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Updated: June 29, 2025
Gillsey went by the child, at a long trot, without answering, and disappeared in the woods; and at the same moment the flood went through the valley, filling it half-way up to the spot where the cabin stood. That lanky youngster's word was law to the father, and she had set his thoughts in a new channel. He felt the camp must be saved, if he died for it. The girl said so.
But the noise of the onrushing flood was now in their startled ears, and they needed no words to tell them their awful peril. Not staying an instant, every man ran for the hillside, barefooted in the snow. Ere they reached a safe height, Gillsey stumbled and fell, utterly exhausted, and for a moment no one noticed his absence.
This was much like the hunting of a tame fox, as far as exhilaration and manliness were concerned; but sport is sport, and the men would have their fun, with the heedless brutality of primitive natures. This diversion, though rough and dangerous, is never practised on any but green hands or unwary visitors; but all signs fail in dry weather, and for Gillsey no traditions held.
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.
"Hackett's dam's bust, shore!" she exclaimed in a moment. Gillsey turned upon her one of his deprecating, toothless smiles. "'T aint a-goin' ter tech us here," said he; "but I'm powerful glad ter be outer the Gornish Camp ter night. Them chaps be a-goin' ter ketch it, blame the'r skins!"
You'll be kinder expected, I reckon, for Stevie's powerful anxious to see you." Sandy grabbed his coat and went along. The Butt of the Camp. He was a mean-looking specimen, this Simon Gillsey, and the Gornish Camp was not proud of him.
It became known in the camp, somehow, that he was a married man, and father of a family as miserable and shiftless as himself. Here was an explanation of his raids upon the provisions, for nobody in the camp would for a moment imagine that Gillsey could, unaided, support a family.
Then it seemed as if a transformation was worked upon the poor cringing fellow, and he began to believe in himself. A new, firmer, manlier light woke in his eye, and he held himself erect. He presently began to move about among the woodsmen as their equal, and their enduring gratitude gave his new self-confidence time to ripen. From that day Simon Gillsey stood on a higher plane.
Then the boss of the camp looked back and saw him lying motionless in his tracks. Already the camp had gone down under the torrent, and the flood was about to lick up the prostrate figure; but the boss turned back with tremendous bounds, swung Gillsey over his shoulder like a sack of oats, and staggered up the slope, as the water swelled, with a sobbing moan, from his ankles to his knees.
It was not always wholesome to play these on each other, but Gillsey afforded a safe object for the ingenuity of the backwoods wit. For instance, whenever the men thought it was time to "chop a fellow down," in default of a greenhorn from the older settlements they would select Gillsey for the victim, and order that reluctant scarecrow up to the tree-top.
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