The Blazed Trail | Page 7

needles, and the powder of snow,
that settled but slowly. There is nothing more impressive than this rush
of a pine top, excepting it be a charge of cavalry or the fall of Niagara.
Old woodsmen sometimes shout aloud with the mere excitement into
which it lifts them.
Then the swampers, who had by now finished the travoy road, trimmed
the prostrate trunk clear of all protuberances. It required fairly skillful
ax work. The branches had to be shaved close and clear, and at the
same time the trunk must not be gashed. And often a man was forced to
wield his instrument from a constrained position.
The chopped branches and limbs had now to be dragged clear and piled.
While this was being finished, Tom and Hank marked off and sawed
the log lengths, paying due attention to the necessity of avoiding knots,
forks, and rotten places. Thus some of the logs were eighteen, some
sixteen, or fourteen, and some only twelve feet in length.
Next appeared the teamsters with their little wooden sledges, their steel
chains, and their tongs. They had been helping the skidders to place the
parallel and level beams, or skids, on which the logs were to be piled
by the side of the road. The tree which Tom and Hank had just felled
lay up a gentle slope from the new travoy road, so little Fabian Laveque,
the teamster, clamped the bite of his tongs to the end of the largest, or
butt, log.
"Allez, Molly!" he cried.
The horse, huge, elephantine, her head down, nose close to her chest,
intelligently spying her steps, moved. The log half rolled over, slid
three feet, and menaced a stump.
"Gee!" cried Laveque.
Molly stepped twice directly sideways, planted her fore foot on a root
she had seen, and pulled sharply. The end of the log slid around the
stump.

"Allez!" commanded Laveque.
And Molly started gingerly down the hill. She pulled the timber, heavy
as an iron safe, here and there through the brush, missing no steps,
making no false moves, backing, and finally getting out of the way of
an unexpected roll with the ease and intelligence of Laveque himself.
In five minutes the burden lay by the travoy road. In two minutes more
one end of it had been rolled on the little flat wooden sledge and, the
other end dragging, it was winding majestically down through the
ancient forest. The little Frenchman stood high on the forward end.
Molly stepped ahead carefully, with the strange intelligence of the
logger's horse. Through the tall, straight, decorative trunks of trees the
little convoy moved with the massive pomp of a dead warrior's cortege.
And little Fabian Laveque, singing, a midget in the vastness, typified
the indomitable spirit of these conquerors of a wilderness.
When Molly and Fabian had travoyed the log to the skidway, they drew
it with a bump across the two parallel skids, and left it there to be rolled
to the top of the pile.
Then Mike McGovern and Bob Stratton and Jim Gladys took charge of
it. Mike and Bob were running the cant-hooks, while Jim stood on top
of the great pile of logs already decked. A slender, pliable steel chain,
like a gray snake, ran over the top of the pile and disappeared through a
pulley to an invisible horse,--Jenny, the mate of Molly. Jim threw the
end of this chain down. Bob passed it over and under the log and
returned it to Jim, who reached down after it with the hook of his
implement. Thus the stick of timber rested in a long loop, one end of
which led to the invisible horse, and the other Jim made fast to the top
of the pile. He did so by jamming into another log the steel
swamp-hook with which the chain was armed. When all was made fast,
the horse started.
"She's a bumper!" said Bob. "Look out, Mike!"
The log slid to the foot of the two parallel poles laid slanting up the
face of the pile. Then it trembled on the ascent. But one end stuck for
an instant, and at once the log took on a dangerous slant. Quick as light

Bob and Mike sprang forward, gripped the hooks of the cant-hooks,
like great thumbs and forefingers, and, while one held with all his
power, the other gave a sharp twist upward. The log straightened. It
was a master feat of power, and the knack of applying strength justly.
At the top of the little incline, the timber hovered for a second.
"One more!" sang out Jim to the driver. He poised, stepped lightly up
and over, and avoided by the safe hair's breadth being crushed when the
log rolled. But it did not lie quite straight