“You’re Mr. Ashe, ain’t you?” the man asked.
Jim nodded and stopped. The man, who wore a calico shirt that, stout as it was, threatened to rip out at the seams when the big muscles played beneath, was an individual whose life had not fallen in places of ease. Work, hard work, had made him. He had triumphed over it. His will and a splendid body had triumphed, until Jim paid the tribute of his admiration to the result of it.
“Got any place for a cant-hook man?”
“I think we can use one in the log-yard. Out of a job?”
“Walked out of it. When I heard Mike Moran was goin’ to run the Diversity Hardwood outfit I quit—sudden.”
Jim waited.
“I worked for him three year back on the South Branch.” The man spat savagely in the dust. “Self-respectin’ lumberjack wouldn’t ’a’ stayed twenty-four hours gittin’ what some of them fellers got. Me, it wasn’t so bad. ‘What was the matter?’ says you. ‘Plenty,’ says I. First, he starts in gittin’ rid of as good a crew as ever stuck their legs under a cook-shanty table, and filled up the woods with Polacks and Italians and Hunkies. Just critters with arms and laigs like folks. Grub was rotten—rotten! Them poor foreigners got it comin’ and goin’. Knocked round, fed spoiled meat—and then cheated out of their pay. Oh, foreigners hain’t the only ones that’s been cheated out of their pay in Michigan camps. I wisht I had what was comin’ to me fair, Mr. Ashe. Why, I knowed two Polacks that come out of Moran’s Camp Three, after workin’ from November till April—and they come out owin’ him eighteen dollars!”
“Now, now,” said Jim.
“I’m tellin’ the truth. Wanigan. Jest robbed off’n ’em. Get a plug of tobacco at the wanigan—charged for six. Like that. And fines. No wonder he’s gittin’ richer ’n hell. Gittin’ out his timber don’t cost him nothin’ to speak of. Men like him is drivin’ real woodsmen out of Michigan. You can go so far with robbin’ an Irishman or a Norwegian or a Nova-Scotian—and then somethin’ busts. But with them lingo-talkin’ foreigners, why there hain’t no fight to ’em. And he’ll do the same here. ’Fore another spring the camps’ll be full of ’em—and him robbin’ ’em. I’ve heard ugly things of Mike Moran. Not dealin’s with men, I mean. I’ve had stories whispered to me by men I believed. And one I know is so. Ask somebody that knows what become of Susie Gilders. I calc’late some girl’s dad or brother’ll be splittin’ Mike Moran with an ax one of these days. But I’m talkin’ too much, Mr. Ashe. Didn’t figger to git off on this rig. How about that job?”
“Report to the superintendent. Tell him I sent you. What’s your name?”