Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 2, Number 42, DeMotte, Jasper County, 2 March 1933 — BELOW ZERO [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BELOW ZERO

A Romance of the North Woods

By HAROLD TITUS

WNU Service

SYNOPSIS

"Tom” Belknap, big timber operator, ordered by his physicians to take a complete rest, plans a three months’ trip abroad. Promises of advancement he has made to his son John are broken, and the young man is indignant. Paul Gorbel, Belknap’s partner, whom John cordially dislikes, is a bone of contention. Father and son part without a complete understanding. At Shoestring, his train delayed by a wreck, John is ordered to leave at once. He refuses. After a fist fight, his attackers realize it is a case of mistaken identity. John learns his father is believed to be out to wreck the Richards lumber company. Bewildered and unbelieving, he seeks employment with that company. At the office he finds Gorbel bullying a young girl, and throws him out. CHAPTER II--Continued Gorbel struggled, but the lock on his wrist was secure. He bent forward for relief as John opened the door. The cold night surged in on them, and then the one was running down the steps to regain the balance that the other’s shove had imperiled. At the bottom he whirled and lifted his face, normally handsome, now wrenched with rage. “You swine!” he cried. “You’ll pay for this!” “Collect, then! But you stay away from here until you’re sent for! Get that?” He closed the door and turned back to the office, removing his cap as he went. Brighter lights burned now, for a cluster in the ceiling had been switched on. The girl sat at a littered desk in the middle of the room, pale, shoulders hunched, head bowed. He stopped, poised in surprise. She was the girl he had seen in the station waiting room, and with her coat and hat removed, in the jersey dress which exposed a graceful column of throat, she was as out of place in this office with its battered desks and dingy walls as a flower in a wood yard! John spoke: “He called me an eavesdropper. I .guess, in a way, he was right.” “Fortunately, you heard,” she murmured, and then looked up. “Oh! . . . Oh, I didn’t know it was you!” She brushed at her soft, short hair nervously and managed a sort of smile. “I . . . I wanted to tell you how . . . how sorry I am that the boys did what they did. . . . Won’t you come in?” She rose, and he could see that she was rallying her composure rapidly. “I feel like an intruder,” he said, advancing. “I came over here on the chance that I might find the manager and ran into the late unpleasantness!” “I am the manager,” she said simply. And now surprise had him wholly; so completely that he blinked and laughed outright. “What! You. . . . Why, a girl in this mess?” She flushed deeply. “I guess that’s what it is: a mess. Even strangers know! I am Ellen Richards. This was my father’s company. I’ve been trying to carry on for over a year now, since he . . . since he died.” “Oh,” he said dully. “Oh!”--a bit longdrawn, this time, and in a sort of relief rather than amazement or stupefaction. Relief, because it was a girl on whom his father made war! It simplified matters for a chap in an embarrassing position. A man, even in a pinch, might want to fight through to the finish on his own resources. A girl like this--the sort of girl you took to tea and the theater and to supper clubs; a nice girl who looked as though she read books and played golf and would complete the picture of a smart roadster--would be needing help. Lots of help! Immediately! It was her tough luck that she had incurred the attention of an old tyrant such as his father was turning out to be; his good luck that she was in trouble, filled with animus as he was for old Tom, and aching as he was to show what he could do. “Well!” he said as he took the chair she indicated, and in the third ejaculation was a deal of satisfaction, as of one suddenly rounding a dubious corner into an unexpectedybonanza! “It was terrible the way the boys met you,” she said. “There’s an excuse for it, of, course. It can be explained by the fact that they’re so worked up over what has been going on and so loyal to my father’s memory that they do these things regardless of my wishes. I’m . . . I’m so sorry! I feel responsible for it, and for their hurting you.” He touched his cut lip. “Don’t mind me. As I understand the situation you seem to have troubles enough without worrying about a scratch on a stranger!” Her eyes dropped. “And it was awfully generous of you to ... to do what you did just now”--voice trembling ever so little. “First we hear that Tom Belknap’s bully is coming here to harm more of my men and we beat you up in our excitement. Next, you walk in here to find Tom Belknap s partner demanding surrender and save me . . . embarrassment. There are some matters a girl can’t handle . . . alone.” John stirred uneasily. To tell a girl who could speak of a man with such

