# The High Rigger

Extracted from Short Stories magazine, 1926 Dec 25, pp. 38–49. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted.
THE HIGH RIGGER
By J. ALLAN DUNN
Author of “The Horizon Hunter,” “Outmatched,” etc.
A STORY IN J. ALLAN DUNN'S BEST VEIN SHOWING THAT ADVENTURE AND MANY A TEST OF COURAGE HAVE NOT PASSED IN THE PACIFIC COAST FORESTS, EVEN THOUGH LUMBERJACKS HAVE BECOME TIMBER MECHANICS AND WAYS OF LUMBERING HAVE CHANGED
JOHN FLEMING, lumberman, was the victim of a form of fear that had been part of him since he could remember, against which he struggled in vain, a fear that oppressed and depressed him with the dread of being known as “yellow.”
This was the fear of high places. It came upon him with a swift rush of vertigo, a paralysis of nerves, a flood of nausea that left him a clammy, trembling wretch, clinging for safety or crawling to it, his manhood broken down, shame driving him to solitude.
None doubted his courage in the crew with which he worked after he came back from the war. He had won citations there, risen to a sergeantcy. In the trenches he had known fear of another kind, born of an active imagination—the instinct to run and hide, the terror of sudden death. This he had conquered, banished it utterly, as thousands of high-strung comrades had done.
It was only when he was on a height, suddenly conscious of it, that the Thing attacked him, vanquished him before he could rally his will against it. He could birl a log, ride it through white water, leap from one to another with absolute coordination, without a suggestion of giddiness. His fear did not interfere with his work, he was acknowledged one of the best of the crew; yet he knew that it lurked within him, biding its time, a demon that could turn him in a moment from a man of splendid body, of superb efficiency, into an abject, trembling coward, an object to be laughed at, pitied, scorned.
It came to him in dreams sometimes, the fear of falling—falling to some frightful doom. He would wake sweating and shivering, hoping that he had not called out and betrayed himself. After he came back from the war he hoped that he had acquired strength to overcome it, but the dreams recurred and he felt that the weakness was still there.
He talked about it with the Company doctor one day, a kindly, elderly man. After his confession he sat in the chair across from the other, miserably awaiting a verdict.
The doctor relit his pipe, puffed gravely, manner and voice sympathetic.
“You're the victim of a phobia, son,” he said. “There's a long name for it I'll not inflict upon you. The scientific names of ailments always make them sound worse than they are.
“It's a common and sound theory that all things come to us through our senses, rousing emotions to which man, as opposed to the beast, applies reason. The brain cells summon memory. In a coward these recollections may stimulate the emotion of fear, in a bully, those of hatred, You are neither.
“In the trenches you won out with the rally of pride and patriotism, the desire to prove yourself brave. A man may hear or see something that causes him to fly into a rage, but he tells himself that it is not wise to do so. He uses discretion. His conscious self controls the automatic functions of his subconscious.
“But there ate certain phenomena, such as this fear of yours, that are inherent, protoplasmic, handed on through the generative cells; persistent, though they may not manifest themselves in every generation. Terror of darkness, horror of snakes, your own fear of high places. It may come down from ancestors who lived in trees, or perched in them after sundown for fear of prowling monsters, waking night after night in the fancied danger, or the actual danger; of falling. Our cousins, the apes, still have it. It attacks simultaneously, paralysing your ganglia, short-circuiting your nerves, eliminating brain processes. It isn't anything to be ashamed of, any more than near-sightedness.”
“That's an explanation of it,” said Fleming. “What I want to know is can I get the best of it?”
The doctor's pine had gone out while he was talking. He lit a match, regarded the flame contemplatively before he applied it.
“If,” he said between puffs, “you were stimulated by some complex emotion or ambition strong enough to control your subconscious and this was threatened by your phobia, I should say that you had a good chance of mastering it, of rallying your will to assume leadership while the other forces offset each other. And, once having won out, the chances are good that the thing might vanish, at least diminish.
“In the meantime,” he rose and came over to Fleming, giving him a friendly slap on the shoulder, “why worry about it? You don't have to climb trees or walk along cliffs in your present job. If you know a lion is certain to attack you, you keep from jungles and menageries. My advice to you is to stop bothering about it, don't herd the thought or memory of it—and stay on the ground. Outside of this, you're a hundred per cent normal. I wish I had your physique. Good luck to you.”
The interview had not done him much good. It confirmed the conviction that he was haunted.. If anything it made him moodier, though there were plenty of times when he forgot all about it, in the sheer joy of work, of boon companionship, laboring through the long day, sleeping quietly through the nights.
Through the winter, as trees were felled, swampers prepared the skid-roads, scalers gauged the cut, teamsters sledded the logs down to the river over the iced ways, while the snubrope men eased them down the declines; the fear was dormant. Spring was heralded. The rains came, the river broke its frozen bonds and the crew went gaily to its banks and prepared to spill the great rollways where the logs had been piled high, sidewise to the stream; making ready for highwater to commence the drive.
Fleming had hard work to keep up the study on his course in engineering mechanics. He turned in with the rest, too tired, too exhausted for anything but replenishing sleep. One thing he saw clearly, that lumbering in the Eastern states was played out. The sleds now carried as much as a hundred sticks to the load where once five logs was the limit.
