THE OLD SOUBUNGO TRAIL
“And never a knight in a tournament
Rode lists with a jauntier mien,
Than he of the drive who came alive
Thro’ the hell of the Hulling Machine.”
—The Spike-sole Knight.
Larry Gorman, “the woodsman’s poet,” whose songs are known and sung in the camps from Holeb to Madawaska, was with Rodburd Ide’s incoming crew. His three most notable lyrics are these: “I feed P.I.’s on tarts and pies,” “Bushmen all, your ear I call until I shall relate,” and “The Old Soubungo Trail.”
When Rodburd Ide’s hundred men “met up” with the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt’s hundred men at the foot of Pogey Notch, Larry Gorman displayed a true poet’s obliviousness to the details of the wrangle between principals. He didn’t understand why Pulaski Britt, blue with anger above his grizzled beard, and “Stumpage John” Barrett, mottled with rage, should object so furiously when Rodburd Ide’s girl took away the tatterdemalion maid of the Skeets, nor did Larry ask any questions. If this be the attitude of a true poet, there was evidently considerable true poetry in both crews, for no one appeared to be especially curious as to the why of the quarrel. However, the imminence of a quarrel was a matter demanding woodsmen’s attention. It might have been noted that Poet Gorman cut the biggest shillalah of any of them. And while he rounded its end and waited for more formal declaration of hostilities, he lustily sang the solo part of “The Old Soubungo Trail,” with a hundred hearty voices to help him on the chorus:
“I left my Lize behind me,
Oh, she won’t know what to do,
I left my Lize for the Old Town guys,
And I left my watch there, too.
I left my clothes at a boardin’-house,
I reckon they’re for sale,
And here I go, at a heel-an’-toe,
On the old Soubungo trail.
Sou-bung-o! Bungo!
’Way up the Bungo trail!”
Spirit rather than melody characterized the efforts of these wildwood songsters. The Honorable Pulaski Britt, who didn’t like music anyway, and was trying to talk in an undertone to timber baron Barrett, swore a deep bass obligato.
He did not take his baleful gaze from Dwight Wade, who had gone apart, and was leaning against the mouldering walls of the Durfy hovel.
“You had your chance to block their game, and you didn’t do it, John. You make me sick!” muttered the belligerent Britt. “You’ve let that college dude scare you with threats, and old Ide champ his false teeth at you and back you down. You don’t get any of my sympathy from now on. I had a good plan framed. You knocked it galley-west by poking yourself into the way. They’ve got the girl. They’ll use her against you. You can fight it yourself after this.”