contempt and animosity that he was that man’s son was a bit more of an ordeal than he cared to undertake, considering his objective. He had found her in a man’s job, in a man’s fight, confronted with a man’s problems, but she was no man; a girl, with feminine reactions and prejudices, and to reveal his identity would terminate this talk abruptly. His heart went down ... and then rebounded. Sandy’s letter rested in his bill-fold. Good old Sandy, so rattled at writing a letter of character that he left out the once important, but now damning, third of his name! He picked up her last words: “Yes: a lot of matters a girl can’t handle alone,” but his steady gaze on her face was not one of sympathy or understanding. He was sizing her up, studying her in the light of a possible vehicle for that urge for vengeance. “Throwing your caller out was simple. Maybe it won’t be so easy to help you in other things. But that’s what I came here for: to ask for a chance to try.” “Meaning just what?” she asked with an odd bluntness for a girl. “That I understand you’re looking for a woods superintendent and I’d like to take on the chore.” “And that . . . that’s what brought you to Shoestring?” Surely it was a surge of relief, the sudden dawning of an unlooked-for hope, which unsteadied her tone then! Well, now, a young man can’t lie, can he? Not to a girl who, for an instant and even through the concentration of a savage purpose, seems peculiarly lovely to behold? No. . . . This young man could not; but for the sake of attaining his goal he may evade a little, may he not? “I’ve just finished one job. I don’t know how good I am; I’d like to find

out. When I heard of the jam you’re in here”--lifting one hand and giving it a little twist as though the explanation were self-evident--“I thought it might be a good place to see what I’m good for . . . what I’m wound on.” A moment of silence followed. He could see the pulses leaping in her throat, and his own heart speeded a trifle. A girl in a corner should welcome such a chance, and he waited, anticipating that welcome, but it did not come. Instead of figuratively falling on his neck and hailing him as the savior of the day, she folded her small hands and looked at him with a gaze as searching as it was level. “Perhaps you’re asking for more than you understand ... in the way of trouble, I mean. I need help and right away, but I wouldn’t want any man to come to work for me without knowing just how desperate the situation it. That, you see, wouldn’t be fair to . . . to the sort of man I need. “People who have known this company for years figure that we are through. Even the men on the job have the notion that we’re marked paid. Perhaps they are right; I’m trying to prove them wrong. “I . . . It might be simpler if I knew just how much you have heard?” He told her tersely the gossip he had listened to in the past hour, and she nodded slowly. “Those things are all true. There’s a fundamental problem of finance, however, which is behind it all. The Bank of Kampfest, now owned by Belknap & Gorbel, holds enough of our paper to make our statement look very bad. We can hope for nothing but embarrassing demands there. The only way we can meet those obligations and keep from being sold out to satisfy them is to keep the mill sawing. I can borrow on lumber in the yard from Milwaukee banks, largely because we have some very favorable contracts. However, the contracts will be voided unless we are prepared to meet their terms of regular and prompt deliveries. “The way out now goes back to keeping the mill logged and running. Things haven’t been any too smooth at the woods end; you know what we are up against in the matter of transportation, evidently. We can’t spend a dollar for more equipment. We must

keep afloat with what we have . . . or go down.” She paused and John had a queer feeling: annoyance at her apparent competence. “Snow came early and we’re going to have trouble with it. We have fourteen miles of railroad through choppings where drifting will be certain. I was worried tonight and went looking for Tiny and Way-Bill--my engineer and conductor--to have them take the plow out if it didn’t let up. That’s how I happened to see your reception. The snow has stopped; we’re safe for tonight. How long we’ll be safe, no one can tell. Without fighting snow we’ve been unable to build up a reserve of logs in the millyard. A threeday shut down would ruin us.” She paused again and her eyes shifted a moment from his intent scrutiny. She talked like a man, a business man, but that change in her face indicated to John that she was playing up to a part, downing her weaknesses and limitations with an effort which gave her a superficial veneer of coldness, hardness. “No, things haven’t been going so well in the woods. I kept Royce, my father’s old Superintendent, on because I could trust him absolutely and I ... I need men I can trust”--the shell she had built about herself giving way ever so little for the moment. “We were just getting along when Mr. Belknap himself came up to Kampfest.” John’s month tightened and his brows gathered closer. “He seems to have arranged things very well. For a year Mr. Gorbel, his partner, has been asking me to put a price on the property. I have refused. After Mr. Belknap left, the process of forcing us out began. They overtaxed our railroad with their logs; then Mr. Belknap’s hired thug put my superintendent out of the picture. The camp foreman, Mark Saunders, isn’t up to the job. Two others who are good loggers won’t come, now that the story has got around that Tom Belknap is after the Richards hide. “That is the situation,” she ended abruptly. “That’s what a superintendent will have to confront. Who are you to do it?” He smiled, despite the unpleasant conviction that this Ellen Richards was going to be amazingly hard to deal with, and reached into a pocket for his bill-fold! “A fellow doesn’t like to polish his own medals,” he laughed, a bit nervously, as he considered the thin ice on which he was treading. “I’ve only held one job that amounted to any-thing”--fingering through the papers in the wallet. “I’ve had four years in forestry school, but the value of that remains to be proven, I suppose.” He handed over Sandy’s letter. “I don’t know what you expect in the way of personal qualifications. I swear when it isn’t always necessary; I smoke cigarettes; I’ve been known to drink some. I don’t know all that there is to know about hardwood logging by a long-shot.” She was not reading the letter; watching him, instead, as though his words or manner intrigued her. "I'd be interested in this job principally because it would . . . would show what I could do, and I'm curious to know how good or how bad I am. I’ve done my best to size up my own shortcomings; as for the rest, I’ll leave it to Sandy McIver”--gesturing towards the letter she held. The girl’s eyes dropped to the scrawl and her mouth twitched. It was coming now, he felt! She was going to jump at the chance of getting help! He leaned forward a bit. “That’s a fine letter, Mr. Steele,” she said. “Witch Hill. . . I don’t know the company.” She looked at him as if slightly puzzled and paused a moment. Then, decisively: “I’d like to have you go to camp with me tomorrow morning. After a few hours on the job I’ll give you an answer." She rose with a manner of dismissal and John Belknap, masquerading now as John Steele, got to his feet, annoyed and confounded. “Fair enough,” he said; it was all there was to say. “What time?” “Seven sharp, in the mill-yard. Good night. And once more: I thank you for . . . for what you did here.” “That was all right,” he said. “I’d be glad to take on a row with a hand like Gorbel!” He did not heed the slight huskiness that had been in her voice, indication that thinking back to her encounter brought a recurrence of fright. He did not care what went on in the mind or the heart of Ellen Richards except for what she might think or feel of him as an applicant for a chance to show his father, indeed, what he was wound on!

