THE upshot of Connie Morgan's interview with Hurley, the big red-shirted camp boss, was that the boss hired him with the injunction to show up bright and early the following morning, as the train that was to haul the outfit to the Dogfish Spur would leave at daylight.

"'Tiz a foine job ye've got—wor-rkin' f'r forty dollars a month in yer own timber," grinned big Mike Gillum, as he packed the tobacco into the bowl of his black pipe, when the two found themselves once more seated upon the Syndicate foreman's little veranda at the conclusion of the evening meal.

Connie laughed. "Yes, but it will amount to a good deal more than forty dollars a month if I can save the timber. We lost fourteen thousand dollars last year because those logs got mixed. I don't see yet how he worked it. You say the logs are all branded."

"Who knows what brands he put on 'em? Or, wuz they branded at all? They wuz sorted in th' big river but the drive was fouled in the Dogfish. S'pose the heft of your logs wuz branded wid the Syndicate brand—or no brand at all? The wans that wuz marked for the Syndicate w'd go to Syndicate mills, an' the wans that wuzn't branded w'd go into the pool, to be awarded pro raty to all outfits that had logs in the drive."

"I'll bet the right brand will go onto them this year!" exclaimed the boy.

Mike Gillum nodded. "That's what ye're there for. But, don't star-rt nawthin' 'til way along towards spring. Jake Hurley's a boss that can get out the logs—an' that's what you want. Av ye wuz to tip off yer hand too soon, the best ye c'd do w'd be to bust up the outfit wid nawthin' to show f'r the season's expenses. Keep yer eyes open an' yer mout' shut. Not only ye must watch Hurley, but keep an eye on the scaler, an' check up the time book, an' the supplies—av course ye c'n only do the two last av he puts ye to clerking, an' Oi'm thinkin' that's what he'll do. Ut's either clerk or cookee f'r you, an most an-ny wan w'd do f'r a cookee."

The foreman paused, and Connie saw a twinkle in his eye as he continued: "Ye see, sometimes a boss overestimates the number av min he's got workin'. Whin he makes out the pay roll he writes in a lot av names av min that's mebbe worked f'r him years back, an' is dead, or mebbe it's just a lot av names av min that ain't lived yet, but might be born sometime; thin whin pay day comes the boss signs the vouchers an' sticks the money in his pockets. Moind ye, I ain't sayin' Hurley done that but he'd have a foine chanct to, wid his owner way up in Alaska. An' now we'll be goin' to bed f'r ye have to git up early. Oi'll be on Willow River; av they's an-nything Oi c'n do, ye c'n let me know."

Connie thanked his friend, and before he turned in, wrote a letter to his partner in Ten Bow:

"Dear Waseche:

"I'm O.K. How are you? Got the job. Don't write. Mike Gillum is O. K. See you in the spring.

"Yours truly,
"C. Morgan."

Before daylight Connie was at the siding where the two flat cars loaded at Pine Hook, and two box cars that contained the supplies and the horses were awaiting the arrival of the freight train that was to haul them seventy miles to Dogfish Spur. Most of the crew was there before him. Irishmen, Norwegians, Swedes, Frenchmen, and two or three Indians, about thirty-five in all, swarmed upon the cars or sat in groups upon the ground. Hurley was here, there, and everywhere, checking up his crew, and giving the final round of inspection to his supplies.

A long whistle sounded, and the headlight of a locomotive appeared far down the track. Daylight was breaking as the heavy train stopped to pick up the four cars. Connie climbed with the others to the top of a box car and deposited his turkey beside him upon the running board. The turkey consisted of a grain sack tied at either end with a rope that passed over the shoulder, and contained the outfit of clothing that Mike Gillum had advised him to buy. The tops of the cars were littered with similar sacks, their owners using them as seats or pillows.

As the train rumbled into motion and the buildings of the town dropped into the distance, the conductor made his way over the tops of the cars followed closely by Hurley. Together they counted the men and the conductor checked the count with a memorandum. Then he went back to the caboose, and Hurley seated himself beside Connie.

