Big Timber Part 6

Benton ripped out an angry oath, pa.s.sed his men, and strode away down the path. Stella fell in behind him, wakened to a sudden uneasiness at the wrathful set of his features. She barely kept in sight, so rapidly did he move.

Sam Davis had smoke pouring from the _Chickamin's_ stack, but the kitchen pipe lifted no blue column, though it was close to five o'clock.

Benton made straight for the cookhouse. Stella followed, a trifle uncertainly. A glimpse past Charlie as he came out showed her Matt staggering aimlessly about the kitchen, red-eyed, scowling, muttering to himself. Benton hurried to the bunkhouse door, much as a hound might follow a scent, peered in, and went on to the corner.

On the side facing the lake he found the source of the cook's intoxication. A tall and swarthy lumberjack squatted on his haunches, gabbling in the Chinook jargon to a _klootchman_ and a wizen-featured old Siwash. The Indian woman was drunk beyond any mistaking, affably drunk. She looked up at Benton out of vacuous eyes, grinned, and extended to him a square-faced bottle of Old Tim gin. The logger rose to his feet.

"H'lo, Benton," he greeted thickly. "How's every-thin'?"

Benton's answer was a quick lurch of his body and a smashing jab of his clenched fist. The blow stretched the logger on his back, with blood streaming from both nostrils. But he was a hardy customer, for he bounced up like a rubber ball, only to be floored even more viciously before he was well set on his feet. This time Benton snarled a curse and kicked him as he lay.

"Charlie, Charlie!" Stella screamed.

If he heard her, he gave no heed.

"Hit the trail, you," he shouted at the logger. "Hit it quick before I tramp your d.a.m.ned face into the ground. I told you once not to come around here feeding booze to my cook. I do all the whisky-drinking that's done in this camp, and don't you forget it. d.a.m.n your eyes, I've got troubles enough without whisky."

The man gathered himself up, badly shaken, and holding his hand to his bleeding nose, made off to his rowboat at the float.

"G'wan home," Benton curtly ordered the Siwashes. "Get drunk at your own camp, not in mine. _Sabe?_ Beat it."

They scuttled off, the wizened little old man steadying his fat _klootch_ along her uncertain way. Down on the lake the chastised logger stood out in his boat, resting once on his oars to shake a fist at Benton. Then Charlie faced about on his shocked and outraged sister.

"Good Heavens!" she burst out. "Is it necessary to be so downright brutal in actions as well as speech?"

"I'm running a logging camp, not a kindergarten," he snapped angrily. "I know what I'm doing. If you don't like it, go in the house where your hyper-sensitive tastes won't be offended."

"Thank you," she responded cuttingly and swung about, angry and hurt--only to have a fresh scare from the drunken cook, who came reeling forward.

"I'm gonna quit," he loudly declared. "I ain't goin' to stick 'round here no more. The job's no good. I want m' time. Yuh hear me, Benton.

I'm through. Com-pletely, ab-sho-lutely through. You bet I am. Gimme m'

time. I'm a gone goose."

"Quit, then, hang you," Benton growled. "You'll get your check in a minute. You're a fine excuse for a cook, all right--get drunk right on the job. You don't need to show up here again, when you've had your jag out."

"'S all right," Matt declared largely. "'S other jobs. You ain't the whole Pacific coast. Oh, way down 'pon the Swa-a-nee ribber--"

He broke into dolorous song and turned back into the cookhouse. Benton's hard-set face relaxed. He laughed shortly.

"Takes all kinds to make a world," he commented. "Don't look so horrified, Sis. This isn't the regular order of events. It's just an acc.u.mulation--and it sort of got me going. Here's the boys."

The four stretcher men set down their burden in the shade of the bunkhouse. Renfrew was conscious now.

"Tough luck, Jim," Benton sympathized. "Does it pain much?"

Renfrew shook his head. White and weakened from shock and loss of blood, nevertheless he bravely disclaimed pain.

"We'll get you fixed up at the Springs," Benton went on. "It's a nasty slash in the meat, but I don't think the bone was touched. You'll be on deck before long. I'll see you through, anyway."

They gave him a drink of water and filled his pipe, joking him about easy days in the hospital while they sweated in the woods. The drunken cook came out, carrying his rolled blankets, began maudlin sympathy, and was promptly squelched, whereupon he retreated to the float, emitting conversation to the world at large. Then they carried Renfrew down to the float, and Davis began to haul up the anchor to lay the _Chickamin_ alongside.

While the chain was still chattering in the hawse pipe, the squat black hull of Jack Fyfe's tender rounded the nearest point.

"Whistle him up, Sam," Benton ordered. "Jack can beat our time, and this bleeding must be stopped quick."