CHAPTER III He was in the mill-yard early, watching Ellen, clad in Mackinaw and breeches and pacs, as she watched the loading of camp supplies. She was crisp, intent, business-like and greeted him almost curtly. Tiny Temple reached down from the locomotive cab to shake his hand; Way-Bill took a moment to apologize again for the trouble of last night, and

John could see that both were watching him closely, probably wondering about his errand. He strolled about; watched the mill saw; looked over equipment in the yard. With the train under way he sat alone in the “dog-house” of the way-car while Ellen remained below, talking earnestly with the conductor. Her words reached him occasionally and always they were of the country, savoring in phrase and inflexion of the timber. She was a daughter of the camps, for certain; sprung from the same stock which had given him birth. Out to the northward they toiled, up mile after mile of stiff grade, and after seven miles they crossed the main-line branch, with its water tank and tender’s house. From the crossing they rocked and clanked down long grades towards the distant timber, stopped at the Belknap & Gorbel camps, spotted cars and then went on another three miles to Richards Camp Sixteen, woods headquarters. He just followed her around. He met men: Saunders, the foreman; Jack Tait, the barn boss; the cook, the sealer, the clerk, Jerry Tubbs, fat and asthmatic. He heard her talk to these men as he himself would have talked to men in his employ: directly, tersely, in their own language. But now and again he heard items which indicated the sorry deficiencies in her experience for such a task as that confronting her. He kept his eyes as well as ears open; he asked questions of Ellen occasionally and of a man here and there; but all the time he was restive, up on the bit, growing hourly more provoked with a girl who needed him but who would keep him waiting! But in late afternoon, when she led the way into the office, deserted for the moment, she changed; ceased to be the assured young business woman, filling a man’s shoes more or less competently. The crude office was silent, and John closed the door. She dropped to a chair as though suddenly weakened and her mouth worked. Then she looked up with a wry little smile and asked: “Well, what do you think of it?” “Hay-wire!” he exploded. “It’s slow, costly ... a joke! No wonder you’re in trouble, with a woods job run like this one!” “Well . . . what would you do?” she asked, trying to put some tone of challenge into the words and failing. He stood there and told her what he would do and why, item by item; told it emphatically, almost as though she were disputing him; told it with a thoroughness and his agility of interpretation. She watched him, lips parting as his conviction carried him away and when he stopped, again standing before her, saying, “Those are a few of the things I’d do until I dug up more to do,” she looked away into the sunset, filtering through the naked tops of maple and birch and beech and hes eyes misted. “I’m glad you’re looking for a hard job, John Steele!” she said calmly. “I think ... I think I’m going to depend on you from now on.” He laughed then, as a man will who is coming out of a fright. “I’ll do my best,” he said. Now when a young man, wholly mad, is out to show what he can do, and who has had an opportunity of displaying his capacities dangled before his eyes tantalizingly for a day that seemed like a week, he is bound to go fast, once started. Ellen Richards’ new boss went like the wind, like fire, like a wild horse; by day he drove his crews; by night he sat in the office at camp or in town and laid plans for further driving. The winter’s operation had been confined to a long, narrow ravine into which, because of the contour of the country, steel could not be laid at justified expense. The haul was along the bottom of this sharp depression to its lower end and thence up a hill, where a tow-team worked every hour getting loftds to the top. From there the sleighs doubled back on the high land, paralleling the first part of the haul to reach the landing. Over three miles, it was, and at one point the steel came within forty rods of the rim of the ravine. “We should be dumping right there!” John exclaimed to Saunders when he saw the place. “Yeah. But we don’t haul by airplane yet!” the foreman growled. John said no more but his mind was busy. In the mill-yard was an old steam loader, long discarded. It was not in bad shape, and three days later it was in the woods; men were building a road through the deepening snow straight up the side of that pot-hole and on to the adjacent steel. The jammer was set down, skidded to the brink of the steep pitch and a cable bent to the drum. Teams left off the long journey by iced roads, took their sleighs down the pitch to the skidways, brought them, loaded, to the foot of the incline, unhooked and came up ahead while the power of the Rapid’s steam engine snaked the loads to the top.