So far, this was his trade, the extent of his experience. He talked with others of the vast stands of timber still on the Pacific Coast, of the methods employed there, vastly different from these in their mechanical development. There he might put in practice what he had learned from his course, advance in engineering, become a boss. He thought of it in the scant intervals between active labor, sometimes for a few moments before slumber and digestion drugged him.
Then the Thing leaped out of covert.
The winter had been a severe one. It was approved practice to break down the rollways by teasing and prying out the lowermost and outer log on a rollway, when the upper tiers were apt to come crashing, roaring down to the river bed, there to lie on the ice until the flood waters bore them off, or be carried away by the already running current. Now ice had welded the logs together and nothing short of destructive dynamiting would stampede the ways. They had to break them out from the top, tier by tier, timber by timber.
Fleming was assigned to the work, heaving with his heavy, steel-shod peavey, putting the strength of his shoulder and back muscles into it, loosening the grip of the ice, sending the big trunk rolling down to the bouldered beach. He worked forward from the rear of the huge stack to the rivermost log and pa for a moment to wipe the sweat from his eyes.
The river was breaking up. Brown water showed in widening channels amid the gray ice which the great balks helped to crush. He looked down from the combined height of rollway and steep bank and instantly the fear possessed him from head to foot, with paralysis of nerves, with overwhelming nausea and giddiness. Instinctively he thrust the shoe of his peavey deep into the bark and clung to the pole, his head bowed, shivering, bathed in clammy sweat, the strength out of him.
The man beside him saw him sway, sprang forward, boot-calks sinking in the logs, giving him secure footing, catching Fleming's shoulder in the grip of his strong fingers, holding him, easing him down till he lay on the top of the stack, writhing, groaning in agony of spirit. The Thing, its dastardly end accomplished, was retreating, skulking off.
“You sick, buddy?” asked the man with rough but ready sympathy.
“I guess I am,” muttered Fleming. “I'll have to get off of here.”
He refused assistance, clambering down hazardously, his face haggard, gray with his experience. The busy, alert foreman was close by.
“Hurt?” he asked crisply. He needed all his men. The river was going out, the logs had to be got into the water.
“I got a spell of dizziness up there,” said Fleming dully. “I'll be all right in a minute. It happens to me sometimes.”
The boss looked at him sharply, but without suspicion of the real cause.
“Bilious, I reckon,” was his verdict. “I git that way myself at times. It'll work off. Soon's you can, roll them loose logs inter the stream. She's breakin' up fast. We'll lose highwater, first thing you know. Better not go on the ways again.”
Fleming nodded, went to work. The fear had passed, but the memory, the shame of it, were still vivid. The incident did not pass undiscussed. He was known as a good man. Little things make up the riverman's talk. He overheard one verdict that seemed to be generally accepted.
“Touch of that damn gas, I reckon. He got it good, they say. Got a “Craw dee Gare” on top of it. Much good thet does a man.”
That shamed him too. But he did not contradict it. The rollways were broken out, the drive started. The logs reached the sawmill boom down river and he was paid off. He did not join in the general celebration. His turkey was packed and he took the first train out for Boston, then New York.
Two weeks later he was on the Pacific Coast. A week more and he was in Washington, the last stand of Big Timber. He was through with the pineries. Now it was Douglas fir, giants of first growth, with some cedar and hemlock.
He applied at an agency. The agent asked him swift questions, surveying his strong, supple figure, his hands, with quick appreciative appraisal; using terms unfamiliar, though he guessed their meaning.
“You ain't a high-rigger? I could land you pretty. What are you? Hook-tender, chaser, choker setter? You don't look like a fireman, or a donkey puncher. I can use any of 'em. Fallers, buckers and swampers.”
“I'm a good axman or sawyer. I'll take a swamper's job if I can't get anything else.”
“Axman! Fallers we call 'em out here. You come from Maine? You'll find things run different here. All right. Six a day and found. Good chow. First class camp. Radio in the bunkhouse. Ten dollars fee in advance. There's your receipt. Show it to me in the morning. Meet me at the depot. You go out tomorrow morning with a crew to Olympia. Ship in from there. Now then, next man.”
II
ALOUISE WOOD—her real name was Alice Louise, she told Fleming—was the daughter of the manager of the Company's store. She was an out-of-doors girl, a woodswoman, slender but athletic, bronze-haired and gray-eyed, intensely interested in the life and activities of the Camp, knowing so much about its workings that Fleming was amazed at her. Aside from the girls he had met during the preparations for his going overseas, the ones he had met in France, most of those that Fleming had known had been backwoods types, or the hybrid women of the rivertowns.
Alouise was different, mentally alert, up-to-date. At first he hardly knew what she looked like. He was normal enough, not shy, but the Thing had created within him an inhibition that kept him away from intimacy with the opposite sex. Suppose a girl he cared for should discover him a coward?
Probably he would hardly have spoken to her, since she did not wait upon the men, had not her father been an old white water wanigan man of Maine and Northern Pennsylvania. He recognized Fleming as akin in race and spirit and made him welcome, spinning old yarns to which Fleming listened patiently enough, gradually coming out of his shell at the girl's frank friendship.
The first thing he knew he realized that he was in love with her—and that she liked him. He took her to the dances at the cross-roads and their acquaintanceship ripened.
He was not without rivals, plenty of them. None serious until “Spider” Reeves appeared upon the scene.
