You see, he does not know this matter is a personal one with me, I mean the wheel that goes round and never gets anywhere. If he did it would probably make no difference, for the peculiarity about his arguments are their sincerity and wisdom. I always did suspect that Providence was a large serene young man with a strain of steel in him.
At Bickerdike, all the engineers I knew got out. Some are stationed here; some await orders, but most of them go down the branch line that is under construction from this point. Bickerdike is largely a tent town, although, as yet, it is the metropolis of the Grade. I heard one man on the train tell another it was "one of these here high-society places where folks dance on a plank floor and don't call off the figures." I promise to visit at Bickerdike on my return trip with some friends I have not seen for years. No matter where you come from, it would be almost impossible to drop off at any of these little frontier posts without meeting some one you knew elsewhere, so representative is the population of this Northern country.
At each post the same question is asked the newly-arrived passenger. "Well, what's the news along the road?" To-day the news concerns a wash-out near the End of Steel, and doubts are expressed as to the possibility of our getting through.
At Marlboro, the people are talking of their cement industry, and at the next station lumber is the topic. They are making the lumber out of spruce. The small logs have been converted into railway ties. Some of them are crossed. If ever you have "taken out" ties you know what this means. As you likely haven't, I'll tell you. The railroad contractor, when he rejects a tie, crosses the end of it with a blue or red pencil. Once an acquaintance of mine, by name Jerry Dalton, took out a cut of ties in the Province of Saskatchewan. One day Jerry—an accurate man rather than a placid one—was stamping about somewhat more rampageous than a baited bull.
"What is the matter now, Man Jerry!" I asked; "you are always having a big sorrow."
"Sorrow ith it?" lisped Jerry at the top of his tall voice. "Look at them d—— ties (begging your pardon, ma'am). Look at them ties! Does that turkey-faced, muddle-headed idjit of a contractor think I'm running a Catholic themetery? Crosses ith it? It's crosses he's after giving Jerry! Troth! an' it's a crown I'll be puttin' on him." ...
And so as I look at this pile of crossed logs by the wayside, I am wondering who is the rascal responsible for the Catholic themetery.
These mills belong to a Northern timber chief whose large holdings have made them turbulent. They have called him a timber-wolf, and other names that are smart rather than polite. As a matter of fact, any man who pays the government dues and converts the trees into lumber for the use of the settlers, deserves all the emoluments that can possibly accrue. On account of floods and fires, lumbering is a precarious industry, and the majority of operators fail thereat or carry a nerve-grinding overdraft at the bank.
And did you ever stand on the heights and watch a rising, ripping flood bear out your booms and incidentally the year's logs? If you have, my good little man, you'll be sensible to something closely approximating a tender regard for the timber-wolves. This play of lamb and wolf is frequently disastrous to the wolf.
I would like to rest off here to see the whip-saw bite into the logs; to watch the long white boards as they fall from the carriage, and to drink in their refreshing odour, for the whole essence of the North is concentrated in the odour of the spruce.