The tow-team was liberated for the haul; each sleigh was able to move an extra thousand a day; costs were cut. Daily the size of the decks at the new landing increased; log production was stepping up; a fundamental shortcoming was being overcome, and as he stood on the third afternoon following the initiation of his new plan, John muttered tightly. ". . . see what I'm wound on, Tom! See what I’m wound on, yet?” Yes, the Richards operation had new life, new vigor as long as John had his fingers on each phase, but a man can’t be in more than one place at a time; each day has only its allotted hours. He had had the train crew with him from the beginning and did not need to worry about getting the best out of what equipment he had there. Tucker, the roadmaster, was spry enough, eager enough, it seemed, but there were times when John felt that he could not wholly trust the man. Nothing he could put his finger on; no delinquency he could point out. Just intuitive distrust. He won Jack Tait, the barn boss, as a stalwart friend by sitting up through one bitter night to help minister to a sick horse. The horse died, but its distress had not been John’s primary motive in going without sleep. He needed the staunch support of his men, as any executive needs the faith and loyalty of those at his command. No business will succeed unless divisional heads are behind the management heart and soul; the backbone of an army is its non-coms. But the uphill pull commenced to show progress. Forty thousand a day, John must put to the mill to keep the band-saw fed. He began to do better than this; by holiday time the reserve decked in the yard had crept up a trifle; a two-day cut was there, waiting for an emergency; a three, enough for four days. Not time, yet, for a long breath, but time to let yourself hope ... a trifle. . . show you what I’m wound on!” he growled between set teeth as he watched a load going on to the deck instead of directly into the hotpond. Not time, yet, for a long breath, though. The night watchman at the mill reported that in making his rounds an unidentified skulker had run out of the locomotive stall. A wrench was found, dropped in the doorway, and John put on a special man to guard Tiny’s old relic, their only hope. Three days later, running for one of the stiff grades with four loads of logs bound for Kampfest, Tiny Temple looked back to see a car leave the rails, to see the splintered ends of ties pop up through the snow, to see the car take the ditch and go over before he could stop. Wrecking tools were in Shoestring, and it was necessary to make the run in for jacks and replacers. They got the car back on and the track repaired, but a day was lost and the margin of safety for the mill shrank instead of growing. Way-Bill and Tiny came to John. “A brake-beam on that car’d been monkeyed with,” the conductor said. “You could see the fresh wrench marks on the nuts.” “What do you make of that?” “They know we’re doin’ too well. Fixed to spill us to make trouble. They care a d —n about getting their logs moved! The Kampfest yard’s full, and if we keep on the main line won’t be able to clean out the switches at the crossing. More dirty work!” John called Tucker into the conference, but the roadmaster smiled and shook his head doubtfully. “Fairy story!” he said. “You couldn’t tell within two weeks when that beam’d been repaired.” Way-Bill spat and big Tiny eyed Tucker with a look that was not just pleasant. John wondered, feeling a bit uneasy. Thereafter, he kept wrecking equipment in the way-car. And now Gorbel’s men commenced dumping at two landings, which meant that it would be necessary to spot two strings of empties daily, more minutes taken from the time of Ellen’s train crew. A man must take it and grin, though. John knew that; he had read the old contract by which Richards agreed to transport those logs. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

“Yes; a Lot of Matters a Girl Can’t Handle Alone.”