Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1900-02-22
Old Fransway's Hate.


Half-br Indian guides are popu-
be as useful as the white kind one
would say who saw the daily embark
alton of well-equipped "sports -
every city man in the woods is called
a ''sport"-who take to the road with
one of these dark and unknowable off
spring of the lumber camps. Perhaps
the general idea is that little Indian
blood in man means so much true
hunter, or maybe the Indian will go
for little less thau the whites in the
business. However these things are,
the woud-be hunter should pause to
consider the significance of this tale,
remembering that Indians never
change, and that back somewhere in
the sixties lived one lone Indian, q
mere remnant, who fought controls
and tho vested interests of great ''par-
ties" from the outside, because of an
idea. The game was his; no white
man should have of it or come to
spoil it; not even the logging crew,
who did not come to kill.
An Indian III never show you the
game; not If he can help 1t. -"
had picked my guide, Snow, for
his age and experience. He was a
friend of the late Jock Darling, that
famous character and once sinful dog
ger of deer, and the things he said
about the woods went. Still, as he
made this remark, l was considering
the natural results of competition.
Snow met my donbting look with the
firm iawed, solid contemptuousuess of
his kind; hut on this occasion he con-
descended to speak out. We sat in
the public room of the road ''hotel"
that surmounted barred and windy
ridge. Fate had showed us in here on
the way to our projected camp, between
an ineyorable round, red, scorching
stove and the depth of an open
window. And the weather was cold
hunting weather, when the deer wonld
be out of their safe swamps and feed
ing-at their peril along the ridges.
Back in the sixties," said Snow,
81 was . Witty young fellow, aud I've
lived round logging camps ever since
/ could remember anything. L believe
| usel a baby axe. After while l
had my spell at swampin' roads
swampin's the only work that's con-
sidered tit for youngsters and green
horns, = because, then, it's no matter
how the trees fali--and I'd become a
regular chopper. And when, on top
of this, [ say / worked three seasons
at river drtvin' and kept hearty, you'll
realize that L must have been well.
lnuscled young chap for my years.
Now, besides this natural educa-
tion, as yon might say, I'd had little
schoolin' through an uncle of mine at
Houlton, so that when the time came
that big new lumber company
wanted to put Il surveyor in the woods
for EN-, / about filled the bill That
was Il good JOB in those days, when the
business was new, though L didn't do
what you're thinkin' of I didn't lay
down lines, but l just walked straight
into the woods and looked over the
standin' timber, and I took it in rs
straight as l could with my eye, saw
what the trees would amount to, saw
how many pair horses and how many
men could get the logs to water, and
then [ wrote down my ideas and my
tiggers to the company that was wait
in to begin work on what l said This
was the practical side, and it was easy
larnin' the headwork, but | must say
by the end OF the second winter Ia
had enough. A man gets used to
being by himself in the woods, though
I've heard regular old sports, who'd
been down here huntin' fall after fall,
tell of nigh losiu' their wits at the
chance, rs it seemed, they'd be obliged
to sleep ont alone away from camp. l
had my little grub outfit and blanket,
aud, of course, / knew how to make
myself snug in all kinds of weather. so
that never had n thought that warn't
pleasant till the day l met up with
Fransway. 1t was funny thing I
hadn't seen Fransway before, as I'd
been workin' more or less right in the
country where he put in his time.
Fransway was n character, big In
dian, the biggest [ ever saw, mighty
man with chest like pork barrel,
though he must have been old then,
and with bad, squirting eye. He
usel to be chief, the story was, but
the rest of his tribe were dead. Well,
the day ! saw him he never looked in
my direction at all, just kept right
along on his snowshoes it was in
January got out of sight, ]
thought, in hurry. After that hard
ly q week passed but what Fransway
showed up somewhere to the east,
west, north or south of me and my
work, never coioing decently near,
however. l held on to my blanket in
case he was looking for chance to
steal that, but after he'd been follow
in ne ronnd n spell longer made ont
his business was something different
If it was anything to do with me, why
couldn't he come straight up and spit
it out?
81 began to think some thon. I'd
no sooner set fixed for the night in
some nice hollow with solao boughs