There was nothing derogatory about the nickname. It was chosen not because of his personal appearance but because of his occupation. Spider was a high-rigger, a hero in his way, handsome and debonnair, as became his calling. He had an infectious gaiety, a devil-may-care swagger, a ready twinkle in his brown eyes, a way of wearing his well-cut clothes that caught the feminine eye—and held it. Beside him Fleming felt a serious, almost clumsy clown at times, when Reeves sang the latest songs or showed Alouise the newest steps.
It was a new world Fleming was in, lumberman born and bred though he was, and its unfamiliarity at first estranged him.
Here were no rushing streams with white-water rapids, no jams, no wanigan crew or shanty men, no ice, snow only in January and that not enough to stop operations. There was no birling of logs, no riding of them, no clearing up the banks after the first rush of the drive with the picked 'rear' outfit, laughing at mishaps, racing each other while the bateaux darted here and there to keep the logs moving.
All was mechanical, or nearly so. Once they built skidroads on the Pacific Coast, corduroyed them with small logs and the bull teams—twenty-yoke of patient oxen—tolled the timber down them. Then came donkey engines and cables to supplant the oxen and the bullwhacker vanished from the skidways. Now they built a standard gauge railroad into the new area, taking in six-drummed donkey engines especially designed by mechanical engineers to move the big timbers over the rough lands of the Douglas fir forests. The old ground-lead system was done away with, where, no matter how swampers cleared roads or snipers shaped the butts like sled-runners, the logs would hang up and cables snap, with loss of life and time. High-lead logging was the order of the new day and the lumberjacks became timber mechanics.
There were still fallers and sawyers but drag and link-saws run by machinery, working vertically and horizontally, threatened to oust these.
The men had to have a knowledge of rigging, of mechanics. There were railroad crews, graders, bridge-builders tracklayers and operating crews. Blacksmiths and donkey and doctors and punchers. Specialists everywhere, hookmen, high-riggers, choker setters and firemen. Of the old-timers there remained the swampers and snipers, woodbucks and loaders, whistle punks to signal the action of the cable, filers, the bull cook and his flunkeys.
Efficiency and speed, aided by machinery. Electricity and gasoline for motive power. A radio in the bunkhouse, a garage for the men's own cars that carried them to the cross-roads dances. Bath-houses, a laundry, a drying room. Five hundred men in camp, married many of them, family cottages, a school and the store. The men worked only eight hours a day. The old rallies, the fight from early dawn until after dark to get the drive going, to use the ice while it lasted for the sledding, and beat the thaws; all were gone. The timberjacks shaved, bathed and dressed in store clothes after hours. There was no more singing of chanteys while steaming clothes hung on poles about the blazing fire, clothes wet from a dozen immersions where life was risked in the icy torrent among charging timbers; no legends told of Timber Spooks and Wood Demons, of great achievements in dam breaking or riding rapids. Those who stayed in the bunkhouse played rummy while the phonograph ground out Broadway ballads and foxtrots. The latest films were shown twice a week. There was a surgery and an emergency hospital.
The glamor of the pine woods logging was missing, the burly rivermen, red-shirted or mackinawed, poling and peaveying, breaking out the rollways or the key-log of a jam, the fights and feasts; all that was like a dream. Saltpork and beans, sourdough bread and molasses were replaced by a menu that included fresh salmon and green peas.
No more reunions at the sawmill towns, sorting of logs, the revelry that followed the pay-off, the wrestling, the often brutal settlements of physical supremacy. No more calked boots and stagged pants. The timberjacks wore one piece overalls, like garagemen.
There was one mill in the state, Alouise told him, that produced half a million feet of fir lumber for every eight hours its headsaws ran. The mammoth bull donkey engines—wood yarders—weighed thirty tons, handling steel cables nineteen hundred feet in length, one eighth of an inch short of two in thickness, hauling in logs at a speed of four hundred and forty feet a minute. The handlers had to know how to splice wire rope.
It was Alouise who helped Fleming to adapt himself. While her father lamented the old days of Bangor, of Saginaw, of runs on the Kennebec, the girl, with all the details of modern logging clear in her mind, talked of new methods with his new assistant. He did not know that she admired his gravity, his determination to go ahead, to master all the branches of the business. She was human enough, she liked to dance, to ride, to swim, to talk nonsense, but she was modern, energetic, womanly, but eager to accomplish something worth while. If she married a man it would be as partner-mate rather than housewife, though she kept house for her father.
As Fleming became adjusted some measure of glamor returned. The big up-to-date way of handling the lumber got into his spirit. He admired its efficiency and began to see his way to become a more important part of it than the mere swinger of an ax. He commenced to use brain as well as brawn, applying what he had book-learned, watching, questioning, taking up courses more directly connected with the business. There were many things to learn and he wanted a general mastery, but he had to take what practical opportunities came along.
From one man, born on the eastern slope, who took a notion to him, he learned the mechanics of block and tackle, lifts and leverages. He studied knots and splices as eagerly as an advanced boy-scout and became acquainted with the principles of rigging the lead cables and overheads that upheld the heavy butts and sent them along without drag.
There were the trees. The love of them was ingrained in him. It had made a lumberman of him in the first place. Sometimes, he fancied, the affinity might go back to the time of the Younger World, when he had acquired the fear that now never came to him, even in dreams. Those were held by Alouise.
They rode together through the forests, amid the enormous firs that towered on the slopes. There was inspiration among these giants though they were set to slay them, to bring them toppling down. But this was for the housing of men and his employments, the advancement of the age. They were no longer in the Younger World. Government reserving, wise timber men replanting. The ultimate mission of these trees must have been designed for their present purposes. Among the enormous trunks man's most powerful and ingenious machinery labored to an appointed end.
