When the breakfast was over the crew were set to making skidways and travoy roads on eight.This was a precedent.In time the work on the plains was grumblingly done in any weather.However, as to this Radway proved firm enough.He was a good fighter when he knew he was being imposed on.A man could never cheat or defy him openly without collecting a little war that left him surprised at the jobber's belligerency.The doubtful cases, those on the subtle line of indecision, found him weak.He could be so easily persuaded that he was in the wrong.At times it even seemed that he was anxious to be proved at fault, so eager was he to catch fairly the justice of the other man's attitude.He held his men inexorably and firmly to their work on the indisputably comfortable days; but gave in often when an able-bodied woodsman should have seen in the weather no inconvenience, even.As the days slipped by, however, he tightened the reins.Christmas was approaching.An easy mathematical computation reduced the question of completing his contract with Morrison & Daly to a certain weekly quota.In fact he was surprised at the size of it.He would have to work diligently and steadily during the rest of the winter.
Having thus a definite task to accomplish in a definite number of days, Radway grew to be more of a taskmaster.His anxiety as to the completion of the work overlaid his morbidly sympathetic human interest.Thus he regained to a small degree the respect of his men.Then he lost it again.
One morning he came in from a talk with the supply-teamster, and woke Dyer, who was not yet up.
"I'm going down home for two or three weeks," he announced to Dyer, "you know my address.You'll have to take charge, and I guess you'd better let the scaling go.We can get the tally at the banking grounds when we begin to haul.Now we ain't got all the time there is, so you want to keep the boys at it pretty well."Dyer twisted the little points of his mustache."All right, sir,"said he with his smile so inscrutably insolent that Radway never saw the insolence at all.He thought this a poor year for a man in Radway's position to spend Christmas with his family, but it was none of his business.
"Do as much as you can in the marsh, Dyer," went on the jobber.
"I don't believe it's really necessary to lay off any more there on account of the weather.We've simply got to get that job in before the big snows.""All right, sir," repeated Dyer.
The scaler did what he considered his duty.All day long he tramped back and forth from one gang of men to the other, keeping a sharp eye on the details of the work.His practical experience was sufficient to solve readily such problems of broken tackle, extra expedients, or facility which the days brought forth.The fact that in him was vested the power to discharge kept the men at work.
Dyer was in the habit of starting for the marsh an hour or so after sunrise.The crew, of course, were at work by daylight.Dyer heard them often through his doze, just as he heard the chore-boy come in to build the fire and fill the water pail afresh.After a time the fire, built of kerosene and pitchy jack pine, would get so hot that in self-defense he would arise and dress.Then he would breakfast leisurely.
Thus he incurred the enmity of the cook and cookee.Those individuals have to prepare food three times a day for a half hundred heavy eaters; besides which, on sleigh-haul, they are supposed to serve a breakfast at three o'clock for the loaders and a variety of lunches up to midnight for the sprinkler men.
As a consequence, they resent infractions of the little system they may have been able to introduce.
Now the business of a foreman is to be up as soon as anybody.He does none of the work himself, but he must see that somebody else does it, and does it well.For this he needs actual experience at the work itself, but above all zeal and constant presence.He must know how a thing ought to be done, and he must be on hand unexpectedly to see how its accomplishment is progressing.Dyer should have been out of bed at first horn-blow.
One morning he slept until nearly ten o'clock.It was inexplicable!
He hurried from his bunk, made a hasty toilet, and started for the dining-room to get some sort of a lunch to do him until dinner time.As he stepped from the door of the office he caught sight of two men hurrying from the cook camp to the men's camp.He thought he heard the hum of conversation in the latter building.The cookee set hot coffee before him.For the rest, he took what he could find cold on the table.
On an inverted cracker box the cook sat reading an old copy of the Police Gazette.Various fifty-pound lard tins were bubbling and steaming on the range.The cookee divided his time between them and the task of sticking on the log walls pleasing patterns made of illustrations from cheap papers and the gaudy labels of canned goods.Dyer sat down, feeling, for the first time, a little guilty.
This was not because of a sense of a dereliction in duty, but because he feared the strong man's contempt for inefficiency.
"I sort of pounded my ear a little long this morning," he remarked with an unwonted air of bonhomie.
The cook creased his paper with one hand and went on reading; the little action indicating at the same time that he had heard, but intended to vouchsafe no attention.The cookee continued his occupations.
"I suppose the men got out to the marsh on time," suggested Dyer, still easily.
The cook laid aside his paper and looked the scaler in the eye.
"You're the foreman; I'm the cook," said he."You ought to know."The cookee had paused, the paste brush in his hand.
