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In the meantime I shall have another look at the skidway while you people are packing up," he said, rising. "What shall we do without tents?" questioned Anne anxiously. "Do nicely. When we make camp this afternoon Mrs. Shafto and I will show you.
When this treadmill work was impossible, owing to too steep banks, and where no batteau locks existed, the crew hauled the boats across the portage on a skidway of small rolling logs, and, so journeying, Prescott was reached. When wind failed, the long oars were used, the men rising from the thwarts to pull, standing.
No ring of the axe, no shout of the driver, no fall of the tree broke the silence. FitzPatrick comprehended. He knew that at the next skidway the men were gathered, waiting to see what he would do; gathered openly at last in that final hostility which had been maturing all winter. He knew, besides, that most of them were partly drunk and wholly reckless, and that he was alone.
They were instructed to move forward across the forty in a straight line, felling every pine tree over eight inches in diameter. While the "saw-gangs," three in number, prepared to fell the first trees, other men, called "swampers," were busy cutting and clearing of roots narrow little trails down through the forest from the pine to the skidway at the edge of the logging road.
Immediately after breakfast the following morning, Ethel put on her wraps and started out alone. Arriving, after a long, aimless ramble, at the outermost end of a skidway, she sat upon a log to rest and watch a huge swamper who, unaware of her presence, was engaged in slashing the underbrush from in front of a group of large logs.
I do not think it advisable to head directly for Forty-three, but to camp in the vicinity of that section, as I shall wish to speak with the foreman of the gang there." "Reckon ye know what ye wants to do," nodded the guide. When Tom returned from the skidway he smiled and shook his head in answer to the question in Grace's eyes. "Nothing further," he said briefly.
"You know I am always ready to assist you, Dyke. Is it a criminal case?" "Yes; the last on record." "The express crime?" "Yes." "I mistrusted as much. You have been down the road?" "To St. Louis!" "Exactly." "I took a young offender down who escaped from prison last winter. I think the officers will look after him more closely in the future." "Who was it?" "Martin Skidway."
Once Long Pine Jim lurked at the bottom for three days. Thorpe happened by the skidway just as Long Pine arrived with a log. The young fellow glanced solicitously at the splendid buckskins, the best horses in camp. "I'm afraid I didn't give you a very good team, Jimmy," said he, and passed on. That was all; but men of the rival gangs had heard.
Arrived at the Southwestern metropolis, Dyke Darrel turned his prisoner over to the proper officers, warning them of the dangerous nature of young Skidway, and then he turned his thoughts and feet in another channel. Dyke Darrel went to the office of the railroad company on whose road the midnight crime had been committed, and consulted with one of the officers in regard to the same.
I spoke of that afore; an' now I give ye warnin' that I cull every log, big or little, punk or sound, that ain't sawed square and true across th' butt." "Th' log is sound and good, an' ye'll scale it, or I'll know th' reason why!" "I will not," replied FitzPatrick. The following day he culled a log in another and distant skidway whose butt showed a slant of a good six inches.
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