There were firs that towered three hundred feet, twelve feet in diameter at the stately pillar's base. Once chosen firs had furnished masts where the wind filled sails to waft the commerce of the world, to speed discoverers. The song of the sea was in their crowns. There was timber centuries old before Columbus sighted Watling Island. Now sail had gone and steam was passing, electricity was being harnessed from the waters that once ran to waste. All was advancement. And they, as they talked about it, idling their mounts through the aisles where the sun slanted, were part of it, one with it.
From the standpoint of romance the high-rigger was easily the outstanding figure. Reeves, with his likable swagger, his steady head and brave heart, spurred and belted, climbing with saw and ax up a straight shaft a hundred and fifty feet to rig a “high-lead spar,” was a picturesque sight.
The high-rigger came to the area as soon as the logging railroad was completed and the great donkey engines sledded under their own power to their settings. At each of these big trees were selected by the foremen, left by the fellers. Gallant sights were Reeves and his fellows, carefree as steeple-jacks, spurred like game-cocks, with a climbing rope attached to a linesman's belt, circling the tree, hitched up as the climb progressed, trimming the tapering column as they went.
High up, seemingly no larger than a woodpecker, Spider worked to forty feet or so of the top, chopped an undercut, sawed through, and then braced himself as the crown of timber and limbs and foliage swung out and went crashing down while the lopped tree swung in vast circles as he clung, riding it as a puncher forks a bucking bronco, swinging to its gyrations; nothing to hold him but spurs, a taut rope and leather belt, his muscle and his nerve. If he should be shaken loose, even if the rope caught, he might hang head-down, with a snapped spine. It happened. Insurance companies did not hunt for premiums from high-riggers.
Fleming, leaning for a breathing space upon his ax, watched Spider in fascinated admiration. But the sweat turned cold on his body as he watched, knowing what would happen to him if he dared such an ascent.
Or would it? It sometimes seemed to him as if his love for Alouise had exorcised the Thing. He remembered his talk with the doctor. If some all powerful emotion or ambition could stimulate him sufficiently to offset the immediate attack, allow him to summon his will, rally his reasoning faculties, it might vanish. He had both these things now.
When the term commenced and Alouise began to teach in the little school, he had idle hours in which he used to test himself. If he could climb, gaze down—but he must not do that at first. He got a belt and rope and spurs and, in some place where he would not be overlooked, he made his first timorous essays.
The trunk soared skyward above him to what seemed an unbiddable height. Fleming tested his rope and belt, clasped the trunk, set in his spurs and lifted himself, hitching up the circling cord and leaning back a little. It was much the way a South Sea Islander goes after coconuts. He made steady progress for twenty feet, then stopped, as he would to lop off a limb. There were none this low down, Presently he went on. Ten feet more. Then, for the first time in his attempts, he looked down.
Instantly the ground seemed to heave like the sea in a groundswell, the solid trunk to rock. He went faint at the pit of his stomach and vertigo attacked him. He fought it off, with a vision of Alouise. He dug in his spurs and held on, until the dizziness passed, reluctantly, sullenly, and the thwarted Thing within him sulked in temporary defeat.
Fleming gritted his teeth, set his jaw and went on to where a limb impeded progress. He did not look down again. Next time for that. Descent was not easy. He had not the trained agility of Reeves, clear as a gymnast. But he touched ground and stood against the trunk, still in his harness, his head against the bark, moist with effort and the clammy ooze of glandular excretion from sheer terror. He put up a little prayer in that moment, of thankfulness, of humility, of hope and petition.
Little by little he fought it out. It was his battleground, a tree trunk; the Armageddon of his spirit, and the trials were very real. He was gaining ground. The tests were not decisive. He made the offensive, expecting encounter, it did not come unexpectedly upon him. But he was winning. He had not spoken to Alouise about it. He feared her shrinking from him, knowing her own resolute way of facing things, her abhorrence of cowardice. She had wormed out of him something of his record in the war and shown herself proud of it. If he conquered, then he could tell her. The defeated fear would be a trophy. She would understand. She wanted a man to be strong in every way. She frankly admired the daring of Reeves. Reeves, inclined to be a will o' the wisp in love, sought out by other girls, attached himself to Alouise.
There were occasions when Fleming might have spoken, if he had not been obsessed by his weakness, times when he fancied Alouise gave him the opportunity, even made it, and wondered why he did not respond. After these she openly favored Reeves, only to check him if he showed signs of appropriation.
The trees nearest the railroad were logged off, the yarders moved back into the woods, a loading engine taking the trunks to the loader. Its track ran close to the spar tree, two great blocks on loadlines directly over the center of the car in use. Two lines were used, each with huge tongs. A pair of these gripped the front end of a log and yanked it free of the pile. The tongs of the other set lifted the other end and the balk swung parallel to the car, the top loader signalling and the loading engineer lowering the log into place.
Back farther the last wedge was sledged home in a fir that was all of seven centuries old, a towering column of three hundred feet. It came down thundering, shaking the ground as it leaped as if in a final agony, the buckers swarmed upon it and sawed it into lengths of twenty-four to eight feet, bridge timbers and plank material, marked off for them by a scaler. The butt logs measured full twelve feet about the bark.
