The panting little engine reached the camp and rested from its labours. The engineer, posing as a good-natured Santa Claus, handed out parcels to those who came expecting them. A scarlet sweater to one burly chopper, a double-bitted axe to another, a new pair of brogans to a third. There were canned and boxed provisions for the boarding house, and papers and letters from the postoffice.
Off in the woods 1 heard a sound as of an explosion. Leaving our superfluous belongings on the engine we set out toward the big noise, following a "skid road" down which logs were being dragged. We soon came within the sound of a saw. Two men knelt on opposite sides of a giant pine whose fall we had heard. They were sawing it into lengths according to marks chipped by the axe of a third man who carried also a measuring stick. He had in his hand orders for bridge timbers—the "bill" for the day— and this log, being as he had judged it, a sound tree, about three feet in diameter, had furnished the seventy-foot "stick" requisite to "fill the bill," and two or three twelve-foot logs beside. The top was a mere rosette of leafy branches, above the clear, straight trunk. Such a tree is worth a dollar for each one of its three hundred years, if no defects are discovered as it goes through the mill.
There are trees standing among these with a trunk diameter exceeding four feet. These venerable pines do not make the best lumber. They are over ripe, and almost certain to be hollow at the base and to show "punky" spots of cheesy unsound wood, which has to be discarded in the mill.
This head faller is a man of long experience and ripe judg ment. He must choose the trees most likely to fill the orders sent him by the manager from the office. His eye measures the standing tree, selects one, and decides which way it shall fall. While his two sawyers are busy cutting the last one into proper lengths, he chops a long notch low on the butt of the next to fall. It is as deep as his axe head—a smooth, two-lipped trough, whose angle is a straight line terminating in the bark each way. As the tree falls the two lips meet. There must be no log nor stump across its path, or the falling tree breaks. Often a tree is broken by the impact of its fall on boggy ground, but this usually is due to decay that has weakened its trunk in certain spots.
The tree must fall where the "skidders" who come with horses to "snake" its logs to the railroad can get at it with least troubl of clearing away other obstructions. It must lie, if
possible, with its butt toward a skid road. Young trees, espe cially pines, are saved as far as possible. But I saw a cucumber tree fifty feet high shattered to kindling wood by a falling pine.
The axe of the head faller chips the thick bark off in a circle around the tree, joining the ends of the wedge. This bark is full of dirt that would dull the saw much more than the hard wood. Now the sawyers come and kneel to their task. Men with horses and massive log chains come to get the fresh logs.
The long cross-cut saw has ragged teeth and a handle on each end. Its blade was sprayed well with kerosene before work began, for the resin of the bleeding tree has to be "cut" with oil, or it binds the saw and stops the work. The saw began on the side opposite the notch, and fared steadily toward it. The rhythm of its song and the perfect co-operation of the two men were good to hear and see. Once or twice they stopped, took off one handle, drew the saw out and oiled it on both sides. When half way through they drove in a wedge, that gave the saw more room.
There was no anxiety on the part of the crouching men, no least tremour of the tree, until the trunk was almost severed. Then the sawing suddenly doubled its speed. When within a few inches of the notch it ceased, the men sprang away, the tree trembled, swayed, and fell, its top sweeping through the air with a mighty sigh. The lips of the notch closed with crushing impact as the shaft shook the earth that shuddered under the blow.
The men stood aside, oiling their saw, and set it into the fallen trunk as the marker indicated the place. The absence of conversation was oppressive—the understanding of each sawyer with the other made talk unnecessary. Were they overcome by the presence of visitors? "No," the head faller told us, "they are always quiet." The work among the pines has this strange effect upon the men. They do not raise their voices when they speak, even to their horses. The hemlock peelers are a noisy, quarrelsome crew, given to profanity and coarse joking; but the fallers in the upper camp are thoughtful and pensive, while at their work. In that cathedral woods we felt the presence of something that discouraged speech. We did not understand it—any more than the labourers did. Three days we spent among the pines, each day repeating the events of the first, and deepening its impressions.