The prey of the strongest

by Morley Roberts

I

"Klahya, tilikum."

As Pitt River Pete spoke he entered the humming Fraser Mill by the big side door chute down which all the heavier sawed lumber slid on its way to the yard. He had climbed up the slope of the chute and for some moments had stayed outside, though he looked in, for the sun was burning bright on white sawed lumber and the shining river, so that the comparative gloom of the Mill made him pause. But now he entered, and seeing Skookum Charlie helping the Wedger-off, he spoke, and Skookum, who could not hear in the uproar, knew that he said "Klahya."

The Mill stretched either way, and each end was open to the East and the West. It was old and grimed and covered with the fine meal of sawdust. Great webs hung up aloft in the dim roof. In front of Pete was the Pony Saw which took the lumber from the great Saws and made it into boards and scantling, beams and squared lumber. To Pete's right were the Great Saws, the father and mother of the Mill, double, edge to edge, mighty in their curved inset teeth, wide in gauge and strong whatever came to them. As they sang and screamed in chorus, singing always together, the other Saws chimed in: the Pony Saw sang and the Great Trimmer squealed and the Chinee Trimmer whined. Every Saw had its note, its natural song, just as naturally as a bird has: each could be told by the skilled hearer. Pete listened as he stepped inside and put his back against the studs of the wall-plates, out of the way of the hive of man, he only being a drone that hour. And the Big Hoes, Father and Mother of the Mill, droned in the cut of logs and said (or sang) that what they cut was Douglas Fir, and that it was tough. But the Pony Saw said that the last big log had been Spruce. The smell of spruce said "spruce" just as the Saw sang it. And the Trimmers screamed opposing notes, for they cut across the grain. Beneath the floor where the chorus of the Saws worked was the clatter of the lath-mill and the insistent squeal of the Shingle Saw, with its recurrent shriek of pride, "I cut a shingle, phit, I cut a shingle, phit!"

The whole Mill was a tuned instrument, a huge sounding board. There was no discord, for any discord played its part: it was one organic harmony, pleasing, fatiguing, satisfying; any dropped note was missed: if the Lath Mill stayed in silence, something was wanting, when the Shingler said nothing, the last fine addition to the music fell away. And yet the one harmony of the Mill was a background for the soloes of the Saws, for the great diapason of the Hoes, for the swifter speech of the Pony, for the sharp cross note of the Trimmers. The saws sang according to the log, to its nature, to its growth: either for the butt or the cleaner wood. In a long log the saws intoned a recitative: a solemn service. And beneath them all was the mingled song of the belts, which drove the saws, hidden in darkness, and between floors. Against the song of the Mill the voice of man prevailed nothing.

When any man desired to speak to another he went close to him and shouted. They had a silent speech for measurements in feet; the hand, the fingers, the rubbed thumb and finger, the clenched hand with thumb up, with thumb down, called numbers for the length of boards, of scantling, what not.

"Eleven feet!" said the rubbing thumb and forefinger.

If any spoke it was about the business of the Mill.

"Fine cedar this," said Mac to Jack, "fine cedar—special order—for——" a lost word.

But for the most part no one spoke but the saws. Men whistled with pursed lips and whistled dumbly: they sang too, but the songs were swallowed in the song of the Saws. They began at six and ran till noon unless a breakdown happened and some belt gave way. But none had given this day and it was ten o'clock. The men were warm and willing with work, their muscles worked warm and easy. It was grand to handle the lever and to beat in the iron dogs: to use the maul upon the wedges as the Saws squealed. They worked easy in their minds. They looked up and smiled unenvious of idle Pitt River Pete. They knew work was good, their breath felt clean: their hearts beat to the rhythm of the Mill.

As mills go it was a small one. It could not compete with the giants of the Inlet and the Sound who served Australia, which grows no good working wood, or South America. It sent no lumber to Brisbane, no boards to Callao or Valparaiso. It served the town of New Westminster and the neighbouring ranches: the little growth of townships on the River up to Hope and Yale. Sometimes it sent a cargo to Victoria or 'Squimault. A schooner even now lay alongside the wharf, piled high with new sawed stuff, that the saws had eaten as logs and spewed as lumber.

