"Karl the Swede" is the only Scandinavian in the crew, which, like the other gangs of workmen which I have known, is exceedingly heterogeneous in character. There is nothing remarkable about Karl. He is a fair-haired, blue-eyed, stocky youth of one-and-twenty, and as hard-drinking, hard-working a woodsman as any of them. But Karl happens to be the only man who, during my stay in camp, has met with an accident. It was yesterday morning. The men were trimming logs, and "skidding" them at a point on the mountain a mile or more from camp, and I was piling bark not far from the "skid-ways." At a little before noon I heard the buckboard go jolting over the bowlders on the mountain-road; and a few minutes later there rang through the forest Fitz-Adams's call to dinner.
I set out for the nearest skid-way, where the men were gathering, when suddenly I came upon Karl lying at length in a clump of myrtle, with one foot extended upon a rock, and bare, except for a woollen sock that was bound tightly around the instep. What had happened was clear in an instant. The sock was saturated with blood, and a dark, clotted stream stained the foot, and a pool of blood had formed on the surface of the rock. I sat down beside him, and Karl first showed me in his boot a clean cut three inches long, where the axe-blade had entered. Then he unwrapped the sock, and lifting from the wound a quid of pulpy tobacco, he exposed a gash where the skin and shallow flesh lay open to the bone. The flow of blood had nearly ceased, for the tobacco had acted as a styptic; and Karl quickly reapplied it, and again bound the wound tightly with his sock.
All the while he acted in a perfectly impersonal manner, as though he were in no way directly concerned in the accident, which was simply a phenomenon of common interest to us both. He betrayed no trace of suffering nor even of annoyance at the discomfort of the mishap; and soon he began to speak of it, in his broken English, with like impersonality.
"Fitz-Adams, you know, would take him to camp in the buckboard after dinner, and would see that he got safe to English Centre, where the doctor would dress the wound. That would do very well until he reached Williamsport; but he must go to Williamsport, and that was the worst of it; for it would be several weeks before he could get back to camp, and then, between drunks and the doctor's bills, his savings would be all gone."
This taken-for-granted attitude toward riotous living is strikingly characteristic. I have noticed it repeatedly among the men. They speak of past and prospective debauches with the naïveté of callow undergraduates, except that among the lumbermen there is no sense of credit or distinction attaching to vice; it is simply inherent in the order of things. This is by no means a professed creed. Profession, when there is any, is all in the other direction, and is of the nature of the "homage that vice pays to virtue." It is simply in the natural and unpremeditated speech and action of the men that you detect this attitude of mind.
The time spent at the camp is, in one aspect of it, a course of training, a cumulative storage of energy, financial and physical, against a future expenditure in the sudden outburst of a grand carouse.
It has been interesting to notice what have appeared to be the instinctive precautions of the men. There seems to be an established custom of great strength that prohibits the keeping of spirits in camp. And gambling is strangely infrequent. I have heard hints of memorable epochs, when, like an epidemic, gambling has swept the camp with fearful force, and there is a wholesome fear of its return. I was struck with this one night, when, without apparent warning, the customary "High, Low, Jack and the Game" gave place to poker, and an excited crowd stood round the table and watched; and Fitz-Adams had to go up to the office to bring down wages due to the players. But the outbreak spent itself without becoming epidemic this time, and you could feel the relief among the men when "Phil the Farmer" and "Irish Mike" agreed to stand their loss of about ten dollars each, and not continue the game.
"High, Low, Jack" is invariable after supper, and lends itself with singular sociability to the pleasure of the men. There is but one pack of cards, and only one table in the lobby. A four-handed game is begun immediately after supper, the opposite men playing partners. A game is not long; and at its end the beaten partners give place to a new pair, and this course continues until all the members of the crew have had a hand.
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