The hook tender swung his choker setters to a big log, the rigging was pulled down from the haulback line, the choker cable girdled the timber. A whistle punk pulled on his wire, a distant electric whistle tooted shrilly and the log moved in a slow roll, its nose lifting as it crashed down the line while the choker setters swabbed their foreheads and thrust a fresh “chew” into their lean jaws, waiting for the next set of rigging to come along. The monarch was down, its forest life ended, its real usefulness begun.
Spider was to rig a spar. There was more to it than the topping. After that he must reclimb with a light line and small block and, with helpers and the aid of a donkey engine—not a yarder—rig the guy- line and blocks. First the highlead block through which the main hauling line must pass, a shapen mass of wood and metal weighing fifteen hundred pounds, to be suspended a hundred and fifty feet from the ground, as high as possible for the maximum effect of the drag. Then a second block for the lead of the haulback cable. Sometimes smaller blocks for the rigging of loading lines.
The spar tree itself was stoutly guyed with heavy steel cables before the heavy blocks were hung, before the yarding, roading and loading engines came to their carefully appointed places. The last were mounted on sled runners of hewn logs and hauled into position. All in all it was an important operation.
But Spider was the central figure, watched as he climbed, watched as he yelled warning and the lookers on scattered before the top came rushing down, watched as he swung in dizzy circles, as he took up the light line, helped rig the big blocks and at the last came to earth, usually sliding down a cable as a sailor descends halyards, a smile on his face and a light in his eyes, running his fingers through his curly hair and singing.
III
IT WAS Sunday afternoon. Fleming called at the store, which had dwelling rooms attached, and found Reeves ahead of him. Spider made a face at him, sufficiently friendly, but the look of a rival. The two men got along well enough though their temperaments differed.
“Alouise tells me she promised to go with you for a walk,” he said. “You've got to take me along. Starting a new setting tomorrow and I've got to rig a spar. Never can tell what might happen. So you can't shake me. You can choose your own way but I'm tagging. You haven't got the heart to say no, neither of you. Suppose poor Spider gets a ride?”
“Don't,” said Alouise. “Do you want to spoil our afternoon? You've never had an accident.”
“I'm clever, that's why. But I've had a sort of hunch that I'm overdue, just the same,” he added soberly. “Do I get a bid, or do I just naturally crash the gate?”
The girl looked demurely at Fleming.
“Its John's party,” she said.
For a moment Fleming rebelled. He wanted Alouise to himself, he believed she would prefer it. He knew what Reeves would do in his place. Make some quick excuse, say something witty but eminently to the point that would make Fleming feel out of it, force his hand for withdrawal. He had the right of way. He glanced at Reeves and Spider grinned at him.
“Not afraid of me, are you?”
The girl flushed. Fleming tried to speak off-handedly.
“Not yet. Glad to have you along, of course.”
“Of course. Come on, we'll chirrup to the birdies, pick the pretty flowers. Take along some ice-cream and candy and guzzle it. Make a peaceful picnic of it. How about Rocky Glen?”
The girl had once said she wanted to go there and Fleming knew that Reeves remembered it. He was always scoring small points. Fleming had meant to suggest it himself. He saw her face light up and acquiesced,
It was not far, a gorge between the steeper slopes where the trees did not find congenial soil, save for dwarf growth. There were bushes there with scrub oaks, birch ash and aspen and sumach. Berries. Flowers. A small cascade at the head, falling to a streamlet, Reeves insisted upon walking.
“I've got to climb all day tomorrow,” he said, “Let me tread the good old earth while I can. Listen, Alouise, tomorrow's Armistice Day. You get a holiday. We poor timber mechanics have got to labor. Contracts are contracts. What is the mere memory of past glory? Fleming won't get a chance to wear his croix de guerre and I, a 'umble ranker, as the Tommies say, can't sit around and swap yarns of how we licked the Boches.”
“You didn't tell me you had a decoration,” said Alouise to Fleming.
“More chump he. Ee's a bloomin' 'ero. I saw the cross in his turkey bag. Made him tell the gang all about it. It wasn't much. I can climb trees but Fleming there climbed into cosy little machine-gun nests and chased out the Heines. Wouldn't think it to look at him, would you?”
Fleming laughed it off. Reeves was generous enough, but somehow gave the effect, to Fleming, of having deliberately underrated his own prowess. He thought the girl fancied so, too.
They picnicked in the shadow of big rocks at the foot of the cascade, Reeves keeping them in merry mood, telling of his escapades during the war that he seemed to have treated only as a medium for escaping onerous duty. Once in a while he told a story with a thrill to it, always related in the third person, with a laughing denial that he had anything to do with it that enhanced the suggestion of concealment. He made Fleming tell how he won the Cross, and the story came lamely enough.
“I'm not a hero,” Fleming said.
“Tosh! Likewise spoofing. We'll prove it. We are in the trenches, Zero hour approaches. See that bush up there, covered with flowers? Those are plumes in the helmet of a Prussian officer, make him a general. Trophies for the applauding fair. I'll race you for 'em.”
Fleming looked hard at him. Reeves laughed back.
“No wager on it, old scout. We're not breaking lances. Come on.”
The bush was two thirds of the way up the steep side of the glen. Not so hard a climb. It was not like going to the top of a cliff, looking down. Alouise was looking on. She wanted the flowers, had said so. But he had a sense of being trapped, of imminent disaster. The Thing seemed to stir within him. He willed it down.