"Ever work in the woods?" he asked.

"No."

"Be'n to school much?"

"Yes, some."

"'Nough to figger up time books, an' keep track of supplies, an' set down the log figgers when they're give to you?"

"I think so."

"Ye look like a smart 'nough kid—an' ye've got nerve, all right. I tried to holler ye back when I seen ye swimmin' out to that canoe yeste'day—I didn't think you could make it—that woman was a fool. She'd ort to drownded. But, what I was gettin' at, is this: I'm a goin' to put you to clerkin'. Clerkin' in a log camp is a good job—most bosses was clerks onct. A clerk's s'posed to make hisself handy around camp an' keep the books—I'll show you about them later. We're goin' in early this year, 'cause I'm goin' to run two camps an' we got to lay out the new one an' git it built. We won't start gittin' out no timber for a month yet. I'll git things a goin' an' then slip down an' pick up my crew."

"Why, haven't you got your crew?" Connie glanced at the men who lay sprawled in little groups along the tops of the cars.

"Part of it. I'm fetchin' out thirty-five this time. That's 'nough to build the new camp an' patch up the old one, but when we begin gittin' out the logs, this here'll just about make a crew for the new camp. I figger to work about fifty in the old one."

"Do you boss both camps?"

Hurly grinned. "Don't I look able?"

"You sure do," agreed the boy, with a glance at the man's huge bulk.

"They'll only be three or four miles apart, an' I'll put a boss in each one, an' I'll be the walkin' boss." The cars jerked and swayed, as the train roared through the jack pine country.

"I suppose this was all big woods once," ventured the boy.

"Naw—not much of it wasn't—not this jack pine and scrub spruce country. You can gener'lly always tell what was big timber, an' what wasn't. Pine cuttin's don't seed back to pine. These jack pines ain't young pine—they're a different tree altogether. Years back, the lumbermen wouldn't look at nawthin' but white pine, an' only the very best of that—but things is different now. Yaller pine and spruce looks good to 'em, an' they're even cuttin' jack pine. They work it up into mine timbers, an' posts, an' ties, an' paper pulp. What with them an' the pig iron loggers workin' the ridges, this here country'll grow up to hazel brush, and berries, an' weeds, 'fore your hair turns grey."

"What are pig iron loggers?" asked the boy.

"The hardwood men. They git out the maple an' oak an' birch along the high ground an' ridges—they ain't loggers, they jest think they are."

"You said pine cuttings don't seed back to pine?"

"Naw, it seems funny, but they don't. Old cuttin's grow up to popple and scrub oak, like them with the red leaves, yonder; or else to hazel brush and berries. There used to be a few patches of pine through this jack pine country, but it was soon cut off. This here trac' we're workin' is about as good as there is left. With a good crew we'd ort to make a big cut this winter."

The wheels pounded noisily at the rail ends as the boss's eyes rested upon the men who sat talking and laughing among themselves. "An' speakin' of crews, this here one's goin' to need some cullin'." He fixed his eyes on the boy with a look almost of ferocity. "An' here's another thing that a clerk does, that I forgot to mention: He hears an' sees a whole lot more'n he talks. You'll bunk in the shack with me an' the scaler—an' what's talked about in there's our business—d'ye git me?"

Connie returned the glance fearlessly. "I guess you'll know I can keep a thing or two under my cap when we get better acquainted," he answered The reply seemed to satisfy Hurley, who continued,

"As I was sayin', they's some of them birds ain't goin' to winter through in no camp of mine. See them three over there on the end of that next car, a talkin' to theirselfs. I got an idee they're I. W. W.'s—mistrusted they was when I hired 'em."

"What are I. W. W.'s?" Connie asked.

