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Updated: June 10, 2025
Quietly it fell, in big, downy flakes that floated lazily to earth from the even gray of the cloud-spread sky, tracing aimless, zigzag patterns against the dark green background of the pines, and covering the brown needles of the forest floor and the torn mold of the skidways with a soft blanket of white. The men sprang eagerly to their work heartened by the feel of the snow.
Several acres had been cut off, and skidways built up for more extensive operations, probably for that very season. Upon consulting his map, the forester found, as he had expected, that the timber was not charted as belonging to private individuals. Tom pointed to a man-made dam in the river. It had been constructed of spiles small logs, driven in like posts, set so that they leaned upstream.
They drove on, and at the skidways Mr. Marlin dropped his subordinate. "I'll be out to see you to-morrow," he said, "with some maps and specifications I must work out to-night. Good-bye." "He's a prince," muttered Charley, and fell to measuring logs.
The blacksmith's shop was entirely buried under a huge drift; only one half of the cook-shack roof was visible, and the bunk-house was buried to the eaves. A twenty-foot drift cut off the view of the stables, and the whole crew was busy digging paths and breaking out skidways.
Open, face downward upon the surface of the desk where it had been pushed aside to make room for a rough sketch of the camp with its outreaching skidways and cross-hauls, lay a small volume. "And Southey!" she exclaimed under her breath, and picked up the book.
Then other men piled them by means of long steel chains and horses, just as they would have skidded them in the woods. Only now the logs mounted up and up until the skidways were thirty or forty feet high. Eventually the pile of logs would fill the banking ground utterly, burying the landing under a nearly continuous carpet of timber as thick as a two-story house is tall. The work is dangerous.
"Then I'll do some practicing to-day," said Charley. "You sent my crew into another district and I can put in a whole afternoon practicing." "Very good. I'll take you out to the skidways where the logs are being piled by the highway, and you can work there as long as you like. Do you have that log-rule I gave you?" "Sure. But what about this? How shall I know if my measurements are correct?"
An unprecedented thaw set in, ruining the skidways and reducing the snow of the forest to a sodden slush that chilled men to the bone as they floundered heavily about their work. Reed and Kantochy, two sawyers, were caught by a "kick-back." One of the best horses was sweenied.
Babe cast a shoe while making a hard pull one day, and it was hurled for a mile and tore down forty acres of pine and injured eight Swedes that were swamping out skidways. Ole was also a mechanic and built the Downcutter, a rig like a mowing machine that cut down a swath of trees 500 feet wide.
The Rough Red had charge of the banking, where his aggressive, brutal personality kept the rollways free from congestion. For congestion there means delay in unloading the sleighs; and that in turn means a drag in the woods work near the skidways at the other end of the line. Tom North and Tim Nolan and Johnny Sims and Jim Denning were foremen back in the forest.
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