Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 7, 2025
The scaler did what he considered his duty. All day long he tramped back and forth from one gang of men to the other, keeping a sharp eye on the details of the work. His practical experience was sufficient to solve readily such problems of broken tackle, extra expedients, or facility which the days brought forth. The fact that in him was vested the power to discharge kept the men at work.
Dyer's black eyes gleamed at him suspiciously, but the movement appeared wholly natural in view of the return to shore. "Nothing," he replied. "I didn't like your gang particularly, but that's nothing." "Why do you take such nervy chances to injure us?" queried Carpenter. "Because there's something in it," snapped the scaler. "Now about face; mosey!"
The scaler smiled a thin smile all to himself behind the stove. Big John Radway depended so much on the moral effect of approval or disapproval by those with whom he lived. It amused Dyer to withhold the timely word, so leaving the jobber to flounder between his easy nature and his sense of what should be done. Dyer knew perfectly well that the work was behind, and he knew the reason.
Jack Orde is a name you can scare fresh young rivermen with yet," he added with a laugh. "Well, pack your turkey to-night; we'll take the early train to-morrow." That evening Bob laid out what he intended to take with him, and was just about to stuff it into a pair of canvas bags when Tommy Gould, the youngest scaler, pushed open the door. "Hello!" he smiled engagingly; "where are you going?
As by a flash Dyer, the scaler, leered insolently from behind the Indian's stolid mask. "How do you know?" said Thorpe. For answer the Indian threw his shoulders forward in Dyer's nervous fashion. "He make trail big by the toe, light by the heel. He make trail big on inside."
So he learned why and when the sawyers threw a tree up or down hill; how much small standing timber they tried to fell it through; what consideration held for the cutting of different lengths of log; how the timber was skilfully decked on the skids in such a manner that the pile should not bulge and fall, and so that the scaler could easily determine the opposite ends of the same log; in short, a thousand and one little details which ordinarily a man learns only as the exigencies arise to call in experience.
"What is it, Albert?" he added. "Jot of chewin'," was the reply. The scaler took from the shelf a long plug of tobacco and cut off two inches. "Ain't hitting the van much, are you, Albert?" he commented, putting the man's name and the amount in a little book. Thorpe went out, after leaving his name for the time book, enlightened as to the method of obtaining supplies.
"That 'seventeen' white pine is going to underrun," said Dyer. "It won't skid over three hundred thousand." "It's small stuff," agreed Radway, "and so much the worse for us; but the Company'll stand in on it because small stuff like that always over-runs on the mill-cut." The scaler nodded comprehension. "When you going to dray-haul that Norway across Pike Lake?" "To-morrow.
Next year I had a little more, but she lasted me three weeks. That was better. Next year, I says to myself, I'll just save fifty of that stake, and blow the rest. So I did. After that I got to be scaler, and sort've quit. I just made a deal with the Old Fellow to leave my stake with headquarters no matter whether I call for it or not. I got quite a lot coming, now."
The men gathered, interested in this record load. "Thirteen thousand two hundred and forty," announced the scaler at last. "Whoopee!" crowed Billy O'Brien, "that'll lay out Rollway Charley by two thousand feet!" The men congratulated him on his victory over the other teamster, Rollway Charley.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking