"Oh, timber." Enthusiasm cooled.
"Look at what they say about those fellows up at Anvik, what they made last year."
"They've got a saw-mill."
"Now they have. But they cut and sold cord-wood to the steamers two years before they got a mill, and next summer will be the biggest season yet. We ought to have set to, as soon as the cabins were built, and cut wood for the summer traffic. But since there are five of us, we can make a good thing of it yet."
The Colonel finally carried the day. They went at it next morning, and, as the projector of the work had privately predicted, a better spirit prevailed in the camp for some time. But here were five men, only one of whom had had any of the steadying grace of stiff discipline in his life, men of haphazard education, who had "chucked" more or less easy berths in a land of many creature comforts ... for this—to fell and haul birch and fir trees in an Arctic climate on half-rations! It began to be apparent that the same spirit was invading the forest that had possession of the camp; two, or at most three, did the work, and the rest shirked, got snow-blindness and rheumatism, and let the others do his share, counting securely, nevertheless, on his fifth of the proceeds, just as he counted (no matter what proportion he had contributed) on his full share of the common stock of food.
"I came out here a Communist—" said the Boy one day to the Colonel.
"And an agnostic," smiled the older man.
"Oh, I'm an agnostic all right, now and for ever. But this winter has cured my faith in Communism."
Early February brought not only lengthening daylight, but a radical change in the weather. The woodsmen worked in their shirt-sleeves, perspired freely, and said in the innocence of their hearts, "If winter comes early up here, spring does the same." The whole hillside was one slush, and the snow melting on the ill-made Little Cabin roof brought a shower-bath into the upper bunk.
Few things in nature so surely stir the pulse of man as the untimely coming of a few spring days, that have lost their way in the calendar, and wandered into winter. No trouble now to get the Big Chimney men away from the fireside. They held up their bloodless faces in the faint sunshine, and their eyes, with the pupils enlarged by the long reign of night, blinked feebly, like an owl's forced to face the morning.