Three days later saw him trudging beside McKenna and MacNutt, while behind them a wagon laden with tents, blankets, food, and tools bumped and jolted.
They left roads behind, and plunged into unmarked, uncharted country where the wheels sank half-way to the hubs in damp, green moss, crashed through fern to the horses’ bellies, or skidded perilously on rocky hillsides. Ahead, McKenna piloted his crew, a light axe in his hand, gashing the trees with blazes at frequent intervals. He blazed them both back and front, until the road was plainly marked so that going and coming the way might be seen. To Joe the instinct of the old woodsman was marvellous. He made no mistakes, never hesitated, never cast back. But always he followed the lines of the least natural resistance, and somehow these lines, which he apparently carried in his head, became a fairly straight route to an objective point.
There were obstacles easier to surmount than to avoid—logs to be cut and thrown aside, pole bridges to be built, bits of corduroy to be laid in shaky places; merely temporary things, these, for the flying column. Later others would make a road of it, but at present anything that would carry team and wagon served. So the crew slashed out a way with double-bitted or two-faced axes—“Methodist axes,” as they were called in an unwarranted reflection upon that excellent denomination—throwing light, frail bridges together with wonderful celerity, twisting fallen timber out of the way with peavey-hook and cant-dog, and doing the work effortlessly and easily, for they were one and all experts with the tools of their trade, and such work was child’s play to them.
In due course they arrived at the site chosen by McKenna when he had cruised the limit. It was a natural opening, ringed about with towering, feathery-headed pines. At one end it sloped down to alder and willow through which a little stream slid gently between brown roots and mossy banks. This meant water supply. Ruffed grouse roared up from under Joe’s feet as he parted the bushes, and when he rose to his knees, having drunk his fill lying flat on the ground, he saw a big, brown swamp hare, already graying about the ears, watching him not twenty feet away. Also, in a bare and muddy place, he saw the pointed tracks of deer, and dog-like prints which were those of a stray wolf. However, he had not come to hunt.
Tents came out of the wagon and were rammed up and made fast in short order. The cook dug a shallow trench and built his fireplace, drove forked stakes, laid a stout, green pole between them, slung his pot-hooks on it and below them his pots, and so was ready to minister to the needs of the inner man. With tape-line and pegs McKenna laid out the ground plans of bunk-house, eating-camp, caboose, foreman’s quarters, and stables. At a safe distance he located the dynamite storehouse.
Already the crashing fall of trees announced that the crew was getting out timbers for the buildings, and Joe watched the work of axes and saws with a species of fascination. No sooner did a tree strike the ground than men were on it, measuring, trimming, cutting it to length. When a square timber was required, one man cut notches three feet apart down the sides of a prostrate trunk and split off the slabs. Another, a lean, wasp-waisted tiemaker, stripped to underclothes and moccasins, mounted one end with a huge, razor-edged broad-axe which was the pride of his heart. Every stroke fell to a hair. He hewed a straight line by judgment of eye alone, and the result was a stick of square or half-square timber, absolutely straight, and almost as smooth as if planed.
As fast as the logs were ready the teamster grappled them with hook and chain, and the big horses yanked them out into position. Another wagon and more men arrived. Buildings grew as if by magic. The wall-logs were mortised and skidded up into place; the whole was roofed in; the chinks were stuffed with moss and plastered with wet clay; bunks in tiers were built around the walls; tables and benches knocked together in no time; and the Wind River camp was finished and ready for occupation.
While these preparations were going forward, Joe, McKenna, and MacNutt prowled the woods at such times as the last two had to spare from construction work. The walking boss and the foreman sized up the situation with the sure rapidity of experts. They knew just how many feet of timber a given area held, how long it should take so many men to cut it, and in how many loads, given good sleigh-roads, it should be hauled out to the banking grounds at the river.
“It’ll depend a lot on the season, of course,” said McKenna. “If she’s a fair winter—a powder of snow and good frost for a bottom and then snow and hard weather with odd flurries to make good slippin’—we can get out all we cut. But if she freezes hard and dry, and the snow’s late and scanty or hits us all in a bunch when it comes, it will put us back. Or if mild weather gets here early and the roads break it will be bad.”
As the walking boss spoke he and Joe were standing at the top of a height looking down a vista of brown tree-trunks which sloped gently away to a dense cedar swamp. Suddenly Joe’s eye caught a moving figure and he pointed it out to McKenna.