While they were eating, Forest asked one of the drivers to sing a song, and then said to Merry:
“We’ll have a chance to hear a typical lumberman’s song from that old fellow. The old-fashioned songs of the lumbermen are like the old-time songs of the sailors. Nearly always they are sung in a certain tune which seems to fit them all, and they tell a story that is strung out in from fifty to a hundred stanzas. The tune of the sailors reminds one of the wind and the waves; the tune of the lumber camps is suggestive of the dark forests and their tragedies.”
The old man needed some urging, as there were strangers present, but, after a time, he consented to sing. Before he began, the men filled their pipes and found comfortable positions on the “deacon’s seat” and around the camp. As Frank and his friends said smoking would not disturb them in the least, Forest told the men to “fire up.” So the drivers began to smoke as they prepared to listen.
Two kerosene lamps lighted the strange scene, which was one never to be forgotten by Frank. The faces of the rough, weather-beaten men were studies for him.
At last the old driver was ready, and he started into the song, which told of the hard heart and imperial sway of John Ross, a local lumber boss. There never was another such man as John Ross. He faced storms and floods, and defied fate to gain his ends. If he wanted more men he went from house to house for them, and when they heard him coming every male member of the families arose and went to the woods to do his bidding without a murmur, not daring to refuse. He took the newly-wedded bridegroom from the embrace of his weeping bride, and he tore the son from the feeble father who could not live to see the snows of winter pass away with the coming of the spring sunshine. But gradually the song goes on to show the better points in the man’s character, telling of his courage and charity, and, in the end, everybody is compelled to own that, in spite of his many eccentricities, John Ross is a decent sort of man.
By the time this epic was ended supper was over and the table pretty well cleared. Then somebody proposed “congregational singing,” and the men took their pipes from their mouths and prepared to “limber up.”
Then the songs came in floods. Some one started in with “Nellie Gray,” and, with few exceptions, every man joined in the chorus. Then came “John Brown’s Body” and “Marching Through Georgia.”
“Old Black Joe” was followed by “Annie Rooney” and “Down Went McGinty.” But it was on the chorus of “Nicodemus” that the singers “bore down hard.”
“There’s a good time coming,
It’s almost here;