The Blazed Trail | Page 4

man's vices.
In him the passions are elemental, the dramas epic, for he lives in the
age when men are close to nature, and draw from her their forces. He
satisfies his needs direct from the earth. Stripped of all the towns can
give him, he merely resorts to a facile substitution. It becomes an affair
of rawhide for leather, buckskin for cloth, venison for canned tomatoes.
We feel that his steps are planted on solid earth, for civilizations may
crumble without disturbing his magnificent self-poise. In him we
perceive dimly his environment. He has something about him which
other men do not possess--a frank clearness of the eye, a swing of the
shoulder, a carriage of the hips, a tilt of the hat, an air of muscular
well-being which marks him as belonging to the advance guard,
whether he wears buckskin, mackinaw, sombrero, or broadcloth. The
woods are there, the plains, the rivers. Snow is there, and the line of the
prairie. Mountain peaks and still pine forests have impressed
themselves subtly; so that when we turn to admire his unconsciously
graceful swing, we seem to hear the ax biting the pine, or the
prospector's pick tapping the rock. And in his eye is the capability of
quiet humor, which is just the quality that the surmounting of many
difficulties will give a man.
Like the nature he has fought until he understands, his disposition is at
once kindly and terrible. Outside the subtleties of his calling, he sees
only red. Relieved of the strenuousness of his occupation, he turns all
the force of the wonderful energies that have carried him far where
other men would have halted, to channels in which a gentle current
makes flood enough. It is the mountain torrent and the canal. Instead of
pleasure, he seeks orgies. He runs to wild excesses of drinking, fighting,

and carousing--which would frighten most men to sobriety--with a
happy, reckless spirit that carries him beyond the limits of even his
extraordinary forces.
This is not the moment to judge him. And yet one cannot help admiring
the magnificently picturesque spectacle of such energies running riot.
The power is still in evidence, though beyond its proper application.
Chapter II
In the network of streams draining the eastern portion of Michigan and
known as the Saginaw waters, the great firm of Morrison & Daly had
for many years carried on extensive logging operations in the
wilderness. The number of their camps was legion, of their employees a
multitude. Each spring they had gathered in their capacious booms
from thirty to fifty million feet of pine logs.
Now at last, in the early eighties, they reached the end of their holdings.
Another winter would finish the cut. Two summers would see the great
mills at Beeson Lake dismantled or sold, while Mr. Daly, the "woods
partner" of the combination, would flit away to the scenes of new and
perhaps more extensive operations. At this juncture Mr. Daly called to
him John Radway, a man whom he knew to possess extensive
experience, a little capital, and a desire for more of both.
"Radway," said he, when the two found themselves alone in the mill
office, "we expect to cut this year some fifty millions, which will finish
our pine holdings in the Saginaw waters. Most of this timber lies over
in the Crooked Lake district, and that we expect to put in ourselves. We
own, however, five million on the Cass Branch which we would like to
log on contract. Would you care to take the job?"
"How much a thousand do you give?" asked Radway.
"Four dollars," replied the lumberman.
"I'll look at it," replied the jobber.

So Radway got the "descriptions" and a little map divided into
townships, sections, and quarter sections; and went out to look at it. He
searched until he found a "blaze" on a tree, the marking on which
indicated it as the corner of a section. From this corner the boundary
lines were blazed at right angles in either direction. Radway followed
the blazed lines. Thus he was able accurately to locate isolated "forties"
(forty acres), "eighties," quarter sections, and sections in a primeval
wilderness. The feat, however, required considerable woodcraft, an
exact sense of direction, and a pocket compass.
These resources were still further drawn upon for the next task.
Radway tramped the woods, hills, and valleys to determine the most
practical route over which to build a logging road from the standing
timber to the shores of Cass Branch. He found it to be an affair of some
puzzlement. The pines stood on a country rolling with hills, deep with
pot-holes. It became necessary to dodge in and out, here and there,
between the knolls, around or through the swamps, still keeping,
however, the same