Big Timber. Bertrand W. Sinclair
about," he grinned. "Loggers, Siwashes, and the natives in general. Can't very well help it, Sis. There's so few people in this neck of the woods that nobody can afford to be exclusive—at least, nobody who lives here any length of time. You can't tell when you may have to call on your neighbor or the fellow working for you in a matter of life and death almost. A man couldn't possibly maintain the same attitude toward a bunch of loggers working under him that would be considered proper back where we came from. Take me, for instance, and my case is no different from any man operating on a moderate scale out here. I'd get the reputation of being swell-headed, and they'd put me in the hole at every turn. They wouldn't care what they did or how it was done. Ten to one I couldn't keep a capable working crew three weeks on end. On the other hand, take a bunch of loggers on a pay roll working for a man that meets them on an equal footing—why, they'll go to hell and back again for him. They're as loyal as soldiers to the flag. They're a mighty self-sufficient, independent lot, these lumberjacks, and that goes for most everybody knocking about in this country—loggers, prospectors, miners, settlers, and all. If you're what they term 'all right,' you can do anything, and they'll back you up. If you go to putting on airs and trying to assert yourself as a superior being, they'll go out of their way to hand you packages of trouble."
"I see," she observed thoughtfully. "One's compelled by circumstances to practice democracy."
"Something like that," he responded carelessly and went on eating his supper.
"Don't you think we could make this place a lot more homelike, Charlie?" she ventured, when they were back in their own quarters. "I suppose it suits a man who only uses it as a place to sleep, but it's bare as a barn."
"It takes money to make a place cosy," Benton returned. "And I haven't had it to spend on knickknacks."
"Fiddlesticks!" she laughed. "A comfortable chair or two and curtains and pictures aren't knickknacks, as you call them. The cost wouldn't amount to anything."
Benton stuffed the bowl of a pipe and lighted it before he essayed reply.
"Look here, Stella," he said earnestly. "This joint probably strikes you as about the limit, seeing that you've been used to pretty soft surroundings and getting pretty nearly anything you wanted whenever you expressed a wish for it. Things that you've grown into the way of considering necessities are luxuries. And they're out of the question for us at present. I got a pretty hard seasoning the first two years I was in this country, and when I set up this camp it was merely a place to live. I never thought anything about it as being comfortable or otherwise until you elected to come. I'm not in a position to go in for trimmings. Rough as this camp is, it will have to go as it stands this summer. I'm up against it for ready money. I've got none due until I make delivery of those logs in September, and I have to have that million feet in the water in order to make delivery. Every one of these men but the cook and the donkey engineer are working for me with their wages deferred until then. There are certain expenses that must be met with cash—and I've got all my funds figured down to nickels. If I get by on this contract, I'll have a few hundred to squander on house things. Until then, it's the simple life for us. You can camp for three or four months, can't you, without finding it completely unbearable?"
"Why, of course," she protested. "I wasn't complaining about the way things are. I merely voiced the idea that it would be nice to fix up a little cosier, make these rooms look a little homelike. I didn't know you were practically compelled to live like this as a matter of economy."
"Well, in a sense, I am," he replied. "And then again, making a place away out here homelike never struck me as being anything but an inconsequential detail. I'm not trying to make a home here. I'm after a bundle of money. A while ago, if you had been here and suggested it, you could have spent five or six hundred, and I wouldn't have missed it. But this contract came my way, and gave me a chance to clean up three thousand dollars clear profit in four months. I grabbed it, and I find it's some undertaking. I'm dealing with a hard business outfit, hard as nails. I might get the banks or some capitalist to finance me, because my timber holdings are worth money. But I'm shy of that. I've noticed that when a logger starts working on borrowed capital, he generally goes broke. The financiers generally devise some way to hook him. I prefer to sail as close to the wind as I can on what little I've got. I can get this timber out—but it wouldn't look nice, now, would it, for me to be buying furniture when I'm standing these boys off for their wages till September?"
"I should have been a man," Miss Estella Benton pensively remarked. "Then I could put on overalls and make myself useful, instead of being a drone. There doesn't seem to be anything here I can do. I could keep house—only you haven't any house to keep, therefore no need of a housekeeper. Why, who's that?"
Her ear had caught a low, throaty laugh, a woman's laugh, outside. She looked inquiringly at her brother. His expression remained absent, as of one concentrated upon his own problems. She repeated the question.
"That? Oh, Katy John, I suppose, or her mother," he answered. "Siwash bunch camping around the point. The girl does some washing for us now and then. I suppose she's after Matt for some bread or something."
Stella looked out. At the cookhouse door stood a short, plump-bodied girl, dark-skinned and black-haired. Otherwise she conformed to none of Miss Benton's preconceived ideas of the aboriginal inhabitant. If she had been pinned down, she would probably have admitted that she expected to behold an Indian maiden garbed in beaded buckskin and brass ornaments. Instead, Katy John wore a white sailor blouse, a brown pleated skirt, tan shoes, and a bow of baby blue ribbon in her hair.
"Why, she talks good English," Miss Benton exclaimed, as fragments of the girl's speech floated over to her.
"Sure. As good as anybody," Charlie drawled. "Why not?"
"Well—er—I suppose my notion of Indians is rather vague," Stella admitted. "Are they all civilized and educated?"
"Most of 'em," Benton replied. "The younger generation anyhow. Say, Stell, can you cook?"
"A little," Stella rejoined guardedly. "That Indian girl's really pretty, isn't she?"
"They nearly all are when they're young," he observed. "But they are old and tubby by the time they're thirty."
Katy John's teeth shone white between her parted lips at some sally from the cook. She stood by the door, swinging a straw hat in one hand. Presently Matt handed her a parcel done up in newspaper, and she walked away with a nod to some of the loggers sitting with their backs against the bunkhouse wall.
"Why were you asking if I could cook?" Stella inquired, when the girl vanished in the brush.
"Why, your wail about being a man and putting on overalls and digging in reminded me that if you liked you may have a chance to get on your apron and show us what you can do," he laughed. "Matt's about due to go on a tear. He's been on the water-wagon now about his limit. The first man that comes along with a bottle of whisky, Matt will get it and quit and head for town. I was wondering if you and Katy John could keep the gang from starving to death if that happened. The last time I had to get in and cook for two weeks myself. And I can't run a logging crew from the cook shanty very well."
"I daresay I could manage," Stella returned dubiously. "This seems to be a terrible place for drinking. Is it the accepted thing to get drunk at all times and in public?"
"It's about the only excitement there is," Benton smiled tolerantly. "I guess there is no more drinking out here than any other part of this North American continent. Only a man here gets drunk openly and riotously without any effort to hide it, and without it being considered anything but a natural lapse. That's one thing you'll have to get used to out here, Stell—I mean, that what vices men have are all on the surface. We don't get drunk secretly at the club and sneak home in a taxi. Oh, well, we'll cross the bridge when we come to it. Matt may not break out for weeks."
He yawned openly.
"Sleepy?" Stella inquired.
"I get up every morning between four and five," he replied. "And I can go to sleep any time after supper."
"I think I'll take a walk along the beach," she said abruptly.