I had been cursed at West Point, though in terms less hard to bear; and in expectation of the worst, I thought that I had schooled myself to take it philosophically when it came. But I had an awful moment now, for philosophy was clean gone, and in its place was a swift, mad desire to kill; and as the hot blood rushed to my brain, and tingled in my finger-tips, all that I could see for the instant were the handy stones under my feet, and the close range of Fitz-Adams's head.
I do not know what it was that saved me, unless it was the sight of Fitz-Adams flushed with the anger into which he lashed himself, and becoming the more ludicrously impotent in his rage, as I restrained my temper, and showed no sign of fear. Why he did not discharge me on the spot I do not know. With awful imprecations he kept urging me to faster and yet faster work. I quickened my clumsy pace to the swiftest that I could maintain with efficiency, and held it there, careless of his curses; and, exhausted as I was, I yet had the satisfaction at the last of noting that our load was on as quickly as was Black Bob's.
And Fitz-Adams, too, found a curious balm for his troubled feelings. We were at the last cord, and he was cursing hard, while I panted and sweated in my straining efforts to pass the bark aboard. The strips were large and heavy, some of them, and they all lay rough side up; and as you lifted them over your head there fell upon you from each a shower of dust and dirt that had gathered in the crumbling outer bark. This filled your ears and hair, and found its way far down your back. I had blocked the wheel, but we were on a sharp descent, and the load was growing heavy. Evidently Fitz-Adams feared our breaking loose, and so he stopped me suddenly with an order to "make fast the lock-break." Now "the lock-break" conveyed the dimmest notion to my mind, and the boss would give no hint as to what it really was nor how it was to be "made fast;" instead, he stood and watched me, while, with awkward guesses as to its purpose, I succeeded in unhooking one end of a heavy chain that hung under the wagon, and having passed it between two spokes of a hind wheel, I clumsily made fast the hook in a link of the chain drawn taut.
Fitz-Adams stood, meanwhile, in speechless anger, enraged beyond relief from oaths; and then the tension broke, with comical effect, in a sentence which seemed to come to him as a happy inspiration:
"I'm damned, Buddy, if you ain't greener than a green Irishman; greener than a green Irishman." He repeated the phrase as though it exactly met the case, and brought him satisfaction far beyond the power of profanity; and then he shouted through the forest:
"Hey, Bob!"
"Hello!"
"This Buddy, he's greener than a green Irishman!" and he laughed aloud, and there came an answering laugh from Bob; and the boss started down the mountain with his load, the locked wheel bounding and crunching among the stones, while he swore to steady the horses.
That was all of the loading for the morning, so Toler and I joined company. Toler had in charge the cutting of roads to the bark-piles, and I was to serve with him.