As logs! Aye, in the pool below, in the Boom, which is a chained log corral for swimming logs, a hundred great logs swam. Paul (from nowhere, but a tall thin man) was the keeper and their herder. He chose them for the slaughter, and went out upon them as they wallowed, and with a long pike stood upon the one to be sacrificed and drove it to the spot whence it should climb to the altar: a long slope with an endless cable working above and below it. He made it fast with heavy dogs, with chains may be, and then spoke to one above who clapped the Friction on the Bull-Wheel and hove the log out of the water, as if it were a whale for flensing. It went up into the Mill and was rolled upon the skids, and waited. It trembled and the Mill trembled.

"Now, now, that log, boys. Hook in, drive her, roll her, heave and she's on! Drive in the dogs and she goes!"

Oh, but it was a good sight and the roar was filling. Pete's eyes sparkled: he loved it: loved the sound and the song and itched to be again on the log with the maul. Those who speak of sport—why, let them fell a giant, drive it, boom it, drag it and cut it up! To brittle a monarch of the forest and disembowel it of its boards: its scantlings: its squared lumber: posts, fences, shingles, laths, pickets, Oho! Pete knew how great it was.

"Oh, klahya, tilikum, my friend the log."

He spoke not now to Skookum, but strong Charlie, and lazy Charlie, understood him. At one hour of the day even the lazy surrendered to the charm of the song of the work and did their damnedest. So Skookum understood that his old friend (both being Sitcum Siwashes, or half breeds) loved the Mill and the work at that hour.

White, the chief Sawyer, the Red Beard, was at his lever and set the carriage for a ten inch Cant when the slabs were off and hurtling to the lath mill. Ginger White no one loved, least of all his Wedger-Off, Simmons (a man, like silent Paul of the Boom, from nowhere), for he too was gingery, with a gleam of the sun in his beard and a spice of the devil in his temper. He was the fierce red type, while White was red but lymphatic, and also a little fat under the jowl and a liar by nature, furtive, not very brave but skilled in Saws. Simmons took a wedge and his maul and waited for the log to come to him. The carriage moved: the saws bit: the sawdust squirted and spurted in a curve with strips of wood which were not sawdust, for they use big gauges in the soft wood of the West and would stare at a sixteenth gauge, to say nothing of less. Now Simmons leapt upon the log and drove in the wedge to keep the closing cut open for the saws. The lengthening cut gave opening for another and another. Simmons and Skookum played swiftly, interchanging the loosened wedge and setting it to loosen the last driven in. The Wedgers-Off on the six-foot log were like birds of prey upon a beast.

"Oh, give it her," yelled Skookum. It was a way of his to yell. But Ginger drove her fast, hoping to hear the saws nip a little and alter their note so that he could complain. Simmons knew it, Skookum knew it. But they played quickly and sure. They leapt before the end of the cut and helped to guide the falling cant upon the skids. Chinamen helped them. The Cant thundered on the skids and was thrust sideways over to the Pony Saw.

"Kloshe kahkwa," said Pete. "That's good!"

And as he sent the carriage backward for another cut, Ginger White looked up and saw Pete standing with his back to the wall. Ginger's dull eye brightened, and he regarded Simmons with increased disfavour. Pete he knew was a good Wedger-Off, a quick, keen man very good for a Siwash, as good as any man in the Mill at such work. He had seen Pete work at the Inlet. Oh, he was good, "hyas kloshe," said White, but as for Simmons, damn! He was red-headed, and Ginger hated a red man for some deep reason.

It was a busy world, but even in the rhythm of the work hatred gleamed and strange passions worked as darkly as the belts, deep in the floor, that drove the saws. Quin, the manager (and part owner), came in at the door by the big Saws, and he saw Pete standing by the open chute. He smiled to himself.

"Back again, and asking for work. Where's his wife, pretty Jenny?"

She was pretty, toketie klootchman, a pretty woman: not a half breed: perhaps, if one knew, less than a quarter breed, tenas Sitcum Siwash, and the blood showed in the soft cheeks. She was bright and had real colour, tender contours, everything but beautiful hands and feet, and they not so bad. As for her face, and her smile (which was something to see), why, said Quin, as he licked his lips, there wasn't a white woman around that was a patch on her. Jenny had smiled on him. But Pete kept his eye on her and so far as it seemed she was true to him. But Quin——

In the busy world as it was Quin's mind ran on Jenny.

"Yes, Sir," he used to say, "we're small but all there. We run for all we're worth, every cent of it, every pound of beef. If you want to see bigger, try the Inlet or Port Blakeley. But we cut here to the last inch. Thirty thousand feet a day ain't a hell of a pile, but it's all we can chew. And, Sir, we chew it!"

