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Updated: May 1, 2025
Evidently Casey was disappointed not to get another cursing, for he turned to his comrade, McDermott, an axman. "Say, Mac, phwot do you make of cowboys?" "I tell ye, Pat, I make of thim thet you'll be full of bulletholes before this railroad's built." "Thin, b'gosh, I'll hould drink fer a long time yit," replied Casey.
There were several families of French-Canadians living at clearings on Lurvey's Stream, three miles below the lake; and since I was the youngest and least efficient axman of the party, they sent me down there every afternoon to buy milk and eggs, for more white monkey.
He was not an expert axman, but he knew enough about that cunning craft to make his blows tell, and a continual desire to sing welled up in him. Once, to breathe after the heavy labor, he stepped to the edge of the little grove. The sun was sparkling in the tops of the trees; the valley dropped far away below him. He felt as one who stands on the top of the world.
Soon the tent strings were drawn and the axman pushed through the door, his arms full of dry spruce wood. He stood smiling down at the face framed snugly in the fox fur; then he dropped his burden and knelt before the stove. In a moment there came a promising crackle, followed quickly by an agreeable flutter which grew into a roar as the stove began to draw.
One of the foremen of Benbow Camp the best ax wielder of the crew ran out on the boom to a point near the middle of the frothing stream and began cutting the key-log. It was a ticklish piece of work; but these timbermen were used to such jobs. The gash in the log showed wider and wider. Where Ruth stood she cocked her head to listen to the strokes of the axman.
It was a great sight to see Andy Lowes leap nimbly up the ladder and poke in window after window with his spiked ax, stepping backward now and then into nozzleman Jones's face in order to view the effect. The axmen got glory enough to last for years, and it was an axman who put out the last scrap of fire. Frank Sundell was the hero.
The boy nodded. "Absurd. No two men's speed is the same. Don't force work. Find out what gait you can keep up all day and do that. Make your own standard, don't take another man's." "But I go so slowly!" "Want to know it all and do it all the first summer, don't you? Suppose no one else had to learn? I don't work as hard as you do, though I get more done. You can't buck up against an old axman.
He found himself looking over a large room which was, he thought, one of the most comfortable he had ever seen outside of pictures. At the farther end a great fireplace filled the width of the room. The inside of the log walls had been carefully and smoothly finished by some master axman. There were plenty of chairs, homemade and very comfortable with cushions.
Anybody can chop, it is true, as anybody can daub with a paint brush, but a real axman of the breed of the Deacon, who had gone into the wilderness with scarcely any other tool than an ax, can produce results with it of which the clumsy hacker can scarcely imagine. The Deacon watched the negro's work with disgust and impatience.
"Well," said Weston, addressing the hotel-keeper, "while I don't know what your tariff is, it's quite evident to me, after what the others have said, that my partner couldn't very well have spent more than five or six dollars. We'll call it eight to make more certain, and I'll pacify him if you'll hand me twelve." "Twelve dollars," sang the axman, "or the horse! Bring them out!"
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