the dynamiters. Radway prevents vengeance by Thorpe'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. XXXII—Dyer sneaks among Thorpe's men at night. Dyer caught cutting Thorpe s boom chains.

CHAPTER XXXll—Continued. The storm liad settled into its gait Overhead the sky was filled with gray, beneath which darker scuds flew across the zenith before a howling southwest wind. Out in the clear river one could hardly stand upright against the gusts. In the fan of many directions furious squalls swept over the open water below the booms, and an eager boiling current rushed to the lake. Thorpe now gave orders that the tug and driver should take shelter. A few moments later he expressed himself as satisfied. The dripping crew, their harsh faces gray in the half light, picked their way to the shore. In the darkness of that long night’s work no man knew his neighbor. Men from the river, men from the mill, men from the yard, all worked side by side. Thus no one noticed especially a tall, slender, but well knit Individual dressed In a faded mackinaw and a limp slouch hat which he wore pulled over his eyes. This young fellow occupied himself with the chains. Against the racing current the crew held the ends of the heavy booms while he fastened them together. He worked well, but seemed slow. Three times Shearer hustled him on after the others had finished, examining closely the work that had been done. On the third occasion be shrugged his shoulder somewhat impatiently. The men straggled to shore, the young fellow just described bringing up the rear. He walked as though tired out, banging his head and dragging his feet When, however, the boarding house door had closed on the last of those who preceded him and the town lay deserted in the dawn he suddenly became transformed. Casting a keen glance right and left to be sure of bis opportunity lie turned and hurried recklessly back over the logs to the center booms. There he knelt and busied himself with the chains.

In his zigzag progression over the jam he so blended with the morning shadows as to seem one of them, and he would have escaped quite unnoticed had not a sudden shifting of the logs under his feet compelled him to rise for a moment to his full height. So Wallace Carpenter, passing from bis bedroom along the porch to the dining room, became aware of the man on the logs. His first thought was that something demanding instant attention bad happened to the boom. He therefore ran at once to the man’s assistance, ready to help him personally or to call other aid as the exigency demanded. Owing to the precarious nature of the passage he could not see beyond his feet until very close to the workman. Then he looked up to find the man, squatted Jon the boom, contemplating him sardonically. “Dyer!” he exclaimed. “Right, my son,” said the other coolly. “What are yon doing?” “If yon want to know, I am filing this chain.” Wallace made one step forward and so became aware that at last firearms were taking a part In this desperate game. "You stand still!” commanded Dyer from behind the revolver. “It’s unfortunate for you that you happened along because now you’ll have to come with me till this little row is over. You won’t have to stay long. Your legs ’ll

go out In anTTdur. Til just trouble you to go Into the brush with me for awhile.” The sealer picked his file from beside the weakened link. “What have you against us, anyway, Dyer?” asked Wallace. His quick mind had conceived a plan. At the moment he was standing near the outermost edge of the jam, but now as he spoke he stepped quietly to the boom log. Dyer’s black eyes gleamed at hhn suspiciously, but the movement appeared wholly natural in view of the return to shore. “Nothing,” he replied. “I didn’t like your gang particularly, but that’s nothing.”

"Why do you take such nervy ehances to injure us?” queried Carpenter. ‘‘Because there’s something in it,” snapped the sealer. “Now, about face. Mosey!” Like a flash, Wallace wheeled and dropped into the river, swimming as fast as possible below water before his breath should give out. The swift current hurried him away. When at last he rose for air the spit of .Dyer’s pistol caused him no uneasiness. A moment later be struck out boldly for shore. Wliat Dyer's ultimate plan might be be could uot guess- He had stated confidently that the jam would break “in an hour.” He might intend to start it with dynamite. Wallace dragged himself from the water aud commenced breathlessly to run toward the boarding bouse. Dyer had already reached shore. Wallace raised what was left of his voice in a despairing shout. The scaler mockingly waved his hat, then turned and ran swiftly and easily toward the shelter of the woods. At their border he paused again to bow in derision. Carpenter’s cry brought men to the boarding house door. From the shadows of the forest two vivid flashes cut the dusk. Dyer staggered, turned completely about, seemed partially to recover and disappeared. An instant later, across the open space where the scaler had stood, with rifle a-trail, the Indian leaped in pursuit.

