Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1897-11-18
III Swift Vengeance.

@ EARCHING for simile you would
in all probability liken the lumber
4ume to a centipede--a giant centipede
"a monstrous centipede, winding it's
way down the mountain, twisting
around point here and twinkling its
thousands of long pine legs in the sun
light as it leaped across a canyon there,
crawling for protection at times under
the overhanging shelf of rock and
again pausing at the crest of sharply
inclined hill before plunging over and
down into the valley below, where the
mill and the box factory and the rail-
road trains waited. Sometimes it's legs
were long and stiltlike in appearance
and that was when it spanned the can
yon with the river and the stage track
at it's bottom, and sometimes those legs
were mere stubs and accomplished no
other purpose than TO brace the trough
in proper position as it burrowed along
an excavated shelf of the mountain,
working its writhing way down, down,
down. Here and there a smaller trough
fed it with water stolen from the creek,
the stream being tapped half a mile
above, so that despite spillage and leak
age and other subtraction there should
always be enough of the liquid lubri
cant running in the flume to make the
passage of lumber easy and expe-
ditious.
'Sandy's" was midway of the climb.
''Sandy's" was little white ranchhouse
built alongside the stage road. The
front door opened directly upon the
road and there was no back door, for the
other end of the house was a good 80
feet above the dipping side of the hill.
1t was five miles to the top of the noun
tain where Sandy himself supervised
the logging work, and so his daughter
Becky was alone in the ranchhouse for
long terms-"for a week at n stretch"
as she would express it. Sandy seldom
stretched it beyond 4 week, for he had
some notion of the drear lonesomeness
of life in that isolated house and made
it his pleasant duty to come down every
Saturday night with Sam Harkins, the
stage driver, and accompany him up
the hill on Mondays. And through the
week he made frequent trips down the
almost vertical side of the hill and
climbed laboriously back again after
having frightened for time not only
the life of the 13-year-old girl, but also
his own. In winter when there was no
possibility of using the fume because
of the fabulous depths of snow the fore
man and his little daughter went down
to the city where the railroad and the
mill and the box factory were, to hiber-
nate and to enable Becky to go to
chool.
Sandy induced the company to cut
into the house the telephone which ran
down the mountain as consort to the
fume So that, after considering all
things, Becky was provided for with
decent comfort and managed the mea-
gerIy patronized post Office and tele-
phoned to the headquarters of the COM
pany the hour of Sam Harkins' arrival
and of his departure, and made dinner
for the stage driver and performed the
other functionspeculiar to a handy half
way house.
Mr.. Chong Go Kwee's common desig-
nation was Bad Jim, and the appellation
fitted him to nicely on seven days of
the week. He was husky villain, who
could get more muscle into the work of
tugging timber than any three other
Cinnamon ut the top of the mountain.
but he possessed the mystery of evolv-
ing Chinese gin apparently out of moth
ingness, like wizard, and of drinking
himself into fierce moods which meant
trouble to whomsoever should cross his
path. Sandy discharged Chong several
times, but was obliged to reengage him
because the other men of his sun-kissed
race were afraid to work while he, nurs-
ing a sore heart, was abroad in the
mountains. Besides, although they
kept that secret, they were not above
a quiet love for his Chinese gin of secret
creation.
The Tuesday morning without which
this history would be quite unnecessary
opened bright and clear with Bad Jim
very drunk and anxious to find that
man who had said, according to Jim's
own disturbed dreams, that he could
whip him. Instead he found Sandy,
who was big enough to throw him off
one of the cars on which lumber was
brought from the lake, and promptly |
did so. Sandy. who had refrained from !
physical contact with this bad China |
man. losing all patience, descended |
from the car and whipped him with ex-
IRENE vigOr. He returned to the car, |
hut the other Cinnamon were too badly |
scared to work with any effect, and |
finally when the boss began to criticise
them in his usual picturesque phrase
ology, one, known as Little Boy, ex-
planned to him that the men had sort |
of superstitious dread of working with /
. corpse.
where's your corpse2" Sandy asked, ]