The Savannah morning news., 1902-09-28

, voy road. One stood to right, the other
left, and alternately their axes hit deep.
Tom glanced up as a sailor looks aloft.
She'll do, Hank" he said.
The two then with a dozen half clips
of the ak, removed the inequalities of
| the bark from the saws path. The
long flexible ribbon of steel began to
sing, bending so adaptably to the hands
and motions of the men manipulating
that it did not seem possible to mobile
an instrument could cut the rough pine.
In a moment the song changed tim
bre. Without a word the men straight
ened their backs. Tom flirted along
J the blade thin stream of kerosene oil
from bottle in his hip pocket, and the
sawyers again bent to their work.
swaying back and forth rhythmically,
their muscles ripping under the tex
ture of their woolens like those of a
panther under its skin. The outer edge
of the sawblade disappeared.
Better wedge her, Tom, advised
Hank
They paused, while, with a heavy
sledge, Tom drove a triangle of steel
into the crack made by the saving.
This prevented the weight of the tree
from pinching the saw. Then the
rhythmical z-z-z! z-z-z! again took up
its song.
When the trunk was nearly severed,
Tom drove another and thicker wedge.
Timber" halloOed Hank in a long
drawn melodious call that melted
through the woods into the distance.
The swampers ceased work and with
drew to safety.
Crack" called the tree.
Hank coolly unlocked his saw han
die. and Tom drew the blade through
and out on the other side.
The tree shivered. then leant ever
so slightly from the perpendicular,
then fell. at first gently, afterwards
with a crescendo rush, tearing through
the branches of other trees bending
the small timber, breaking the small
est, and at last hitting, with a ire
mendous crash and bang which filled
the air with fog of small twigs, nee
dies, and the powder of snow.
Then the swampers, who have by
now finished the travoy road. trimmed
the PROSTATE trunk clear of all pro-
tuberances. 1t required fairly skillful
AK work. The branches had to be
shaved close and clear, and at the
same time the trunk must not be CASH
ed. And often a man was forced to
WELD his instrument from a constrain-
ed position.
The chopped branches and limbs had
now to be dragged clear and piled.
While this was being finished, Tom
and Hank marked off and sawed the
log lengths paying due attention to
the necessity of avoiding knots, forks,
and rotten places. Thus some of the
logs were eighteen, some sixteen, or
fourteen, and some only twelve feet
in length.
Next appeared the teamsters with
IL eir little wooden sledges, their steel
chains an" their tongs. They had been
helping the skidders to place the par
allel and level beams, or skids. on
which the logs were to be piled by the
side of the road. The tree which Tom
and Hank had just felled, lay up a
gentle slope from the new travoy road,
so little Fabian Laveque, the team
ster clamped the bite of his tongs to
the end of the largest, or butt, log.
'Allez, Molly!" he cried.
A horse, huge, elephantine, her head
down, nose close to her chest. intelli-
gently spying her steps, moved. The
log half rolled over. slid three feet,
and menaced a stump.
"Gee!" cried Laveque.
Molly stepped twice directly sidewise,
planted her fore foot on a root she
had seen, and pulled sharply. The end
of the log slid around the stump.
"Allez!" commanded Lavequez.
And Molly started gingerly down the
hill. She pulled the timber, heavy as
an iron safe, here and there through
the brush, missing no steps, making
no false moves, backing, and finally
getting out of the way of an unexpect-
ed roll with the ee Sc and intelligence
of Laveque himself. In five minutes
the burden lay by the travoy road.
In two minutes more one end of it
had been rolled on the little fiat wood
en- sledge and, the other end dragging.
it was winding majectically down
through the ancient forest.
When Molly and Fabian had travoy-
ed the log to the skidway, they drew