"They're a gang of sneakin' cutthroats that call theirselfs the Industrial Workers of the World, though why they claim they're workers is more'n what any one knows. They won't work, an' they won't let no one else work. The only time they take a job is when they think there's a chanct to sneak around an' put the kibosh on whatever work is goin' on. They tell the men they're downtrod by capital an' they'd ort to raise up an' kill off the bosses an' grab everything fer theirselfs. Alongside of them birds, rattlesnakes an' skunks is good companions."

"Aren't there any laws that will reach them?"

"Naw," growled Hurley in disgust. "When they git arrested an' convicted, the rest of 'em raises such a howl that capital owns the courts, an' the judges is told to hang all the workin' men they kin, an' a lot of rot like that, till the governors git cold feet an' pardon them. If the government used 'em right, it'd outlaw the whole kaboodle of 'em. Some governors has got the nerve to tell 'em where to head in at—Washington, an' California, an' Minnesota, too, is comin' to it. They're gittin' in their dirty work in the woods—but believe me, they won't git away with nothin' in my camps! I'm just a-layin' an' a-honin' to tear loose on 'em. Them three birds over there is goin' to need help when I git through with 'em."

"Why don't you fire 'em now?"

"Not me. I want 'em to start somethin'! I want to git a crack at 'em. There's three things don't go in my camps—gamblin', booze, an' I. W. W.'s. I've logged from the State of Maine to Oregon an' halfways back. I've saw good camps an' bad ones a-plenty, an' I never seen no trouble in the woods that couldn't be charged up ag'in' one of them three."

The train stopped at a little station and Hurley rose with a yawn. "Guess I'll go have a look at the horses," he said, and clambered down the ladder at the end of the car.

The boss did not return when the train moved on and the boy sat upon the top of the jolting, swaying box car and watched the ever changing woods slip southward. Used as he was to the wide open places, Connie gazed spellbound at the dazzling brilliance of the autumn foliage. Poplar and birch woods, flaunting a sea of bright yellow leaves above white trunks, were interspersed with dark thickets of scarlet oak and blazing sumac, which in turn gave place to the dark green sweep of a tamarack swamp, or a long stretch of scrubby jack pine. At frequent intervals squared clearings appeared in the endless succession of forest growth, where little groups of cattle browsed in the golden stubble of a field. A prim, white painted farmhouse, with its big red barn and its setting of conical grain stacks would flash past, and again the train would plunge between the walls of vivid foliage, or roar across a trestle, or whiz along the shore of a beautiful land-locked lake whose clear, cold waters sparkled dazzlingly in the sunlight as the light breeze rippled its surface.

Every few miles, to the accompaniment of shrieking brake shoes, the train would slow to a stop, and rumble onto a siding at some little flat town, to allow a faster train to hurl past in a rush of smoke, and dust, and deafening roar, and whistle screams. Then the wheezy engine would nose out onto the main track, back into another siding, pick up a box car or two, spot an empty at the grain spout of a sagging red-brown elevator, and couple onto the train again with a jolt that threatened to bounce the cars from the rails, and caused the imprisoned horses to stamp and snort nervously. The conductor would wave his arm and, after a series of preliminary jerks that threatened to tear out the drawbars, the train would rumble on its way.

At one of these stations a longer halt than usual was made while train crew and lumberjacks crowded the counter of a slovenly little restaurant upon whose fly swarming counter doughnuts, sandwiches, and pies of several kinds reposed beneath inverted semispherical screens that served as prisons for innumerable flies.

"The ones that wiggles on yer tongue is flies, an' the ones that don't is apt to be blueberries," explained a big lumberjack to Connie as he bit hugely into a wedge of purplish pie. Connie selected doughnuts and a bespeckled sandwich which he managed to wash down with a few mouthfuls of mud-coloured coffee, upon the surface of which floated soggy grounds and flakes of soured milk.

"Flies is healthy," opined the greasy proprietor, noting the look of disgust with which the boy eyed the filthy layout.

"I should think they would be. You don't believe in starving them," answered the boy, and a roar of laughter went up from the loggers who proceeded to "kid" the proprietor unmercifully as he relapsed into surly mutterings about the dire future in store for "fresh brats."