He was a broad heavy man, dark and strong and much lighter on his feet than he looked. If there hadn't been Skookum Charlie it might have been Skookum Quin. He was as hard as a cant-log.

"We're alive," said Quin the manager. They worked where he was, and, hard as they had worked before, White set a livelier pace and made his men sweat. Quin smiled and understood that Ginger White was that kind of a man. Now Mac at the Pony Saw always took a breather when Quin came in. Just now he walked from his saw, dropped down through a trapdoor into a weltering chaos of sudden death and threw the tightener off his saw's belt. The Pony Saw ceased to hum and whined a little and ran slow and died. The blurred rim of steel became separate teeth. Long Mac stood over the saw and tightened a tooth with his tools and took out one and replaced it with a better washleather to keep it firm. He moved slow but again descended and let the tightener fall upon the belt. The Pony Saw sprang to valiant life and screamed for work. Quin smiled at Mac, for he knew he was a worker from "Way Back," and the further back you go the worse they get! By the Lord, you bet!

So much for Quin for the time. The Stick Moola, as the Chinook has it, is the theme.

It was a beast by the water, that lived on logs. It crawled into the River for logs, and reached out its arms for logs. It desired logs with its sharp teeth. It hungered for Cedar (there's good red cedar of sorts in the ranges, and fine white cedar in the Selkirks), and for Spruce (the fine tree it is!) and Douglas Fir and Hemlock or anything to cut that wasn't true hardwood. It could eat some of the soppy Slope Maple but disdained it. It was greedy and loved lumber. Men cut its dinner afar off and towed it around to the Mill, to the arms, the open arms of the Boom with Paul helping as a kind of great kitchen boy.

At early dawn its whistle blew, for in the dark (or near it) the underlings of the Engineer stirred up the furnaces and threw in sawdust and woke the steam. At "half after five" the men turned out, came tumbling in for breakfast in the boarded shack by the Store and fed before they fed the Mill. The first whistle sounded hungry, the second found the men hungry no more, but ready to feed the Beast.

In winter it was no joke turning out to begin the day early, but when frost had the Fraser in its arms the Mill shut down and went to sleep. One can't get one's logs out of eighteen inches of ice and then a frozen log cuts hard: it shines when cut. But at this season, it was bright at five and sunny at six. The men came with a summer willingness (that is, with less unwillingness than in frost time, for, remember, it takes work to make work easy and your beginner each day hates the beginning) and they were drawn from all ends of the earth.

There were British Canadians:

And Americans: from Wisconsin, Michigan, Texas, Iowa and the Lord knows where.

And Spaniards: one a man of Castile, and one from Mexico.

There were two Kanucks of the old sort from the East or there was one at any rate.

There were Englishmen. Well, there was one Jack Mottram and he a seaman.

There was one Swede, Hans Anderssen, in the Mill. There were two Finns outside it.

And one Lett (from Lithuania, you understand).

There was a Scotchman of course, and, equally of course, he was the Engineer.

There was a French Canadian, not by any means of the habitant type but very much there, and he knew English well, but usually cursed in French as was proper.

There were two Germans. One was as meek as one German usually is unless he is drunk. But one was not meek. More of him anon.

It was an odd crowd, a mixed crowd at meal times in the Mill hash house. To add to everything Chinamen waited: Chinamen cooked.

"Now then, Sing, chuck the chow on!"

"Sing-Sing (that's where you ought to be), where's the muckamuck?"

"Sacré chien——"

"Der Teufel——"

"By the great Horn Spoon——"

"Holy Mackinaw!"

"Caramba—Carajo——"

"By Crimes——"

"Oh! Phit!"

"Oh, where's the grub, the hash—the muckamuck, you Canton rats! Kihi, kiti, mukha-hoilo!"

And the hash was slung and the slingers thereof hurried.

The hash-eaters talked English (of sorts), American (North and South), Swinsk, Norsk, Dansk, true Spanish (with the lisp), Mexican Spanish (without it and soft as silk). They interlarded the talk (which was of mills, lumber, and politics, and Indian klootchmen, and the weather, and of horses and dogs and the devil and all) with scraps of Chinook. And that is English and French and different sorts of Indian fried and boiled and pounded and fricasseed and served up in one jargon. It's a complete and God-forsaken tongue but Easy, and Easiness goes. It is as it were brother to Pidgin English.