“Come on,” he said. “Alouise, you start us.”
They were off, clambering in short rushes, catching at bushes, scrambling over rocks, evenly matched, both in top condition, making for the goal. Slowly Fleming began to forge ahead. He was winning. Reeves had held the spotlight all the afternoon. This time——
He was within fifty feet of the flowers when the dirt gave way under his feet. He clutched at a bush and it came out by the roots. He dug the toes of his shoes, his knees and fingers into the shallow soil, slid to rock, weathered and treacherous. His legs shot into space. He was falling—falling!
One hand caught in a crevice and he was braked, drawing up his feet, twisting over on his back. He lost his grip and went slithering down, sidewise. The rock sheered off abruptly and he looked into space, far down to the brawling little torrent.
The Thing had him! He flung out arms and legs, but there was no strength in him. Waves of vertigo and faintness assailed him. He sprawled, slipping, slipping. In a moment he was going to fall. Black horror enveloped him——
He came really to himself at the foot of the falls again, vaguely conscious that Reeves had rescued him. He was lying on some turf, the girl wetting his forehead with her handkerchief. He would not open his eyes. Shame seared him. He heard Reeves talking.
“He isn't hurt. No bones broken. Hardly scratched. I got him just as he was going over. Might have rolled clean to the bottom. He'd fainted. Hanged if I don't believe he funked it. By Jimminy, we didn't get the flowers, at that! Back in a jiffy.”
Reeves was going up the cliff again. It was no use shamming. He looked up. He might have misread the look in her eyes, but he was miserable.
“I heard what Spider said. He's right. I funked it. I told you I wasn't a hero, Alouise. I'm a coward.”
She was puzzled, grieved. He did not look at her again.
“He'll get your flowers for you,” he said. “I'll be getting along.”
She said nothing as he went, looking after him with the same perplexed, hurt gaze.
He had failed—failed! The Thing was his master. Failed before her and before Reeves, who had known that he had been frightened. He remembered now scraps of Reeves' talk in the descent, soothing, reassuring, condescending, as if to a terrified child.
This was the end of it all. Love and ambition. They had not aided him. He went back in utter humiliation, did not appear at supper, crawled into his bunk and lay there. Reeves came in late, chaffing the crowd.
“Anyone seen Fleming?” he asked. But he did not come over to the bunk. They had talked him over, Alouise and Reeves. They despised him.
He tried to get his time next morning. His foreman referred him to the superintendent, busy, harassed.
“Nothing doing, Fleming. We're behind time on contracts. You're not sick?”
“No, sir.”
“When you signed on you agreed to give ten days notice or forfeit two weeks pay, outside of illness or accident. We have to make our agreements that way. We have our own to fulfill, under penalty. Your pay check is due in eight days, anyway. You can give notice if you want to—quit.”
He put a sting in the last word that pricked Fleming's pride, numb as it was. He had forgotten the clause in the agreement. It was fair enough.
“You're a good man, Fleming. Got good reports about you. You ought to go up in this business. Studying I hear, asking questions. Don't be a fool. Think it over. I'll admit we need you.”
That was some salve. Reeves would not gossip, he was sure. The girl was out of his life but— He hesitated for a minute and, as the superintendent turned to the field phone, walked out and got his ax.
The irony of fate detailed him to help with the spar crew. They needed expert axmen to trim stumps, undercut them so the steel cable guys could be anchored to them. The work was not arduous. For a while he stood idle. Spider was getting ready to climb the tree, laughing and exchanging badinage. If his hunch of being “overdue” persisted, he failed to show it.
Standing apart, Fleming saw Alouise come to the setting with her father. There had been some brief exercises at the school and then it was dismissed. The rigging of the spar was something worth watching, Reeves the principal actor. He did not look toward her. Reeves chatted with her, warned her back, showed her where the top would fall.
“That'll bounce and shiver its timbers,” he said. “Get in the clear. Here's where the Spider gets busy.”
He waved his hand, ran to the tree, jumped at it and clung, four feet up, before he began to climb with extraordinary speed, wielding ax and saw as he disposed of the lower limbs.
“Looks like Spider was out fer a record,” said a swamper. “Made a bet likely.”
“Bet a kiss with Wood's gal. He's sparkin' her. He's showin' off.”
“Best high-rigger in camp.”
“Watch him climb.”
Reeves' actions were so smooth and coordinate, his muscles flowed with such lack of apparent effort that the usual jerky, inchworm manner of the high-rigger was missing. He went up the tree with the suppleness of a panther. As he lopped or sawed off the lower limbs he leaned back to the limit of his circle cord and the slack of his belt, spurs deep; seeming to stand braced backwards while he plied his tools, leaving the spar trim. This exercise rested his climbing muscles and, the moment the trimming was ended, he swung ax or saw to his belt again, the sun shining on their gleaming metal, and started up once more.
At a hundred feet he waved his hand again, taking his scarlet neckerchief to use as a banner. This was not bravado but a special salute for the benefit of Alouise, who stood watching him. She had looked, too, for Fleming, but he took care she should not see him. The night had brought counsel to Alouise. Fleming could not be the self-styled coward he proclaimed himself unless he had never earned that croix-de guerre. Reeves had suggested that, but the girl's good sense could not reconcile that idea with the fact that he had never mentioned it.
“Might have been caught off base with it some time,” said Reeves. “Or—I'll bet you this is the solution. He got shell-shocked, that's why he funks in a pinch. Lost his nerve. It's a rotten shame.”
