Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1885-02-19
A LoGelnG-cAMP BOSS.
A Thrilling Incident in the Pineries Of
Northern Michigan.

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A Thrilling Incident in the Pineries Of
Northern Michigan.
For young man have done soma
pretty tough scrapping in the Rockies
| and mining regions of New Mexico and
Arizona, but w.days ago had the
worst scare of my life in the lumber
districts of Northern Michigan The
speaker was a young man of some
twenty-seven years, dressed in rough
and-ready style and wearing q frizzy
tow beard. He shifted the position Of
his broad shoulders as he lounged back
in an easy chair in the Sherman House
office, pulled his cigar vigorously, and
tn en- continued: eft was one of those
bitter cold days we've just been having,
and I had got up at three o'clock to
rouse the men and get their sprinkler
out. The air seemed full of blue steel
and cut to my marrow like . razor.
One of the teamsters got scared
out and played off sick. So ]
had to take his place. When we
had got good, big load 1 took the
reins and sat down on the butts of the
logs, leaving the two loggers on be-
hind. OF course about twenty feet of
the load hung off the last bob. The
road was a sheet of ice, for the sprink-
Ter ran over it every morning, and the
horses were sharp-shod, so we slid
along smoothly until we got to the
slide-a pretty steep incline ending in
turn which was mighty sharp for
road sixty feet wide. AS soon rs we
started down my hair began to stand
he 10
| fury to keep ahead of the hobs which
were Slowing all over the road. got so
paralyzed and nervous that when we
approached the turn I refined in too
suddenly. / felt the front hobs jump
one way and the back hobs the other.
| The hind ends of the logs whistled
through the air like willow switches,
| and / heard the loggers yell: For Gods
sake, --.' The next thing was
a loud snap! snap! snap!-like
| three tremendous paper-crackers-as
/ the big log-chains broke like SO many
cotton threads. Did you ever use
switch sling? Whirl it round and
round your head. you know, till sud-
den twist sends the apple off the end
| and spinning into the ARP Well, that
| is the way I felt and that is Just
what thought of as was shot off in
| to the air, over and over and over, till
| l struck in a snow drift some hundred
or more feet from the road. When I
had struggled back through the snow ]
found the horses trying to kick loose
from the few bits of harness that dam
gled about them, the hobs tangled
around the trunk of small pine tree,
and the logs scattered to the four
winds. One logger crawled back to
the road with a fractured leg, and the
other soon followed with a dislocated
shoulder. One had struck a tree and
the second had landed against a stump.
They afterward told me in camp that
those things were not at all unusual,
| and, as had some pretty heavy bruises
| myself, 1 concluded that l was not
made to boss a lumber camp. So was
driven to town next day to telegraph
| the management that the head team
ster was filling my place, and that I
was on my way to Chicago; and you
bet your life | am glad did it. If you
have never passed winter in the Mich
igan lumber districts you don't know
what trouble is. In the first place
man has to work from three in the
eleven at night. Ny daily life,
while 1 was fool enough to stay there,
was something like this: kept store
for twenty teamsters and bossed them
at their work. / slept and ate in the
only approximately clean place in the
whole ranch--a little box built out into
the big room and all lined with strong
tobacco, curry-combs, socks, pins, but
tons, buckwheat, kerosene and bad
molasses, The box had no cover, so as
lay on the only quilt between me and
the floor could see the stars through
the frosty cracks in the roof. The
onions, beans, cabbages and small
keg of sauerkraut were stored just out
side my door in the big room, which
was heated red-hot by an immense
open fireplace. At night tho men
would take off their soaking-wet rub
Der boots and stand them up by the
fire.
..Those were awful old days for me.
I had almost sleepless nights, and then
had to get up before daybreak, with
the thermometer twenty or thirty de-
grees below zero, and go about my
work with a splitting headache, con-
tracted in the foul air in which had to
pass the night. I am glad am out of
it. 1t is an unhealthy, dirty, danger
GUS business, and unless q man is in
with the management there is no mon
ey in it. - Chicago Tribune.
"A jet of melted lead recently lodged
in the eye of French workman with
out doing any damage to the organ
Perrier, who ascertained that the inn
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