Chapter 22
The Widowmaker
Junior Kavanaugh had both of the big cook stoves stoked and the fires roaring when Mieczyslaw Kczmarczyk rolled out of his cot in the back of the cook shanty. The eight-inch stove pipes above the ranges glowed a deep red from the heat. Water in the ten large coffee pots was already boiling.
“’Bout time you came back from your voyage through dreamland, Sourdough,” quipped Junior. “There’s a hundred snarling jacks soon to be grumbling about your greasy gravy and bone-hard biscuits!”
“Humph,” uttered the cook.
“Zeke and Zach and me got thirty pounds of pork cooking up in the oven, just the way you showed me, Sourdough. What do ya think about that?”
“What do I think, Junior? Well, I think I gotta water the petunias before anything, that’s what I think.”
The camp cook pulled up his britches and slipped into his shoe-pacs. He opened the cook shanty door to find more than two feet of fresh snow drifted against it. “By the holy jumpin’ ghost of Jehosaphat, Junior! Look at all this gol dang, pot-lickin’, snot-pickin’ snow!”
“I got news for you, Sourdough, there’s plenty more of it out in the yard and the woods. Gonna be a whole lot of angry bull cooks across the pinery when they see how much shovelin’ they gotta do. Harry’s out there now, makin’ a trail to the crapper.”
Sourdough tromped out, mumbling stronger oaths. A minute later, still cussing, he was back in the kitchen stomping his feet to shake off the snow. “What got you out of the barn so dang early, Junior? Graybacks chase you out?”
“Couldn’t sleep much,” replied Junior, pouring pancake syrup from a large kettle into a dozen tin bowls. “I had to get over here to count up all those bets again. I’m gonna be rollin’ in dough, Sourdough. Up to last night I stood to earn about sixty dollars this winter. Now, if the fellas pay off, I’ll have more than double that much in one pocket plus my wages in the other. Move out of the way, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, Mr. Junior Kavanaugh is takin’ over!”
“Don’t count your chickens before they’s hatched, Junior,” said the camp cook. “Ever heard of that?”
“Sourdough, not only is them chickens counted but they’s already plucked, gutted and simmerin’ in the stewpot.”
Next door in the Namakagon Timber Company lodge, Olaf and Ingman sat across from each other at the table in the office. Ingman poured hot coffee from a blue, enameled percolator
“I suppose, then, we best invite Phineas Muldoon over to talk. No reason to postpone this, Olaf.”
“We don’t know that he will meet with us. Looks like he has the whole deck of cards on his side of the table and that dam is the trump card. I believe he intends to stop us from driving our timber.”
“No man on God’s good earth has right to claim control of the waters. The law’s on our side.”
“Law? In the pinery, Ingman, law is controlled by a handful of dishonest lumber tycoons who know which corrupt officials to pay off. Small timber outfits like ours haven’t got a chance.”
“Don’t get me wrong here, Olaf, I agree with you. But it yust don’t seem Muldoon or anybody else can decide how much water goes down the river. What if they did that with the mines up on the Iron Belt?”
“They do. The legislature allows the dang railroad to decide how many runs they’ll make from the mines to the Ashland ore docks. That gives the railroad company control over who ships, when, and at what price. And where does the railroad company get its steel?” he asked rhetorically. “From their own mills in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland, that’s where. Brother, the big mining outfits own not just the ore, but also the steel mills. The mines and mills are controlled by the railroads. They all work hand-in-hand. The small outfit does not stand a chance. You either pay their price, play their game, or sell out to them. In the final tally, they win. Seems Muldoon wants the same deal.”
“Olaf, listen. If we could find a way to stop King Muldoon from controlling the river and our pine, stop him from forcing us out, well, shouldn’t we do it? Shouldn’t we do absolutely everything in our power to get our timber to the mills? To pay our men? To keep our camp and help protect the other small outfits from going bankrupt?”
“Well, of course we should.”
“Then I say we set up a meeting with Muldoon. Then we set up another meeting, this time with the new governor. I read in the paper that he is very interested in the number of voters who now work in the pinery. Some say there are now more votes in the north than down in Milwaukee. Hell, there’s more than twelve thousand lumberyacks between Hayward and Hurley alone. Maybe we can get some help from ol’ Governor Yeremiah Rusk.