His sympathy was word-shallow. The girl's went deeper. She had come close to loving Fleming, she was not sure that she did not love him for all the frailty that she had claimed to despise in any man. A tenderness leavened her thoughts of him. His other qualities took on their normal rating.
She resolved before the day was over to seek him out, to try and get his confidence. Why couldn't he have been more like Reeves, death-daring, reckless, climbing until he was only a miniature figure on a long pole, the strokes of his ax coming down to them faintly?
She wasn't in love with Spider, her woman's instinct told her that he was unstable as water, uncertain as the wind. But the sight of that gallant figure appealed to other feminine instincts in her, awakening to the sight of a man excelling in strength, taking grave risks with a light in his eyes and a smile on his lips.
Reeves' bandanna caught on the snag of an untrimmed limb, that jerked it from the light grasp he had upon it. It came fluttering down, scarlet in the sun.
“Thet's sure bad luck,” said the swamper near Fleming. “Fer a high-rigger to lose anything while he's climbin', thet's the worst kind of a hoodoo. Allus works,”
“Aw, what's a handkerchief? If it was his ax or his saw, now.”
“You wait an' see. It allus works, I tell ye. Means his mind ain't on the job. Thinking of the gel instead of the tree.”
“You talk like an old woman. He's up to his mark now, starting to undercut.”
The tiny figure had lost individuality. As it swung the ax it looked like a marionette. They could see the blows fall, the dull sound of the chop coming afterward, then a bright chip sailing down, clean cut as a knife whittling.
Reeves had to score deep to ensure the proper fall of the top when he sawed-in opposite his cut. He had to judge every blow to a nicety; to gauge the wind, the symmetry of the crown, things instinctive enough to any experienced feller but assuming an acuter problem when tackled a hundred and fifty feet from the ground. The top would fall before he had sawed clean through, it would leave more or less of a nub that Spider, with due pride in turning out a perfect job, would clear away before he went down for his light block and tackle.
The little crowd of spectators and workers stepped back out of danger. Wood drew his daughter into standing timber. A falling top had vagaries, it was apt to spin; breaking boughs, sharp as javelins, might be flung in any direction, in a dozen.
Reeves finished with his ax, poured kerosene on his saw from the phial he carried and set to work; rhythmical, expert, swinging from side to side with his stroke, as easily as a sailor hauled to a masthead in a bosun's chair for scraping and slushing. His body strained back to the limit to permit of the free play of the saw, his knees rode the trunk, his spurs were sunk in the bark. His head was on one side, watching, listening for the first creak that would tell him the top was going. The wind was a bit gusty and that was a handicap. And he was bothered too with the loss of his kerchief. Someone had picked it up, but the idle jingle of the woods repeated itself to him:
Look out when you climb the highlead rig If you lose the little you lose the big.
Silly stuff, all of it, the effort of a would be woods poet who thought more of his rhymes than actual meaning. There were a lot of couplets to fit every job, ax rhyming with backs and hope with rope; just nonsense, but he couldn't get it out of his head. His sawing timed itself to it.
He wished he hadn't lost that silk bandanna. Marred his performance—a clumsy trick like that.
Ah! The almost severed top groaned, rocked a little. A puff of wind backed it from its intended lurch toward the undercut, then released it. It was going. Now he had to ride, to spin, hanging on with all his skill and strength. There she went!
Below, they saw the top teeter, start to fall, hang for a split pulse-beat and then seem to twist, to wrench itself free and come hurtling down. They saw, too, as the beheaded trunk started its wild circlings that something had gone wrong; some flaw of the fir, some trick of the wind had twisted the crown. The trunk had split with swift and irresistible, unreckoned force. It flung Reeves off, breaking hand grip and spurhold, flung him backward with vicious suddenness. It had loosened the taut girdle of his rope and, as some men shouted and began to run toward the tree, as a girl screamed, his limp body, head down, began to slip. The rope circle had been big enough to clasp the fir at the base; now, unless the bark held it, or some projection of a lopped branch caught it, he might fall, to bring up with a jerk that would break his back—or might snap the cord.
Some shouted, more held their breath, gasping with relief when the cord braked, held, leaving the helpless figure hanging.
“Must hev cracked his skull agen the trunk when she split,” said the swamper as the superintendent hurried forward.
“He's out,” the super cried. “Who'll go up and get him down? Take up a line and block and put a bight round him, we'll lower him. Come on now.”
No one came forward, An assistant rigger muttered something about a “hoodooed tree.” Someone suggested sending for Hansen, another high-rigger, but he was at a distant setting.
“He's liable to die before we get him,” said the super. “Hanging the way he is, with a cracked skull, maybe. Hasn't anyone here got the guts to tackle it?”
Alouise stood by with clasped hands, looking up at the limp figure. The tree still quivered. It had avenged indignity.
The men looked at each other. Few of them were climbers, most of them touched with superstition at the catastrophe.
“I'll go up.”
The super wheeled to face Fleming, standing with set face, his jaws clamped until the muscles stood out upon it, his eyes luminous with purpose.
“Can you climb?”
The girl ran forward.
“You?” she gasped. “No——”
“He saved my life yesterday,” answered Fleming. “I can climb. I've got an outfit at the bunkhouse.”
“Where's your belt and spurs?” the super demanded of the assistant-rigger.
