He opened Camp One, and the Fighting Forty came back from distant drinking joints.This was in early September, when the raspberries were entirely done and the blackberries fairly in the way of vanishing.That able-bodied and devoted band of men was on hand when needed.Shearer, in some subtle manner of his own, had let them feel that this year meant thirty million or "bust." They tightened their leather belts and stood ready for commands.Thorpe set them to work near the river, cutting roads along the lines he had blazed to the inland timber on seventeen and nineteen.After much discussion with Shearer the young man decided to take out the logs from eleven by driving them down French Creek.
To this end a gang was put to clearing the creekbed.It was a tremendous job.Centuries of forest life had choked the little stream nearly to the level of its banks.Old snags and stumps lay imbedded in the ooze; decayed trunks, moss-grown, blocked the current; leaning tamaracks, fallen timber, tangled vines, dense thickets gave to its course more the appearance of a tropical jungle than of a north country brook-bed.All these things had to be removed, one by one, and either piled to one side or burnt.In the end, however, it would pay.French Creek was not a large stream, but it could be driven during the time of the spring freshets.
Each night the men returned in the beautiful dreamlike twilight to the camp.There they sat, after eating, smoking their pipes in the open air.Much of the time they sang, while Phil, crouching wolf-like over his violin, rasped out an accompaniment of dissonances.
From a distance it softened and fitted pleasantly into the framework of the wilderness.The men's voices lent themselves well to the weird minor strains of the chanteys.These times--when the men sang, and the night-wind rose and died in the hemlock tops--were Thorpe's worst moments.His soul, tired with the day's iron struggle, fell to brooding.Strange thoughts came to him, strange visions.He wanted something he knew not what; he longed, and thrilled, and aspired to a greater glory than that of brave deeds, a softer comfort than his old foster mother, the wilderness, could bestow.
The men were singing in a mighty chorus, swaying their heads in unison, and bringing out with a roar the emphatic words of the crude ditties written by some genius from their own ranks.
"Come all ye sons of ******* throughout old Michigan, Come all ye gallant lumbermen, list to a shanty man.
On the banks of the Muskegon, where the rapid waters flow, OH!--we'll range the wild woods o'er while a-lumbering we go."Here was the bold unabashed front of the pioneer, here was absolute certainty in the superiority of his calling,--absolute scorn of all others.Thorpe passed his hand across his brow.The same spirit was once fully and freely his.
"The music of our burnished ax shall make the woods resound, And many a lofty ancient pine will tumble to the ground.
At night around our shanty fire we'll sing while rude winds blow, OH!--we'll range the wild woods o'er while a-lumbering we go!"That was what he was here for.Things were going right.It would be pitiful to fail merely on account of this idiotic lassitude, this unmanly weakness, this boyish impatience and desire for play.He a woodsman! He a fellow with these big strong men!
A single voice, clear and high, struck into a quick measure:
"I am a jolly shanty boy, As you will soon discover;To all the dodges I am fly, A hustling pine-woods rover.
A peavey-hook it is my pride, An ax I well can handle.
To fell a tree or punch a bull, Get rattling Danny Randall."And then with a rattle and crash the whole Fighting Forty shrieked out the chorus:
"Bung yer eye! bung yer eye!"
Active, alert, prepared for any emergency that might arise; hearty, ready for everything, from punching bulls to felling trees--that was something like! Thorpe despised himself.The song went on.
"I love a girl in Saginaw, She lives with her mother.
I defy all Michigan To find such another.
She's tall and slim, her hair is red, Her face is plump and pretty.
She's my daisy Sunday best-day girl, And her front name stands for Kitty."And again as before the Fighting Forty howled truculently:
"Bung yer eye! bung yer eye!"
The words were vulgar, the air a mere minor chant.Yet Thorpe's mind was stilled.His aroused subconsciousness had been engaged in reconstructing these men entire as their songs voiced rudely the inner characteristics of their beings.Now his spirit halted, finger on lip.Their bravery, pride of caste, resource, bravado, boastfulness,--all these he had checked off approvingly.Here now was the idea of the Mate.Somewhere for each of them was a "Kitty,"a "daisy Sunday best-day girl"; the eternal feminine; the softer side; the tenderness, beauty, glory of even so harsh a world as they were compelled to inhabit.At the present or in the past these woods roisterers, this Fighting Forty, had known love.Thorpe arose abruptly and turned at random into the forest.The song pursued him as he went, but he heard only the clear sweet tones, not the words.And yet even the words would have spelled to his awakened sensibilities another idea,--would have symbolized however rudely, companionship and the human delight of acting a part before a woman.
"I took her to a dance one night, A mossback gave the bidding--Silver Jack bossed the shebang, and Big Dan played the fiddle.
We danced and drank the livelong night With fights between the dancing, Till Silver Jack cleaned out the ranch And sent the mossbacks prancing."And with the increasing war and turmoil of the quick water the last shout of the Fighting Forty mingled faintly and was lost.
"Bung yer eye! bung yer eye!"
Thorpe found himself at the edge of the woods facing a little glade into which streamed the radiance of a full moon.
Chapter XXXVIII