The grub was "muckamuck" and luckily was "kloshe." But as it happened (it usually did happen) there was salmon.

"Cultus slush, I call it," said one. "Cultu muckamuck."

"That's Ned Quin's nickname up to Kamloops," said Jack Mottram.

"Our man's brother?"

"Him," said Jack. He picked his teeth with a fork and Long Mac eyed him with disgust.

"I know Ned, he's tough."

But Jack was tough himself: he had been salted in all the seas and sun-dried on all the beaches of the rough round world. He made short stays everywhere: passages not voyages: skippers were glad to give him his discharge, for after sixty days at sea he sickened for the land and became hot cargo.

"Oh, I'm tough enough," he would prelude some yarn with.

Now Shorty Gibbs spoke, he of the Shingle Mill. Lately the Shingle Mill had annexed half a thumb of his as it screamed out to him. "He's a son of a——"

He completed the sentence in the approved round manner.

They all admitted that Quin the Manager was Tough, but that Ned Quin of Kamloops was tougher admitted not a doubt.

They swept the food from the table. Just as the logs were divided by the Saws and fell into various Chutes and disappeared, so the food went here. Most of the men ate like hogs (the better Americans least like): they yaffled, they gurgled, they sweated over the chewing and got over it.

"I'm piled up," said Tenas Billy of the Lath Mill. He too was minus a thumb and the tops of some fingers, tribute to the saw. Especially do the Shingle Saw and Lath Saw take such petty toll. When the Hoes ask tribute or the Pony Saw it's a different matter.

"I'm piled up."

As to being piled up, that was a Sawmill metaphor.

"You've put the tightener on your belt!"

To be sure they all had.

But as to piling up, when things were booming and men were warm and feeling the work good, and when nothing went wrong with the belts or with the Engines and the logs came easy and sweet, it was the ambition of the Chief Sawyer to pile up the Skids of Long Mac who had the Pony Saw. Then it was Long Mac's desire to pile up the skids for the Chinee trimmer (not run by a Chinee) and it was that Trimmer's desire to pile up the man opposing. To be piled up is to have bested one's own teeth, when it comes to chewing.

"My skids are full," said the metaphorical.

At six the whistle blew again, with a bigger power of steam in its larynx. The Mill said:—

"Give me the logs, the boom is full and I'm in want of chewin'! Nika tiki hyas stick! Give me logs: I've new teeth this morning! I'm keen and sharp. Hoot—too—oot—too—oot! Give me Fir and Pine and Spruce—spru—ooce!"

The Hash-Room emptied till noontime, when next Hash-Pile was proclaimed, and the men streamed across the sawdust road and the piled yard to the open Mill. Some went in by the door, some by the Engine-Room, some climbed the Chutes. The sun was aloft now and shining over the Pitt River Mountains (where Pete came from) and over Sumach. The river danced and sparkled: scows floated on its tide: the Gem steamer got up steam. The Canneries across the big River gleamed white. The air was lovely with a touch of the breath of the mountains in it. The smell of the lumber was good.

The men groaned and went to work.

They forgot to groan in twenty minutes.

It was good work in an hour and good men loved it for a while.

But it was work that Pitt River Pete saw as he leant against the wall. It wasn't an English pretence, or a Spanish lie, or an Irish humbug: it was Pacific Slope work, where men fly. They work out West!

"Oh, Klahya!"

"I wonder if I can get a jhob," said Pete. And the job worked up for him under his very eyes, for Quin had a quick mind to give him work and get pretty Jenny near, and Ginger White was sore against Simmons.

Yes, Pitt River Pete, you can get "a jhob!" Devil doubt it, for you've a pretty wife, and White drove the carriage fast and faster still, drove it indeed faster than the saw could take it, meaning to hustle Simmons and have present leave to burst out into blasphemy. Things happen quick in the Mill, in any mill, and of a sudden White stopped the carriage dead and yelled to Simmons on the log:

"Can't you keep her open, damn you? Are you goin' to sleep there? Oh, go home and die!"

Simmons, on the log on his knees, looked up savagely. Though the big Hoes were silent there was row enough with the Pony Saw and the Big Trimmer and Chinee Trimmer and the Lath Mill and the Shingle Saw and the Bull Wheel and the groaning and complaining of the planing machines outside. So Simmons heard nothing. He saw Ginger's face and saw the end had come to work. He knew it. It had been coming this long time and now had come. But Simmons said nothing: he grinned like a catamount instead, and then looked round and saw Quin. He also saw Pete.

