"I'm goin' to do th' work they pay me to do," answered FitzPatrick.
He took his way down the trail, his face set straight before him, the smoke of his breath streaming behind. The first skidway he scaled with care, laying his rule flat across the face of each log, entering the figures on his many-leaved tablets of beech, marking the timbers swiftly with his blue crayon.
The woods were empty. No ring of the axe, no shout of the driver, no fall of the tree broke the silence. FitzPatrick comprehended. He knew that at the next skidway the men were gathered, waiting to see what he would do; gathered openly at last in that final hostility which had been maturing all winter. He knew, besides, that most of them were partly drunk and wholly reckless, and that he was alone. Nevertheless, after finishing conscientiously skidway number one, he moved on to skidway number two.
There, as he had expected, the men were waiting in ominous silence, their eyes red with debauch and hate. FitzPatrick paid them no heed, but set about his business.
Methodically, deliberately, he did the work. Then, when the last pencil-mark had been made, and the tablets had been closed with a snap of finality, the Rough Red stepped forward.
"Ye have finished with this skidway?" asked the foreman in soft cat-tones.
"I have," answered FitzPatrick, briefly.
"Yo' have forgot to scale one stick."
"No."
"There is a stick still not marked."