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The lumberman's life at that time was rough but not vicious, for the men were nearly all of native American stock, and my father was none the worse for his winters in camp. He was called at this time, "Yankee Dick, the Pilot." As a result of all these experiences in the woods, he was almost as much woodsman as soldier in his talk, and the heroic life he had led made him very wonderful in my eyes.
The morning was cool and invigorating after the storm, so that it was not to be wondered at that our young friends felt joyous, and presently Eli broke out in a lumberman's "chanty" that he had picked up while in camp Cuthbert joined in the chorus, and unable to withstand the seductive strains, Owen found himself also lifting his voice and adding volume to the merry sound.
Then you will wish to save them from fire and the lumberman's axe, especially the rare and old sequoias. More than three hundred kinds of these dear feathered friends and visitors live in California. Along the sea-shore, in the great valleys and the mountain-forests and meadows, even in the dry, hot desert, the birds, our shy and merry neighbors, are at home.
As we lean on the coping of the sea wall at the end of the green-swarded Battery, in the flush of a May sunset that, on the right, throws the Highlands of the Navesink into dark purple relief and lights the waters of Harbor, River, and Sound into a softly swelling roseate flood, we may fix our eyes on the approach to The Narrows and watch the incoming shipping of the world: the fruit-laden steamer from the Bermudas, the black East Indiaman heavy with teakwood and spices, the lumberman's barge awash behind the tow, the old three-masted schooner, low in the water, her decks loaded with granite from the far-away quarries of Maine.
But we must hasten, for day wanes, and we must see and sketch this cloudless summit from terra firma. A mile and half-way down the lake, we landed at the foot of a grassy hill-side, where once had been a lumberman's station and hay-farm. It was abandoned now, and lonely in that deeper sense in which widowhood is lonelier than celibacy, a home deserted lonelier than a desert.
And it may be I'm undue curious. Who's that girl you go up on the pipe line to meet every mornin'?" His question was so abrupt that, for an instant, the younger man had a hot, childish anger; but he controlled himself, and wondered why he should have been annoyed by the frank interrogation. "Miss Presby, the lumberman's daughter," he said crisply. "But what interests me most is how you knew?"
"Yonder he comes now," vouchsafed the man nearest Orde. Orde made out the great square figure of the boss, his soft hat, his flaming red beard, his dingy mackinaw coat, his dingy black-and-white checked flannel shirt, his dingy blue trousers tucked into high socks, and, instead of driving boots, his ordinary lumberman's rubbers. As a spot of colour, he wore a flaming red knit sash, with tassels.
Slowly the hours wore away, and in the meanwhile Dick learned that the lumberman's name was Luke Peterson and that he was from the timberlands of Michigan. "I used to be in the United States service on the lakes, hunting down smugglers between here and Canada," said Peterson. "But that was years ago." "Do they do much smuggling?" asked Dick. "More than most folks think," was the decided answer.
But it's gone now, and this old one is left in place of it." There was no question about that. Search as Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey and the children did, over the picnic grounds, the lumberman's coat, with money in one pocket and papers in another, was gone. "Who do you s'pose could have taken it?" asked Nan, as her father looked about him with a puzzled air. "I don't know," he answered, "unless "
So soon as the foreman's outer garments had been removed, Frank brought him a pannikin of the lumberman's pet beverage, and he drank it eagerly, saying that it was all the medicine he needed.
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