TWO YOUNG LUMBERMEN

OR

FROM MAINE TO OREGON FOR FORTUNE

BY EDWARD STRATEMEYER

Author of "At the Fall of Montreal," "Young Explorers of the Isthmus," "American Boy's Life of William McKinley," "Old Glory Series," "Between Boer and Briton," "On to Pekin," etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY A. B. SHUTE

BOSTON LEE AND SHEPARD 1903

Published, October, 1903

Copyright, 1903, by Lee and Shepard

All rights reserved

Norwood Press

Berwick & Smith Norwood, Mass.

U. S. A.

PREFACE

"Two Young Lumbermen" is a complete story in itself, but forms the first volume of a line to be issued under the general title of "Great American Industries Series."

In beginning this series, I have in mind to acquaint our boys and young men with the main details of a number of industries which have become of prime importance, not alone to ourselves as a nation, but likewise to a large part of the world in general.

Our United States is a large country and consequently the industries are many, yet none is perhaps of greater importance than that of the lumber trade. Lumber gives us material for our buildings and our ships, our railroads and our telegraph lines, and furnishes the pulp from which millions of pounds of paper are made annually. We export lumber to Europe, to the West Indies, and even to the Orient, drawing on a forest treasure that covers thousands of square miles of territory.

The tale opens in Maine, which in years gone by was the paradise of the American lumberman. In those days pine was king, and Maine became known far and wide as the Pine Tree State. When the best of the pine had disappeared, spruce claimed the logger's attention; and then the lumberman looked elsewhere for his timber, first in Michigan and along the Great Lakes, and in the South, and then in California, and in that vast section of our country drained by the Columbia (or Oregon) River.

The two young lumbermen of this story are hardly heroes in the accepted sense of that term. They are bright youths of to-day, willing to work hard for what they get, but always on the alert to better their condition. As choppers, river-drivers, mill hands, and general camp workers they have a variety of adventures, but only such as fall to the lot of more than one lumberman working in the woods of Maine, Michigan, or Oregon to-day. It was in the Far West that they found their greatest opportunity for advancement, and how they made the most of that chance is described in the pages which follow.

In presenting this work the author desires once again to thank the many who have interested themselves in his previous books. May they find the reading of this volume even more interesting and profitable.

Edward Stratemeyer.

August 1, 1903.

CHAPTER I

A TALK ABOUT EMPLOYMENT

"Do you mean to tell me that Hickley said he wouldn't send over that lot of logs I ordered last week?"

"That is what he said, Mr. Larson. He is short himself, and said he told you he thought he couldn't spare them. Not a drive has come down the river for three weeks."

"I know that, Bradford." John Larson, the owner of the Enterprise Lumber Mill, rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "It's hard luck. I guess I'll have to shut down after all. And I was calculating to keep you all working."

The face of Dale Bradford became as serious as that of his employer. "How soon will you close up the mill?" he asked after a pause.

"As soon as those logs over yonder are cut up." The owner of the sawmill kicked a block of wood out of his way rather savagely. "It's a shame not to get logs, with so much timber cut ready to use."

"The pulp mill is what's done it," replied Dale. "They have a big contract to fill, so I was told over in Oldtown, and so they are willing to pay big prices for any sort of stuff."

"You're right, Bradford. They'll buy little sticks that we couldn't afford to handle."

"What we've got on hand won't keep us going longer than Saturday," continued Dale, gazing around at the small pile of logs resting partly in and partly out of the stream upon which the sawmill was situated.

"Just about Saturday."

"And there's no telling when we'll be able to start up again, I suppose."

"Just as soon as I can get hold of the stuff to go ahead with. I don't like to have the mill idle any more than you or the others like to be out of work."

"I'll have to get something to do pretty quick," said Dale earnestly. "I can't live on nothing."

"You ought to have something saved."

"A fellow can't save much out of six dollars a week, Mr. Larson. Besides, I've been paying off that little debt my father left when he died."

"I see, I see," interposed the mill owner hastily. "You're a good sort of a lad, Dale—as good a lad as your father was a man. If we shut down on Saturday perhaps I can keep you on a week longer—cleaning up around the mill and along the river, and doing other odd jobs. That will give you more time in which to look for another opening."