Junior Kavanaugh interrupted. “Burnt stove lids and woodtick stew in a quarter-hour. Harry is headed this way with his scoop shovel to clear a path. Otherwise you will need knee-high gumboots just to make it to the outhouse.”
“Tor, get up! Get out’a the sack, boy,” yelled Olaf. Then, to his brother, “Ingman, best you set up that meeting with Muldoon. Let’s see what the slippery old shypoke has to say.”
Minutes later the Lokens sat with the men in the cook shanty. Tor poured hot molasses over his pancakes, biscuits, and stewed pork. Ingman and Olaf watched as he devoured everything on his plate, gulped down a second cup of hot coffee, then filled his plate again.
“Son, you eat like a regular lumberjack. I hope you showed better manners at Mrs. Ringstadt’s, yesterday.”
“Yesterday? Oh, sure, Pa. I watched my manners. I didn’t want … well …”
“Let me guess. You didn’t want Mrs. Ringstadt’s daughters to see you eatin' like a north woods shanty boy, right?”
“No, well, maybe,” said Tor, slightly embarrassed. “They’re all nice folks there at her house. Guess I was representing the Loken Camp and I wanted them to see we’re a real polite outfit.” A man at the next table belched.
“Any daughter in particular?” asked his father. “Say … Rosie?”
“Is she the one who plays the piano?” asked Tor, taking a bite.
“Yes, you know, the oldest daughter—your age—the pretty one with the dark hair and green eyes. Remember her?”
“Oh, sure. Was her name Rose? I was concentrating more on business. The bank and all, you know.”
“Yes, business. Tor, I was thinking about inviting the Ringstadts up here for a Sunday dinner. Christmas is coming soon and it would be good to have something fairer to look at than your Uncle Ingman’s ugly snout.”
“And something that smells better than your old pole cat of a pa,” Ingman snapped back with a grin.
Tor’s eyes lit up. He fumbled his fork, dropping it into the syrup on his plate. “That would be fine. Makes no matter to me.”
But inside, Tor was overjoyed with the notion of Rosie coming to the camp. “Rosie, right here, right in our lumber camp,” he thought to himself. Then he looked down the table at the scores of lumbermen stuffing themselves, showing no manners, eating with their fingers, some grunting like hogs at the trough. Many were foul smelling. Most were foul-mouthed. Others were crude, rude, hard characters. What would his young, tender, innocent Rosie think about him, knowing he, Tor Loken, was part of the same company of men? The man at the next table belched again. Tor shook his head in utter disgust.
“Well, then,” said Olaf, “let’s plan on it. Oscar Felsman can telegraph Adeline from the station as soon as we get a message into town.”
“I can take it in later today,” offered Tor, forgetting to hide his interest.
“For a young fellow who doesn’t seem to give a hoot one way or the other, you’re quick to volunteer, Tor,” quipped Ingman.
Tor took a big bite out of a large molasses cookie hoping he wouldn’t have to reply.
Blackie Jackson, finished with his breakfast, grabbed a wooden step stool near them and sat down next to Tor. Sitting on the short stool, he was still taller than the others at the table.
“Mornin’, Boss,” he said to both Ingman and Olaf in his deep
voice. “Looks like we got some snow to deal with today.”
“Mornin’, Blackie,” said Ingman, as Olaf nodded hello.
“I’ll run a couple of ox teams out to the cuttings to break a trail for the boys,” Blackie said. “Skiddin’ should be fine with this wet snow. She’ll be plenty greasy on the sleigh trails. Gonna be a slow mornin’ for the saw teams, though. Ain’t no records gonna be set today, Boss.”
“Blackie,” said Ingman, “set Tor up with one of the ox teams. He can break trail back into those pines up by Sugarbush Creek.” He turned to Olaf. “Sound all right with you, Boss?” Olaf nodded, taking another sip of coffee.
“Dang right!” said Tor. “Long as I can ride on the back of one of those oxen, I’ll break trail all the way to Lake Superior if you say the word.”
“Our holdings don’t go quite that far, Son. Not yet.”
“Olaf,” said Blackie, placing his arm around Tor’s neck, “I’ve been thinkin’ about this lad’s adventure yesterday. Times are hard. There’s some gol dang desperate men out there today, especially in this north country. You never know who might show up around the next bend or what he might have in mind. But them who get a look at me think twice about any foul play or foolishness. Boss, I just want you to know that if you ever need someone to tag along when there’s business to be done, well, Boss, you can always call on me.”