“I don't tote em when Reeves is on the job,” said the man sullenly. “What's more, I'm married. I've got a wife and kids to think of.”
The super turned from him impatiently. The bunkhouse was half a mile from this setting. He looked for a messenger, holding Fleming back.
“You'll need your wind,” he said.
“I'll go.” The girl was off at racing speed, running like a doe, light and swift of foot. She reached the bunkhouse, breathing fast but unspent, demanding of the flunkey leisurely sweeping out the place where Fleming kept his things. The man pointed to a wide shelf where the turkey bags were piled, marked with names or initials.
She found Fleming's while he fumbled, and ransacked it, gathering up belt and spurs, the stout length of cord with its spliced in snaphooks.
A leather case fell to the floor, opening as it fell. The flunkey picked it up.
“Fleming's craw-de-gare,” he said. “Got his name on it. What's up, Miss?”
She did not answer him, but snatched the case from him and thrust it inside her blouse, leaving him stupidly scratching his head. Back she sped, sprinting at the last while Fleming ran to meet her and buckled on the outfit, the superintendent helping with the spurs.
“Are you sure?” she asked him. “I found your cross, John. Your name's on it. For bravery. You are brave, but——”
Her father caught her away.
“You're hinderin' things, Al,” he said. “You've done your bit. Let him be.”
Fleming read the message in her eyes. She loved him. She would have told him so, even then, let him know that she loved him whether he went or not, beseeching him not to attempt a fatal risk. Light flamed in his own eyes. Once more he was taking the offensive. He was going to win. Forces were rallying within him. Love, and the ambitions it had strengthened.
They gave him the line for attaching the block, the light pulley and the rope, attaching them carefully, escorting him to the tree. It was still now, quiescent.
It was a straight climb. He told himself he would not look down, not that he must not. His spirit was flaming high. He felt the play of his muscles as he climbed, thankful for his tests and the experience they had given him in hitching the rope, for the lessons he had taken in rope-work. He was no high-rigger, probably never would be. That job was only a specialist's in the big business he meant to master—was going to master—an accessory and aid, like the pilot to a ship. But he could climb, he could fasten the block securely, using the split to help wedge the hitches, and he could reeve through the long rope. Some one had given him a hand ax that he thrust into his belt.
Up he went, stopping to rest a moment now and then, leaning back. He knew that Alouise, with a prayer on her lips, was watching him, his cross over her heart that throbbed for his peril.
Up, until he could see the face of Reeves, blotched from the blood that had run into it, smeared with wet crimson on the forehead, the body limp as a partly filled sack, the limbs loose. He would have to go carefully, when he reached it, to fasten his pulley in place.
The Thing that had seemed to be cowed, made its sortie when he was within a dozen feet of Reeves. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead, trickling into his eyes. He wanted to vomit, the tree seemed to spin. But he fought it off. He had expected it, he was ready for it. It was only material fear, a weakness of the body. His will was master.
There came a cheer from below, faint but heartening, as he started on again. It flushed his blood into fresh circulation, recharged his nerves. Again the sound rose up.
He was up to Reeves now and then the supreme test came. His own body cord was unable to pass the other until he undid its snaps, putting it about the tree above Reeves'. Fleming clamped hard with his knees, drove his spurs deep, caught with one hand at the taut rope that supported Spider, got it clear—and then he was past. The block and long rope were free, its ground end carefully tended by the superintendent. He kept his eyes on the split, creeping up by inches.
He wrapped the loose rope in figure eights about the forking break, made fast, attached the pulley, reeved through the rope end, attached his ax to it for a weight and sent it gliding down, as the hurrahs came up to him.
His head was clear, the nausea was past. Exaltation flooded him. The Thing was downed. It had vanished, fled in ignominious defeat, the unfair heritage exorcised by his spirit. Never to come back. He knew that, even as he had known fear behind him when he charged the machine-gun nests at the head of his little squad.
He looked down. He saw the group of men, bodies dwarfed, squatty from the perspective, their faces turned upward, tiny spots of white. He saw Alouise, and he waved his hand.
He was not through yet. It was no easy task properly to fasten the bight about Reeves, securing it to his belt, to hold the senseless body while he unsnapped the body cord. But it was done at last and he gave the signal. Men tailed on the rope, easing down their burden.
Fleming leaned back. He was tired with his supreme efforts but he was jubilant. There was new strength and purpose in him. Again he looked down to see Alouise waving her scarf at him. The rope came up to him with a loop in it, into which he stepped.
The solid earth felt good to him. A litter had been fetched and Reeves was already being borne to the hospital. The doctor had pronounced him stunned. He would recover, rig spars again perhaps.
Men surrounded Fleming, shaking his hand, clapping him on the back. Then they stood back, for Alouise. Her eyes were glowing softly through happy tears. Her hands sought his breast, pinned something there.
“It's Armistice Day,” she said with a break in her voice. “You ought to wear this. There is no cross for what you've done, but you——”
Fleming claimed his reward, given freely, for all the lookers on.
The super had sent for Hansen. Another tree had been chosen. Hansen stood ready, phlegmatic, unexcited by the accident. The work had to go on.
“I don't suppose you want to go up again, Fleming?” asked the super, with a smile.
“I don't think I'd want it as a regular job,” said Fleming.
“I've got a better one for you. You're all of a man. Come to my office in the morning. You'd better take the rest of the day off. Come on, boys, let's get busy.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1941, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 83 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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