The head sawyer of the mill now came up to question John Larson concerning the cutting up of certain large logs, and Dale moved away to resume his regular work, that of piling up the boards in the little yard adjoining the steamboat landing.

It was hard work, especially in this summer, noon-day sun, but Dale was used to it and did not complain. And this was a good thing, as nobody would have listened to his complaint, for all around that mill worked just as hard as he did. John Larson was a just man, but a strict one, and he required every man he employed to earn his salary.

Dale Bradford was an orphan, eighteen years of age, tall, muscular, healthy, and as sunburnt as outdoor life could make him. He was the only son of Joel Bradford, who in years gone by had owned a good-sized lumber tract on the west branch of the Penobscot River, in Maine, where this story opens.

When a small boy Dale had had two sisters, and his home with his parents, on the shore of Chesuncook Lake, had been a happy one. But the death of the two sisters and the mother had caused great grief to the father and the son, and it can truthfully be said that after these loved ones were laid away in the little cemetery among the pines, Joel Bradford was never the same. He lost interest in his lumber camp and in the spot that had been his home for so many years, and at the first opportunity he sold out and moved down to Bangor.

It was at Bangor that he fell in with several men who were interested in the gold and silver mines of the great West. One of these men induced him to invest nearly all his money in a mine said to be located in Oregon. The ground was purchased by Joel Bradford, and preparations were made to begin mining on a small scale, when word came that no gold or silver was to be found in that locality, and the scheme fell through, and the man who had induced Mr. Bradford to invest disappeared.

The money lost in this transaction amounted to six thousand dollars—nearly the whole of Joel Bradford's capital—and the former lumberman felt the blow keenly. He grew reckless and speculated in lumber in and around Bangor, and soon found himself in debt to the sum of five hundred dollars. This he paid all but a hundred dollars, when, during unusually severe weather on the river, he contracted pneumonia, from which he never recovered.

Dale was not yet seventeen years of age when he found himself utterly alone in the world, for this branch of the Bradford family had never been large and the grandparents had come to Maine from Connecticut years before. Dale had a fair common-school education, but most of his life had been spent at the lumber camps and along the river and the lakes with his father. He could fell a tree almost as well as a regular lumberman, and had followed more than one drive down the stream to the boom or the sawmill.

"I've got to buckle in and make a man of myself," was what he told himself after the first great grief over the loss of his father was over. "I can't afford to sit down and do nothing. I've got to support myself, and pay off that debt father left behind him."

He had been doing odd jobs for a lumber firm owning an interest in yards at Bangor and at Oldtown, twelve miles further up the Penobscot. But these did not pay very well, and he looked further, until he struck Larson's Run, a small settlement located on a tributary of the big river. Larson had known Joel Bradford well for years, and had purchased many a cut of logs from him.

"So your father is dead and you want a job," John Larson had said. "Well, I'll give you the best that I have open"; and then and there he had engaged Dale at a salary of four dollars per week, a sum which was afterwards raised to six dollars.

Dale secured board with a mill hand living near by, and as soon as he was settled he began a systematic reduction of the debt his father had left unpaid. He felt that this was a duty he owed to the memory of his parent and to the honor of the family at large.

"They shan't say that he swindled anybody," was the way he put it to himself. "I'll pay every dollar of it before I buy a thing for myself that isn't actually necessary."

In the bottom of his trunk at the boarding house Dale had the deed to the land in Oregon which his father had purchased—that unfortunate transaction that had practically beggared them. The young lumberman often read the papers over carefully. They showed that his father had been the sole owner of many acres of territory located in the heart of the great West. Of this great tract of land Dale was now the sole owner.

"And to think that the tract is only a rocky mountain side, good for nothing at all," he would say with a sigh. "Now, if it were only a stretch of farm land, I might go out and try my luck at farming some day. I guess it's only fit for a stone quarry,—same as the rocky lands here,—but nobody wants a quarry out there, a hundred miles or more from nowhere at all."

So far Dale had managed to pay up all but thirty dollars of the debt left behind by his parent. He might have paid this, but a log had rolled on his foot, causing him a bruise that had kept him from work for two weeks and given him a doctor's bill to pay in addition.

