Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1915-10-22

mountain meadow which gave back
ground for Daily's camp; and In all
the windows lights were cleaning. In
one cabin a door opened and a mar
came out, stopping a moment on the
sill to reach up and kiss a woman.
who stood silhouetted against the
light, when the door closed and San
dry could not see the man, though he
could hear his footsteps. The fore
man swung ahead In the path.
"They's a foot-log here" he said.
Underwater slough. 'Tain't deep"
They stopped at the foot OF the
ridge where the donkey, the rollway
and the track terminal huddled
against the bold uplift, and Daily In
troduced him to Hastings and Murphy,
the latter of whom hung out Of the
window of his diminutive cab and
peered at the stranger out of laugh
ing eyes whose forbears had twink1ed
on Donegal's blue bay and Erin's red
checked daughters with impartial Joy.
"Ah, Misther Dillingworth," he said
heartily, IAN phat dye tink av the
West Coast now?"
"Sandry, Murphy" caught up Daily
easily, yet with a warning note.
"Shure! Sandry tbs! Excuse me,
Misther Sandry, but amt tn scenery
foine?"
what I've seen, yes, Murphy" a
swered Sandry after a slight pause.
AS he turned after Daily the Irishman
stuck his tongue in the corner Of his
lips and drummed a minute on the
sill, the broad smile ~lessening on his
reckless face.
AN plat dye know about thot?"
be asked retrospectively of the fog.
Out of the near gloom, which was
tightening a bit with dawn, the log
trail rose, an aggressive snakelike
trough climbing uncompromisingly at
an angle of 36 degrees, its center a
straight pine log sunk to its surface.
which was polished like ivory, its
slightly curving sides the same. How
many tapering trunks had gone into
Its two miles would be hard to say, for
In some places they had sunk and
been covered-in the dip, say, over the
ridge where the real mountain began,
at the turn where 1t wound around the
Shoulder.
Before ten minutes Sandry was
breathing heavily, though he said
nothing and kept close at Daily's
heels. The logger strobe forward and
upward with an easy, climbing lift
that rippled every muscle in his loose
body, while the nan from the cities
strained and heaved In painful labor,
slipping on the wet earth, f~oundering
in the rotten bark and brush that
lined the way. They climbed beside
the trail, not in it. Ahead of them the
gang of men had long since disap-
peared from sight and hearing.
The forenoon that followed was the
opening page in a new chapter of his
life, and Sandry bent all his faculties
to a grasp of outlines.
He stood silently watching the work
go forward. They had reached the
cutting. Here, in a wide dip high
above the world, it seemed to the
fastener, was a huge circle of activ-
ity. Close beside the built trail a Sec
ond donkey engine fused and
screamed, reaching out uncannily on
all sides for the great logs, to haul
them in with screech of spool and
strain of cable and turn them over to
the mysterious steel rope that came
constantly crawling back IN its trav.
cling line. This was called the yard
ing engine"-the one at the foot of
the trail beside the vrollway and the
track being known as the "roader."
The monotonous song of the cross
cut saws had begun where the buck.
ers were converting several hundred.
and-ffty-foot trunks into handling
sections.
A little below, two foot-wide planks
some five or six feet long had been set
into a giant yellow pine about eight
feet from the ground, one on either
side, and on these two men were stand
ing, their flannel shirts open at the
throat, their sleeves rolled up from
arms Of steel and leather, their heads
bare. Sandry watched the bending OF
their backs, every muscle outlined
under the clinging shirts, the play OF
their knees, the whole easy ripping
Of their entire bodies with the regular
give and take of the long saw. The
boards, known as springboards, rose
and dipped with the even motion.
These men were fallers, and pres
emily they would lay the towering
mon arch of the great woods to the
fraction of an inch in a given place,
ready for the buckers, the hook-tender
and the cable.
In the meantime the logs already
down were swiftly stripped of their
limbs, cut into thirty and forty foot
lengths, rolled into the trail with
peavey and cant hook, and sent up and
over the ridge to the accompaniment
of shrill toots from the whistle-bob's
restless cord, the straining of rigging