“Look, Mr. Wade!” He swept his hand in the circuit that embraced the panorama of ridges showing the first touches of frost, the hills still darkling with black growth, the valleys and the shredded forest.
“There she lays before you, ten thousand acres like a tinder-box in this weather, dry since middle August. You’ve seen some of the slash. But you’ve seen only a little of it. Under those trees as far as eye can see there’s the slash of three cuttin’s. Tops propped on their boughs like wood in a fireplace. Draught like a furnace! It’s bad enough now, with the green leaves still on. It’s like to be worse in May before the green leaves start. And about all those dod-fired Diggers down there know or care about property interests is that a burn makes blueberries grow, and blueberries are worth six cents a quart! They have done it in other places. They’re inbred till they’ve got water for blood and sponges for brains. When the hankerin’ for blueberries catches ’em they’ll put the torch to that undergrowth and refuse, and if the wind helps and the rain don’t stop it they’ll set a fire that will run to Pogey Notch like racin’ hosses, roar through there like blazin’ tissue-paper in a chimbly flue, and then where’ll your black growth on Enchanted be—the growth that’s goin’ to make money for you and Rod Ide? I tell ye, Mr. Wade, there’s more to woods life than roamin’ through and cuttin’ your gal’s name on the bark. There’s more to loggin’ than the chip-chop of a sharp axe or the rick-raw of a double-handled gashin’-fiddle. And when it comes down to profit, you can’t be polite to a porcupine when he’s girdlin’ your spruce-trees, nor practice society airs and Christian charity with damn fools, whether they’re dude fishermen tossin’ cigar-stubs or such spontaneously combustin’ toadstools as them that live down yonder eatin’ the State’s pork and flour. I’m up here with ye to tell ye something about the woods, Mr. Wade. And it ain’t all goin’ to be about calipers, the diffrunce between the Bangor and New Hampshire scale, and how stumpage ain’t profitable under nine inches top measure—no, s’r, not by a blame sight!”
There was no passion in the old man’s remonstrance, but there was an earnestness that closed the young man’s lips against argument. He followed silently when Christopher led the way down towards the settlement. Old Jed took up his position at the rear.
The first who accosted them was a slatternly woman, her short skirts revealing men’s long-legged boots. She rapped the bowl of a pipe smartly in her palm, to show that it was empty, and demanded tobacco. She scowled, and there was no hint of coaxing in her tones.
When Wade looked at her with an expression of shocked astonishment that all his resolution could not modify, she sneered at him.
“Oh, you think we don’t know northin’ here—ain’t wuth noticin’ ’cause we live in the woods, hey? Well, we do know something. Here, Ase, tell this sport the months of the year, and then let’s see if he’s stingy enough to keep his plug in his pocket.”
Ase, plainly her son, lubberly and man-grown, roared without bashfulness:
“Jan’warry, Feb’darry, Septober, Ockjuber, Fourth o’ July, St. Padrick’s Day, and Cris’mus—gimme a chaw!”
Two or three men lounged out-of-doors—one with his arm significantly off at the elbow. But there was not even a shadow on his vapid face when he looked at Christopher, author of his misfortune.