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Updated: June 24, 2025
Now arrived on the scene the "swampers" and cross-cut men, swarming over the prostrate tree like ants over a piece of sugar. Some of them cut off limbs; others, with axes and crowbars, began to pry away great slabs of bark; still others, with much precaution of shovel, wedge and axe against jamming, commenced the slow and laborious undertaking of sawing apart the logs.
Here's a list," Dick answered, handing her a memorandum calling for go many millmen, so many drill runners, swampers, car handlers, and so forth; in all, a list of twenty odd. "Who told you to come here?" She exploded the question as if it were vital. "Park. Bells Park." She laughed mirthlessly between lips that did not smile and regular, white teeth. But her laugh belied her lack of sympathy.
"We can get out this way " "Smart work, Red. Did you think that out all by yourself?" asked the other contemptuously. "Yes, we can come out this way when" his voice was sharp with purpose "we are finished. Send one of these swampers down to the levee where the men are working. As long as this flood keeps rising we're safe. Then the other three of us will go for the house.
A teamster, I was told, receives seventy dollars per month, a chopper fifty dollars, chain-tenders and jack-screw men the same, swampers forty-five dollars, sawyers forty dollars, and barkers, who are usually Indians, one dollar a day and board besides, for all.
The falling gang raced to keep ahead of the buckers and swampers, and they in turn raced to keep ahead of the hook tender, rigging slinger, and donkey, which last trio moved the logs from woods to water, once they were down and trimmed.
At the end of an interminable period, a faint, musical halloo swelled, echoed, and died through the forest, beautiful as a spirit. It was taken up by another voice and repeated. Then by another. Now near at hand, now far away it rang as hollow as a bell. The sawyers, the swampers, the skidders, and the team men turned and put on their heavy blanket coats.
Swampers and axe-men set to work building skidways and cross-hauls, and the banks of the river were cleared for the roll-ways. The ground was still bare of snow, but the sawyers were "laying them down," and the logs were banked at the skidways. Then one morning the snow came.
Red Jacket, the teamster of the sorrels, one day was credited with 11,000 feet; while Long Pine Jim and Rollway Charley had put in but 10,500 and 10,250 respectively. That evening all the sawyers, swampers, and skidders belonging to Red Jacket's outfit were considerably elated; while the others said little and prepared for business on the morrow.
When you reflect that one pair of horses takes care of the exertions of a crew of sawyers, several swampers, and three or four cant-hook men, you will readily see what a serious derangement their loss would cause. And besides, the animals themselves are difficult to replace.
It was hardly credible, either, that a man with as extensive property interests as Colonel Ward possessed would dare to destroy wantonly the goods of a railroad company in the strong position of the Poquette road. However, Parker resolved to make a survey at once, in order to put the swampers at work chopping trees and clearing the right of way.
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