"To hell," said Simmons.

As he spoke he hurled his maul at White, and Ginger dodged. The head missed him but the handle came backhanded and smote Ginger on the nose so that the blood ran.

"Oh, oh," said Ginger as sick as any dog. Simmons leapt off into the very arms of Quin.

"I'll take my money, Mr. Quin," said Simmons.

"Take your hook," said Quin. "Look out, here's White for you with a spanner!"

White came running and expected Simmons to run. But Simmons' face was red where White's was white. He snatched a pickareen from the nearest Chinaman, and a pickareen is a useful weapon, a sharp half pick, and six inches of a pick.

"You——" grinned Simmons, "you——"

And White stayed.

"Yah!" said Simmons, with lips set back. And Ginger White retreated.

"Here, sonny, take your pick," said the Wedger-Off that had been to the Chinaman; "fat chops don't care to face it."

He turned to Quin.

"Shall I go to the office, Mr. Quin?"

"Aye," said Quin carelessly enough.

He beckoned to Pete, whose eyes brightened. He came lightly.

"You'll take the job, Pete?"

Would he take it?

"Nawitka," said Pete, "yes, indeed, Sir."

Nawitka! He took the job and grinned with Skookum, who fetched the maul and gave him the wedges with all the pleasure in the world, for Skookum had no ambition to be Chief Wedger-Off. White came forward, dabbing at a monstrous tender nose with a rag.

"I've seen you at the Inlet?" he asked.

"Yes," said Pete, "at Granville."

"You'll do," said White. He dabbed at his huge proboscis and went back to the lever. Pete leapt upon the log and drove in the first wedge.

"Hyas, hyas! Oh, she goes!"

She went and the day went, and Pete worked like fire on a dry Spruce yet unfelled. He leapt on and off and handled things with skill. But when he looked at White's growing nose he grinned. Simmons had done that.

"If he ever talk to me that away," said Pete, "I'll give him chikamin, give him steel!"

He didn't love White, at the first glance he knew that. But it was good to be at work again, very good.

At twelve o'clock the whistle called "Hash," and the engine was shut down. The Saws slackened their steady scream, they grew feeble, they whined, they whirred, they nearly stopped, they stayed in silence. Men leapt across the skids: they slid down the Chutes: they clattered down the stairs: they opened their mouths and could hear their voices. They talked of White (he grubbed at home, being married), and of Simmons and of Pete (he being a Siwash, even if not married, would not have grubbed in the Hash House) and heard the story. On the whole they were sorry that Simmons had not driven the pickareen through White. However, his nose was a satisfaction.

"Like a beet——"

"A pumpkin——"

"A water melon——"

A prodigious nose after contact with the Maul Handle.

"I knew Mr. White," said Jenny to Pete, "Mr. White bad man, hyu mesahchie."

"Sling out the muckamuck," said Pete calmly.

He fell to with infinite satisfaction, and Jenny came and sat on his knee as he smoked his pipe.

"She is really devilish pretty," said Quin, who had no one to sit on his knee.

The whistle suddenly said that it was half after twelve and that it would be infinitely obliged if all the working gentlemen from everywhere would kindly step up in a goldarned hurry and turn to.

"Turn to, turn too—toot," said the whistle as brutally as any Western Ocean bo'sun.

The full fed reluctant gentlemen of the Mill went back into the battle, waddling and sighing sorely.

"Wish to God it was six o'clock," they said. There's no satisfying everybody, and going to work full of food is horrid, it really is.

What happened in the morning happened in the afternoon, and all the saws yelled and the planers complained and the men jumped till six, when the Engines let steam into the Whistle high up against the Smoke Stack and made it yell wildly that work was over for the day. Mr. Engine-man played a fantasia on that pipe and hooted and tooted and did a dying cadenza that wailed like a lost soul in the pit and then rose up in a triumphant scream that echoed in the hills and died away across the waters of the Fraser shining in the peaceful evening sun.

And night came down, the blessed night, when no man works (unless he be in a night shift, or is a night watchman or a policeman or, or—). How blessed it is to knock off! But there, what do you know about it, if you never played with lumber in a Stick Moola? Nothing, I assure you. Go home and die, man.