Algernon Blackwood

“ There were many offers even in the first five minutes, but no one could stand against Jean Garnier. His experience, his strength, his length of limb and arm, and his undoubted skill, all combined to favour him.
He shook hands with a few pals and laughed when the Shanty Boss, a man of proved courage himself, gave him a word of final advice, and added to it⁠—a strange phrase in such company⁠—“may God bring you safe through it.”
Only one man can break a jam. Others can help from the shore, or from whatever vantage-points there may be ”

“ To start the logs on their journey again is to “break a jam,” and it may easily be imagined that the task of disentangling these massive tree-trunks one from another and setting loose the heap of ill-balanced monsters is one fraught with the greatest personal danger. In fact, to break a jam is to lead a forlorn hope, and the honour is pressed upon no one. The Gangman of the boom asks for volunteers from among the single men ”

“ The men knew the dangers that lay ahead, increasing every moment; but none of them flinched. Personal courage in a lumber camp is at a discount, or, as Hank put it more picturesquely, “You kin bet your sweet life there ain’t no white-livered skulkers in a lumber camp outfit.” So that, when the inevitable jam came and the logs began piling up upon each other, with that dreadful thunderous sound which must be heard to be appreciated, it was certainly through no fault of theirs ”

“ A winter that brings a snowfall of ten feet, with thirty-foot drifts and a temperature of forty degrees below zero, is a very serious winter indeed. The life in the camp is almost martial, and necessarily so. In an average sized camp there are some fifty men, rough, vigorous, often desperate fellows, and they are ruled with a rod of iron by the Shanty Boss⁠—i.e. he who rules over the shanty. For there is one huge pine-log shanty in which they eat, and another in which they sleep. ”

“ But the Indian kept a moving camp, and it was some time before they got upon his tracks.
“It was well on in September,” said Hank, as he finished the story, “when we found the trail of the fishing Indian and put up with his old squaw. Garnier and the Indian were out on a fishing bout, and wouldn’t be back for a week or more. One evening at sunset, as we were sitting on the shore parin’ cedar ribs for the canoes, we heard someone singing far out on the lake, and there, sure’nough, was the big fishing-canoe with Pete, the Indian, in the bows, and Garnier, in the stern seat, steering. ”

“ Lawrence to marry him when the camp breaks up in the early summer has lost her prospective husband in this manner.
Guiding the booms, even in clear water, is a dangerous matter. With spiked boots and a balancing-pole that is also a thrusting-pole, the men run along the logs, jumping from one to the other and keeping their balance with amazing agility. ”

“ The work is extremely hard, and there is little energy left over for fighting or quarrelling, although some Shanty Bosses rule their commandoes with more success than others.
The “axeing” of the big trees is all done while there is snow on the ground, for without its slippery assistance it would be impossible to draw the huge logs to the water’s edge. One set of men make a roadway to the nearest lake or stream, consisting of a main artery with smaller trails running into it and taking in all the big trees on the way. ”

“ Jean, dear, you were a strong-built man a while ago, and I was mighty proud when you came that day and put your arm round my waist and said you loved me⁠—me, a weakly bit of a thing, and you standing up six feet of beautiful strength. ”

“ You know⁠—she’ll understand. There’s lots of buried up in these woods,” he added, “fellers that’s broke jams before me.”
“It’ll break her heart as well,” Hank observed. “Lucie’s almighty fond of you.” But Garnier held to his decision, and those among the men who were returning to Ste. Rose agreed to conceal the fact that he was alive.
The arms were set in due course by the camp doctor, the wounds in the face healed gradually; and two months later the man entered into a partnership with a fishing Indian of those parts, and prepared to spend the rest of his life in the woods. ”

“ The judgment of the man never failed. It became an awful fight between the river and the logs, seeking to destroy him, and the skilful courageous woodsman a fight in which the slightest miscalculation, or false distribution of a few pounds’ weight, meant a terrible death. ”

“ Saplings and undergrowth are cut away from the surface of the snow so that the horses may have a clear skidway along which to draw the great logs. In the summer these skidways are recognisable as faint vistas through the forest, always leading to water. ”

“ Here and there, however, it may be a man slips in and the logs close over him and make it impossible for him to rise to the surface again.
Hank gave us all this information, much adorned with unnecessary expletives, by way of explaining what happened subsequently to Garnier, for Hank and Garnier were members of the same camp, and when it broke up to follow the logs in the spring, they chanced also to be assigned to the same boom. ”

“ It was late autumn when this conversation took place, and a large lumber camp was then in process of formation. Garnier saw the chance to get away from his old companions into a vigorous open-air life that would give his system strength for the great battle. ”