CHAPTER XXXIII. “f T .yIHA T is it?” "What is the mat--1411 ter?” “What the ’s up?” TV I “What’s happened?” burst on Wallace in a volley. “It’s Dyer!” gasped the young man. “I found him on the boom! He held me up with a gun while he filed the boom chains between the center piers. They’re just ready to go. I got away by diving. Hurry and put in a new chain. You haven’t got much time!” “He’s a goner now,” interjected Solly grimly. “Charley is on his trail—and he is hit.” Thorpe’s intelligence leaped promptly to the practical question. “Injun Charley where’d he come from? I sent him up to Sadler & Smith’s. It’s twenty miles, even through the woods.” As though by way of colossal answer the whole surface of the jam moved inward and upward, thrusting the logs bristling against the horizon. “She’s going to break!” shouted Thorpe, starting on a run toward the river. “A chain, quisk!” The men followed, strung high with excitement. Hamilton, the journalist, paused long enough to glance np stream. Tl*en he, too, ran after them, screaming that the river above was full of logs. By that they all knew that Injun Charley’s mission had failed and that something under 10,000,000 feet of logs were racing down the river like so many battering rams. At the boom the great Jam was already a-tremble with eagerness to Bpring. Indeed a miracle alone seemed to hold the timbers in their place. “It’s death, certain death, to go oat on that boom,” muttered Billy Mason. Tim Shearer stepped forward coolly, ready as always to assume the perilous

duty. He was thrust back by Thorpe, who seized the chain, cold-shut and hammer which Scotty 'Parsons brought and ran lightly out over the booms. Bhontlng: “Back! Back! Don’t follow me, on your lives! Keep ’em back, Tim!” The swift water boiled from under the booms. Bang! smash! bang! crashed the logs a mile up stream, but plainly audible above the waters and the wind. Thorpe knelt, dropped the coldshut through on either side of the weakened link and prepared to close it with his hammer. He Intended fnrther to strengthen the connection with the other chain. “Lemme hold her for you. You can’t close her alone,” said an unexpected voice next his elbow. Thorpe looked up in surprise and anger. Over him leaned Big Junko. The men had been unable to prevent his following. Animated by the blind devotion of the animal for its master and further stung to action by that master’s doubt of his fidelity, the giant bad followed to assist as he might. “You fool,” cried Thorpe, exasperated, then held the hammer to him. “Strike while I keep the chain underneath!” he commanded. Big Junko leaned forward to obey, kicking strongly his calks into the barked surface of the boom log. The spikes, worn blunt by the river work already accomplished, failed to grip. Big Junko slipped, caught himself by an effort, overbalanced in the other direction, and fell into the stream. The current at once swept him away, but fortunately in such a direction that he was enabled to catch the slanting end of a “dead head” log whose lower end was jammed in the crib. The dead head was slippery, the current strong. Big Junko had no crevice by which to assure his hold. In another moment he would be torn away. “Let go and swim!” shouted Thorpe. “I can’t swim,” replied Junko in so low a voice as to be scarcely audible. For a moment Thorpe stared at him. “Tell Carrie,” said Big Junko. Then there beneath the swirling gray sky, under the frowning jam, in the midst of flood waters, Thorpe had his second great moment of decision. He did not pause to weigh reasons or chances, to discuss with himself expediency or the moralities of failure. His actions were foreordained, mechanical. All at once the great forces which the winter had been bringing to power crystallized into something bigger than himself or his ideas. The trail lay before him; there was no choice. Now clearly, with no shadow of doubt, he took the other view: There could be nothing better than love. Men, their works, their deeds, were little things. Success was a little thing, the opinion, of men a little thing. Instantly he ta'.' the truth of it. And here was love in danger. That it held its moment's habitation in clay of the coarser mold had nothing to do with the great elemental truth of It. For the first time in his life Thorpe felt the full crushing power of an abstraction. Without thought, instinctively, he threw before the necessity of the moment all that was lesser. It was the triumph of what was real in the man over that, which environment, alienation, difficulties, had raised up within him. At Big Junko’s words Thorpe raised his hammer and with one mighty blow severed the chains which bound the ends of the booms across the opening. The free end of one the poles immediately swung down with the current in the direction of Big Junko. Thorpe, like a cat, ran to the end of

the boom, seized the giant by the collar and dragged him through the water to safety. “Run!” he shouted. “Run for your life!” The two started desperately back, skirting the edge of the logs which now the very seconds alone seemed to bold back. They were drenched and blinded with spray, deafened with the crash of timbers settling to the leap. The men on shore could no longer see them for the smother. The great crush of logs had actually begun its first majestic sliding motion when at last they emerged to safety. At first a few of the loose timbers found the opening, slipping quietly through with the current; then more. Finally the front of the Jam dove forward, and an Instant later the smooth, swift motion had gained Its impetus and was sweeping the entire drive down through the gap. Rank after rank, like soldiers charging, they ran. The great fierce wind caught them np ahead of the current. In a moment the open river was fall of logs jostling eagerly onward. Then

suddenly Tar~ouT above the uneven tossing sky line of Superior the strang* northern “loom,” or mirage, threw the specters of tbonsands of restless hers rising and falling on the bosom of the lake.

“You stand still!”

" Run !” he shouted.