The thirty dollars was owing to a riverman named Hen McNair. The fellow was a Scotchman and exceedingly close-fisted, and he had bothered Dale a good deal, hoping to have his claim paid at once.

"You can pay up if you want to," said McNair in his Scotch accent. "If you've not the money sell off some of your things."

"I've sold off all I can spare," had been Dale's reply. "You'll have to wait. From next Saturday on I'll pay you two dollars a week."

"Hoot! 'Twill be fifteen weeks—nigh four months—before we come to the end."

"It's the very best I can do."

"Can't you pay me five or ten dollars now?"

"No. The most I can give you is two dollars."

"Then give me that. And see you keep your word about the balance." And stuffing the bill Dale handed him into his pocket, Hen McNair had gone off grumbling something about the want of honor in a lad who wouldn't pull himself together and pay his father's honest debts.

The sawmill owned by John Larson was run both by water power and by steam—the latter helping out the former when the flow of the stream was not at its best. Rain had been wanting for several weeks, and this had delayed a drive of logs the mill owner had counted on, and had also made it necessary to depend entirely on steam as a motive power. The plant employed twenty-four hands, and this and another mill on the opposite shore were the main industries of the Run.

"How did you make out about those logs, Dale?" questioned a fellow worker in the yard, as the young lumberman resumed his labors.

"Didn't get them," was the laconic answer.

"Didn't think you would," went on Philip Sommers. "Hickley is in with the pulp mill. If he can't get logs, what is the old man going to do?"

"He'll have to shut down."

"Phew! That's bad!"

"Yes, and the worst of it is there is no telling when we'll start up again."

"In that case I'm going to pack up and go up to the West Branch. A friend of mine is going to open up on a claim there about the first of October."

"That is a good while yet. I can't afford to be idle that long."

"What will you do?"

"I don't know yet—perhaps try the other mills."

"Better try the pulp mill—they've got the business just now. Folks must have paper even if they don't get boards," and Philip Sommers gave a short laugh.

"I don't think I'd care to work in a pulp mill," answered Dale. "I like a sawmill or else being out in a lumber camp. But I'd rather work in a pulp mill than be idle."

"The pulp mill over——Hullo, there goes the noon whistle!" Philip Sommers dropped the board he was carrying. "Aint got time to talk any more," he cried. "Going home for something to eat." And picking up his jacket from a lumber pile, he walked away, leaving Dale alone.

CHAPTER II

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE BROOK

The hoarse whistle of the mill, proclaiming the noon hour, sounded out fully half a minute, and when it ceased the machinery in the mill also came to a stop, and men and boys poured forth to get their dinner. Some went to their homes, or to their boarding-places, while others, who lived at a distance and had brought their dinner with them, sought shady and cool spots along the bank of the stream.

Dale did not quit work instantly, as Philip Sommers had done. He, too, was carrying a board, and this he placed on a pile a hundred feet away, as originally intended. Then he straightened out the whole pile of boards, work that took another five minutes of his time.

"Hullo, Bradford, working overtime?" cried one of the mill hands, who had quit at the first sound of the whistle.

"Sure," answered Dale pleasantly.

"Of course the old man is going to pay you double wages for it."

"Guess he will—if I ask him."

"You won't get a cent. Better stop and make the job last."

"I'll stop, now I have finished," answered Dale, and walked away with a quiet smile.

Although neither Dale nor the other workman knew it, John Larson overheard the conversation.

"Young Bradford is a good one," he murmured. "Just as good as his father was before him. Hang such men as Felton, who are always looking at their watches or waiting for the whistle to blow."

It soon became noised around among the workmen that their employer had been unable to obtain the logs he had sent for, and that evening, after the mill had shut down, a number of them waited on John Larson and asked him about the prospects. He was frank and told them what he had told Dale.

"I expected to keep going all summer," he said. "But I can't do it, and after this week I'm afraid you'll have to look for other openings."

As a consequence of this talk several of the men that very evening rowed over to the mill opposite, while some went down to the mills on the Penobscot. A few obtained other situations and left John Larson's employ the next day, but the majority came back from their quests unsuccessful.