The tender veered in from her course at the signal. Fyfe himself was at the wheel. Five minutes effected a complete arrangement, and the _Panther_ drew off with the drunken cook singing atop of the pilot house, and Renfrew comfortable in her cabin, and Jack Fyfe's promise to see him properly installed and attended in the local hospital at Roaring Springs.

Benton heaved a sigh of relief and turned to his sister.

"Still mad, Stell?" he asked placatingly and put his arm over her shoulders.

"Of course not," she responded instantly to this kindlier phase. "Ugh!

Your hands are all b.l.o.o.d.y, Charlie."

"That's so, but it'll wash off," he replied. "Well, we're shy a good woodsman and a cook, and I'll miss 'em both. But it might be worse.

Here's where you go to bat, Stella. Get on your ap.r.o.n and lend me a hand in the kitchen, like a good girl. We have to eat, no matter what happens."

CHAPTER VI

THE DIGNITY (?) OF TOIL

By such imperceptible degrees that she was scarce aware of it, Stella took her place as a cog in her brother's logging machine, a unit in the human mechanism which he operated skilfully and relentlessly at top speed to achieve his desired end--one million feet of timber in boomsticks by September the first.

From the evening that she stepped into the breach created by a drunken cook, the kitchen burden settled steadily upon her shoulders. For a week Benton daily expected and spoke of the arrival of a new cook. Fyfe had wired a Vancouver employment agency to send one, the day he took Jim Renfrew down. But either cooks were scarce, or the order went astray, for no rough and ready kitchen mechanic arrived. Benton in the meantime ceased to look for one. He worked like a horse, unsparing of himself, unsparing of others. He rose at half-past four, lighted the kitchen fire, roused Stella, and helped her prepare breakfast, preliminary to his day in the woods. Later he impressed Katy John into service to wait on the table and wash dishes. He labored patiently to teach Stella certain simple tricks of cooking that she did not know.

Quick of perception, as thorough as her brother in whatsoever she set her hand to do, Stella was soon equal to the job. And as the days pa.s.sed and no camp cook came to their relief, Benton left the job to her as a matter of course.

"You can handle that kitchen with Katy as well as a man," he said to her at last. "And it will give you something to occupy your time. I'd have to pay a cook seventy dollars a month. Katy draws twenty-five. You can credit yourself with the balance, and I'll pay off when the contract money comes in. We might as well keep the coin in the family. I'll feel easier, because you won't get drunk and jump the job in a pinch. What do you say?"

She said the only possible thing to say under the circ.u.mstances. But she did not say it with pleasure, nor with any feeling of grat.i.tude. It was hard work, and she and hard work were utter strangers. Her feet ached from continual standing on them. The heat and the smell of stewing meat and vegetables sickened her. Her hands were growing rough and red from dabbling in water, punching bread dough, handling the varied articles of food that go to make up a meal. Upon hands and forearms there stung continually certain small cuts and burns that lack of experience over a hot range inevitably inflicted upon her. Whereas time had promised to hang heavy on her hands, now an hour of idleness in the day became a precious boon.

Yet in her own way she was as full of determination as her brother. She saw plainly enough that she must leave the drone stage behind. She perceived that to be fed and clothed and housed and to have her wishes readily gratified was not an inherent right--that some one must foot the bill--that now for all she received she must return equitable value.

At home she had never thought of it in that light; in fact, she had never thought of it at all. Now that she was beginning to get a glimmering of her true economic relation to the world at large, she had no wish to emulate the clinging vine, even if thereby she could have secured a continuance of that silk-lined existence which had been her fortunate lot. Her pride revolted against parasitism. It was therefore a certain personal satisfaction to have achieved self-support at a stroke, insofar as that in the sweat of her brow,--all too literally,--she earned her bread and a compensation besides. But there were times when that solace seemed scarcely to weigh against her growing detest for the endless routine of her task, the exasperating physical weariness and irritations it brought upon her.

For to prepare three times daily food for a dozen hungry men is no mean undertaking. One cannot have in a logging camp the conveniences of a hotel kitchen. The water must be carried in buckets from the creek near by, and wood brought in armfuls from the pile of sawn blocks outside.

The low-roofed kitchen shanty was always like an oven. The flies swarmed in their tens of thousands. As the men sweated with axe and saw in the woods, so she sweated in the kitchen. And her work began two hours before their day's labor, and continued two hours after they were done.

She slept, like one exhausted and rose full of sleep-heaviness, full of bodily soreness and spiritual protest when the alarm clock raised its din in the cool morning.

"You don't like thees work, do you, Mees Benton?" Katy John said to her one day, in the soft, slurring accent that colored her English. "You wasn't cut out for a cook."

"This isn't work," Stella retorted irritably. "It's simple drudgery. I don't wonder that men cooks take to drink."

Katy laughed.

"Why don't you be nice to Mr. Abbey," she suggested archly. "He'd like to give you a better job than thees--for life. My, but it must be nice to have lots of money like that man's got, and never have to work."