“I appreciate that, Blackie. I’ll keep you in mind. You never know when we might need some help with this and that. Like you say, the world’s not as safe a place now as when we were in short pants, right Blackie?”
Many of the men were finished and heading out the door into the thick snowdrifts. Strings of foul language could be heard as more men ventured out into the dark lumber camp yard. Blackie stood up, towering above the three Lokens. He returned the stool to its place near the cookstove and strode out the door into the deep snow. It would be a slow morning in the pinery.
Tor and his ox team were eight miles from camp by ten o’clock when the sun came out and the wind shifted. Now a warm, south breeze combined with the sun’s rays to melt the snow. Tor’s ox team dragged a three hundred pound v-shaped plow made from oak timbers. When he reached the timber landing at the end of the trail, Tor turned the oxen homeward. His return trip was faster, a pleasant ride through the woods on this sunny, mid-December day.
Near the camp, Tor met up with one of the saw teams. The two sawyers felled a big pine that missed its mark and now leaned into another tree. The top of the leaning tree was hung up in a tangle of limbs and branches. The cutting crew’s attempts to free it were not working. They chained the butt of the log to their horse team but the horses could not budge the giant white pine.
“Looks like you got a good ol’ widowmaker, fellas,” called out Tor. “You’re welcome to use my ox team if need be.”
The swamper threw a chain over the oak plow pulled by Tor’s team and hooked the other end onto the stubborn tree. The teamster and Tor slowly coaxed the two beasts forward. The five-foot-diameter butt of the tree began to move, then stopped again. Tor and the teamster urged both the oxen and the horses ahead once more. The animals strained, digging into the frozen turf beneath the snow and placing enormous strain on the chains.
High above them came a deafening ca—rack! A large limb sixty feet up in the other tree snapped violently and the gigantic pine plummeted toward the earth. As it fell, the thirty-foot broken limb sprung through the air and fell not three feet from Tor, missing his oxen but striking the horse beside him.
The huge workhorse reared up, snapping the harness. Both horses, crying out in fear, fell to the ground, hooves flailing as the tree slammed to the ground nearby. The oxen lurched forward. Both Tor and the teamster dove away from the animals, covering their heads. In seconds, the accident was over and the horses and men were getting back up.
“You fellas all right?” shouted the teamster. “Anybody get hurt?”
“I’m fine,” called out one of the sawyers.
“Me, too,” piped in the swamper.
“I’m all right,” yelled Tor. One man didn’t answer.
“Where’s Mason?” shouted the teamster. “Mason!”
“Here—over here,” called out the second sawyer.
Mason Fitch lay in the snow face up. A three-foot-long splinter, part of a larger pine branch, stuck out of his thigh. Tor and the other teamster plowed their way through the deep snow to the fallen man. Mason groaned as Tor slowly lifted his leg to find the splinter went all the way through. The swamper brought over his double-bit ax, and with a swift swing, separated the splinter from the branch. The injured lumberjack screamed in pain. Bleeding badly, he began slipping into shock.
“Tourniquet!” shouted teamster Henry Tilden. Immediately the swamper ran to the horse team. Using his razor-sharp ax as a knife, he cut a six-foot length of rawhide strap from the reins. The teamster tied a loop around the leg above the wound, inserted a two-inch thick pine branch and twisted it tightly. The bleeding stopped.
“Where’d you learn that?” asked Tor.
“I worked in a hospital back east during the war,” Henry replied. “Virginny. I saw plenty of soldiers with their arms and legs dang-near blown off from Yankee mini balls. The soldiers who came in with tourniquets usually lived. The poor fellas who didn’t have ’em, well, they just bled to death where they fell.” He checked over his knot. Looking up at the injured logger he said, “Mason, let’s get you back to camp so Sourdough can have a look at you.”
“I don’t want to lose my leg, Henry Tilden,” cried Mason. “I ain’t gonna spend the rest of my years with a stump. Promise me, Henry. Promise me that you will not let Sourdough take my leg!”
“Calm down, Mason. You ain’t got such a bad leg here, just a good ol’ pine sticker through it. Ol’ Sourdough ain’t gettin’ no soup bone off you this time ‘round.” No siree. You’ll be dancin’ Irish jigs by Christmas Day.”