By Saturday noon the big circular saws had cut up the last of the logs, and two hours later the men at the shingle machine also stopped work. Then ensued several hours of sorting out and clearing up, and by five o'clock the hands of the Enterprise Lumber Mill were paid off and told that when they should be wanted again they would be notified.

Dale had been asked by John Larson to remain after the others, and he did so.

"I told you I'd keep you another week," said the mill owner. "There is not a great deal to do, and you can come around every morning at six o'clock and work until twelve, and then have the rest of the day in which to hunt up another job. On Saturday I'll pay you for a full week."

This was certainly very fair, and Dale thanked his employer heartily for his kindness. Yet the youth's heart was heavy, for he knew that finding another opening would not be easy.

"I'll tell you what to do, Dale," said Frank Martinson, the man with whom he boarded. "You try down to Crocker's and over to Odell's. Tell 'em I sent you. They'll give you a job if they have anything at all to do."

"All right, I will," answered the young lumberman.

Crocker's mill was located down on the Penobscot. It was a new place, filled with the latest of machinery, and employing over half a hundred hands. Dale visited it on Monday afternoon, going down on a small lumber raft that happened to be passing.

The din around this hive of industry was terrific, for Crocker turned out much lumber in the rough for a furniture company, and the buzzing and zipping went on constantly from morning till night. The mill itself was knee-deep in shavings and sawdust, a good portion of which was fed into the furnaces under the boilers for fuel.

"Sorry, young man, but I can't take you on," said the superintendent of the works. "Had an opening last week, but it is filled now. Come around in two or three weeks. If Frank Martinson recommends you I know you're all right." And thus poor Dale had his trip for nothing. It took him until midnight to get home, and he had to walk a good part of the distance.

But he was not one to give up easily, and two days later borrowed one of John Larson's horses and directly after dinner set off for the mill run by Peter Odell. This was up in the hills, on the edge of a small lake, a ride of thirteen miles.

The way was rough, but Dale did not mind this, and as he loved to ride on horseback, the journey proved pleasant enough. Once he stopped at a brook to let the horse drink and sprang down himself to quench his thirst and bathe his face and hands.

"This is like old times, when I used to be home with all the others," he thought. "Oh, how I wish those times could come back."

At last he came in sight of the mill, nestling among the trees bordering the little lake—a scene full of rural beauty. To his surprise all was quiet about the place.

"It can't be that Odell has shut down, too," he thought. "If that is so we ought to have heard of it before this."

He was just turning into a side path leading to the mill when a man leaped out from behind a clump of trees and caught his animal by the bridle. The fellow was a French-Canadian, with a dark face and dark, evil-looking eyes.

"Hi! what do you mean by that?" demanded Dale. He did not like the looks of the stranger.

"You stop, talk wiz me," said the Canadian.

"What do you want?"

"You go to de mill, yes?"

"What if I am going to the mill?"

At this the French-Canadian muttered something in French which the young lumberman could not understand. "You look for job, hey? No job no more down by de Larson mill, hey?"

"That is none of your business. Let go of my horse."

Again the man muttered something in French. "You no go to de mill. Geet hurt sure. All mens dare on de strike. You go back." And now he shook his fist in Dale's face.

"Are you on a strike?"

"Yees."

"What are you striking about?"

"Dat none your bus'nees. You go back."

"I will not go back!" declared Dale, his temper rising. "If you don't let go of that horse pretty quick, somebody will get hurt."

"Hah! You are von big fool!" snarled the man, and clung to the animal as tightly as ever. The horse began to prance, and, watching his chance, Dale leaned forward and struck the French-Canadian a sharp blow in the forehead that caused him to stagger back in dismay.

"Good for you!" sang out a voice not far off, and looking in the direction Dale saw a young man of twenty approaching. The newcomer was a young lumberman like himself, and Dale had met him several times, on the river and elsewhere.

"Hullo, Owen," replied Dale. "Who is this chap?"

"That is Baptiste Ducrot, one of the mill hands up here," replied Owen Webb. "Odell hired him about a month ago, but I guess he wishes he hadn't, for the rascal drinks like a fish."

"He says there is a strike on at the mill."

"So there is, among the Canadians. They wanted me to join, but I wouldn't do it."