Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1915-12-15

! way he used his hands, his knife and
his food. 1t glared when he spoke. it
paraded in his clothes, and most Of all
it stood forth pitilessly when he sat
by himself at night in the plain little
room under the dripping caves. They
were nearly always dripping. the pane
behind the spotless curtains was al
ways black and glittering. there was
nearly always the shut-in silence that
rain imposes-that dense silence, lis
tening and lonesome.
Sometimes, to be sure, it was only a
little Oregon mist that saddened the
night outside. but it had the same
effect on the young man from the
midst of life in New York.
He was East and he knew it. Also
the men had known it from that first
speech in the doorway of the cook
shack. They spoke Of him among them
selves as "Dillingworth," accompany
ing the word with grins, tasting its
flavor as delicately as any be-spec-
tacled professor of the East dallying
with a new derivative.
Nowhere in the world is discern
ment brought to finer point than in
the lumber camps and mills of the
Northwest. among that floating gentry
Of the pike and peavey, the kneelaced
boot and the turkey" who pass here
and there with the seasons, picking
critically at the speech and doings of
many places
Also, nowhere is there a stronger
prejudice against any manifestation of
personal superiority, any exploitation
of what may lie east of the Cascades.
To them the man and the place are
one-East and fastener.
They felt for him that contempt
which only the seasoned feel for the
inexperienced. And with the quick
ness which was his characteristic, the
new owner sensed the feeling among
them. 1t only added to that tumble of
sensations and impressions which had
crowded thick upon him from the first
and which he had had no time to
assert and get under control. He had
simply laid them away for future at
tention.
In the meantime he went quickly at
the work of settling himself in the
new environment. A load of lumber
was brought up the slough on the
punt from the mill at Toledo and four
men were put to building a small Of
fee. 1t was set at the edge of the
slough, bit below the cook-shack.
where it commanded from it's two east
ern windows and door the track, the
reading donkey, the log-trail and the
rollway, and from the southern one
the winding slough, the rest of the
track and the lower rollway. where
the donkey engine left the logs, its
duty done. After that they rolled
down with much splashing to the mar
row ribbon Of water which, with ev-
cry flood tide backed in from the bay,
lifted them high and trundled them,
grinding and groaning. slowly down,
perhaps to the mill at Toledo, perhaps
to be laced together with mammoth
chains, built into a great raft and
towed out to the ocean to voyage
along the coast, down to southern Cal
ifornia or up to Portland. A tiny,
wheezy tug fused about the backwa
ter for the express purpose of starting
the monster rats out on the ebb.
Inside the new Office were installed
roll-top desk, case of books, map
or two and several chairs, beside a
small stove. Here, with the four pine
walls around him, Walter Sandry at
last looked around and called himself
at home. TIE drawers Of the new
desk were full Of documents and mem.
oranda, the history, with statistics and
records down to the minutest detail
of the Dillingworth Lumber company
These he set himself to master as his
first step toward the vast golden goal
of the dream that had brought him
west.
Very shrewdly he decided to take
nothing out of the capable hands OF
his foreman. There had been a sort OF
tense pause in the camp pending this
development When it became appar.
ent that things were to go on as
usual the work went forward as ii
line had been loosened.
Big John Daily had gone about dur.
ing the few days of uncertainty with
the unruffied calm of his quiet nature
though there was a small, very small
ache somewhere inside him. Ever
since he could remember, his life had
been cast in Daily's lumber camp
when his father, old John Daily. had
logged with oxen on the eastern slopes
| of the Coast range and there was no
jerkwater railroad in to Yaquina bay.
When a 200-foot fir had tottered out
of line and sent the old man forever
into silence in the roaring thunder OF
its fall, the boy John, at seventeen,
had picked up the reins Of government
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