During the afternoon the poplar and birch woods and the flaming patches of scarlet oak and sumac, gave place to the dark green of pines. The farms became fewer and farther between, and the distance increased between the little towns, where, instead of grain elevators, appeared dilapidated sawmills, whose saws had long lain idle. Mere ghosts of towns, these, whose day had passed with the passing of the timber that had been the sole excuse for their existence. But, towns whose few remaining inhabitants doggedly clung to their homes and assured each other with pathetic persistence, as they grubbed in the sandy soil of their stump-studded gardens, that with the coming of the farmers the town would step into its own as the centre of a wonderfully prosperous agricultural community. Thus did the residents of each dead little town believe implicitly in the future of their own town, and prophesy with jealous vehemence the absolute decadence of all neighbouring towns.

Toward the middle of the afternoon a boy, whom Connie had noticed talking and laughing with the three lumberjacks Hurley suspected of being I. W. W.'s, walked along the tops of the swaying cars and seated himself beside him. Producing paper and tobacco he turned his back to the wind and rolled a cigarette, which he lighted, and blew a cloud of smoke into Connie's face. He was not a prepossessing boy, with his out-bulging forehead and stooping shoulders. Apparently he was about two years Connie's senior.

"Want the makin's?" he snarled, by way of introduction.

"No thanks. I don't smoke."

The other favoured him with a sidewise glance. "Oh, you don't, hey? My name's Steve Motley, an' I'm a bear-cat—me! I'm cookee of this here camp—be'n in the woods goin' on two years. Ever work in the woods?"

Connie shook his head. "No," he answered, "I never worked in the woods."

"Whatcha done, then? You don't look like no city kid."

"Why, I've never done much of anything to speak of—just knocked around a little."

"Well, you'll knock around some more 'fore you git through this winter. We're rough guys, us lumberjacks is, an' we don't like greeners. I 'spect though, you'll be runnin' home to yer ma 'fore snow flies. It gits forty below, an' the snow gits three foot deep in the woods." Connie seemed unimpressed by this announcement, and Steve continued: "They say you're goin' to do the clerkin' fer the outfit. Hurley, he wanted me to do the clerkin', but I wouldn't do no clerkin' fer no man. Keep all them different kind of books an' git cussed up one side an' down t'other fer chargin' 'em up with somethin' they claim they never got out'n the wanagan. Not on yer life—all I got to do is help the cook. We're gettin' clost to Dogfish Spur now, an' the camp's twenty-seven mile off'n the railroad. Guess you won't feel lost nor nothin' when you git so far back in the big sticks, hey?"

Connie smiled. "That's an awfully long ways," he admitted.

"You bet it is! An' the woods is full of wolves an' bears, an' bobcats! If I was figgerin' on quittin' I'd quit 'fore I got into the timber."

The train was slowing down, and Steve arose. "Y'ain't told me yer name, greener! Y'better learn to be civil amongst us guys."

Connie met the bullying look of the other with a smile. "My name is Connie Morgan," he said, quietly, "and, I forgot to mention it, but I did hold down one job for a year."

"In the woods?"

"Well, not exactly. Over across the line it was."

"Acrost the line—in Canady? What was you doin' in Canady?"

"Taming 'bear-cats' for the Government," answered the boy, dryly, and rose to his feet just as Hurley approached, making his way over the tops of the cars.

"You wait till I git holt of you!" hissed Steve, scowling. "You think y're awful smart when y're around in under Hurley's nose. But I'll show you how us guys handles the boss's pets when he ain't around." The boy hurried away as Hurley approached.

"Be'n gittin' in his brag on ye?" grinned the boss, as his eyes followed the retreating back. "He's no good—all mouth. But he's bigger'n what you be. If he tries to start anything just lam him over the head with anything that's handy. He'll leave you be, onct he's found out you mean business."

"Oh, I guess we won't have any trouble," answered Connie, as he followed Hurley to the ground.