United States or Greece ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
On soft nights, when the camp was hot and damp, it made, of course, a sufficiently nasty mess in the victim's hair, but Gillsey, by contrast, deemed rather to enjoy it. It never woke him up. If the joker's mood happened to be more boisterous, the approved procedure was to softly uncover Gillsey's feet, and tie a long bit of salmon twine to each big toe.
But the boss knew all about him, even to his parentage. He lived about ten miles from the camp, across the mountains, on the Gornish River itself. As for his guilt, there was no room for a shadow of uncertainty. A misdemeanor of this sort is always severely handled in the lumber camps. But every man, from the boss down, was filled with profound compassion for Gillsey's family.
From the camp to Gillsey's wretched cabin was only about ten miles across the mountain, but by the stream, which made a great circuit to get around a spur of the hills, it was hardly less than three times as far. To Gillsey, in his log hut on a lofty knoll by the stream, the winter had gone by rather happily.
When he had climbed as high as his tormentors thought advisable which usually was just as high as the top of the tree a couple of vigorous choppers would immediately attack the tree with their axes. As the tall trunk began to topple with a sickening hesitation, Gillsey's eyes would stick out and his thin hair seem to stand on end, for to this torture he never grew accustomed.
Then came the rough-and-ready sentence of the camp-followers. The prisoner was to be "dragged" the most humiliating punishment on the woodmen's code. Gillsey's tears of fright were of no avail. He was wrapped in a sort of winding-sheet of canvas, smeared from head to foot with grease to make him slip smoothly, and hitched by the fettered wrists to a pair of horses.
After waking all the other hands, the conspirators would retire to their bunks. Presently some one would give a smart tug on one of the strings, and pass it over hastily to his neighbor. Gillsey would wake up with a nervous yell, and grabbing his toe, seek to extricate it from the loop. Then would come another and sharper pull at the other toe, diverting Gillsey's attention to that member.
Word Of The Day