The Boss of Wind River

by A. M. Chisholm

“Stop!” cried Joe. “Don’t get me in so deep.” He became serious. “Jack, most people make mistakes at times. Edith and I made one together. I think we both saw it as soon as it was made, but it took all this time to straighten out. I’m sure she’s relieved, and, though it doesn’t seem a nice thing to say, I’m just tickled to death.”

“Well,” said Jack judicially, “I don’t approve of flirting, and I never flirt myself. I think she was flirting straight through, and I don’t know whether to blame you or not. But, anyway, I’m awfully glad it’s all off.”

“It’s great,” said Joe. “Now I can get down to work.”

There was, indeed, much to be done. Wright looked after the manufacturing and sales end of the business and looked after it well; McKenna was an excellent walking boss; MacNutt, Deever, and Tobin were good, practical foremen. But the concern lacked a strong, competent executive head who knew the logging business intimately, who could decide at once and finally the questions that must ever arise, and who could command the loyalty and unquestioning obedience of his men in the camps.

For there is a vast difference in the mind of a lumber jack between working for wages merely and working for an employer. For the one he will do a day’s work; for the other he will do a day’s work and a half, with the pay as an entirely secondary consideration. Just as great commanders have fired their troops with enthusiasm to the point of performing practical impossibilities through pride in them and in themselves and that magic, mystic thing called esprit du corps, so there have been employers who, in time of need, command the unswerving, uncomplaining loyalty of the shantyman. For such men he will work without grumbling in all kinds of weather; he will take all manner of chances on land or water; he will fight for them at the drop of a hat; and, finally, he will throw his loyalty into each lick of axe and pull of saw, so that at the end of the season it may be measured in saw logs.

Nor does this depend wholly or even materially upon the treatment accorded him by the “Old Man”—save that he must have a square deal. He may be driven like a mule, cursed in language for which he would kill any one else, fed poorly and housed worse; but if the essential thing is possessed by the boss the lumber jack will not grumble overmuch nor ask for his time.

And this essential is mysterious and hard to define. Much as the shantyman admires physical prowess, it is not a prime requisite. But courage is, and so is firmness in dealing with any situation. The boss must never recede from a position once taken. He may listen to advice, but he must decide for himself and by himself. He must never argue, he must never give reasons. He must hold himself aloof and above his men, and yet not overdo it. He must be approachable but dignified, friendly but not familiar. He must be boss, first, last, and all the time, and from his decisions, right or wrong, there must be no appeal and of them no slackness of enforcement.

William Kent had filled this bill. With his passing a place became vacant. Some of the old hands hired again into the Kent camps; more did not come back, but went to others of renown. New blood drifted in, and a generation arose which literally knew not Joseph—to whom the name of Kent meant nothing. The old hands would have fought at one word uttered against the “Old Man’s” son, whom most of them had never seen, but they would have done so on general principles merely, and not because they cherished any particular feeling toward him. Neither walking boss nor foreman could take the place which William Kent had filled.

Thus the work of the camps was no better and no worse than the average. The foremen’s capability ensured fair effort. But the something necessary to weld the crews into a supremely efficient machine was lacking.

The winter opened hard and dry, without snowfall. Day after day the wind wailed through the bare arms of the deciduous trees and moaned in the feathery tops of the pines. The ground was frozen to an iron hardness, and the little lakes, creeks, and rivers were bound in black ice, smooth and unbroken.