The rupture with his sister had made repugnant to him all the southern country.He preferred to remain in the woods.All winter long he was more than busy at his logging.Summers he spent at the mill.Occasionally he visited Marquette, but always on business.
He became used to seeing only the rough faces of men.The vision of softer graces and beauties lost its distinctness before this strong, hardy northland, whose gentler moods were like velvet over iron, or like its own summer leaves veiling the eternal darkness of the pines.
He was happy because he was too busy to be anything else.The insistent need of success which he had created for himself, absorbed all other sentiments.He demanded it of others rigorously.He could do no less than demand it of himself.It had practically become one of his tenets of belief.The chief end of any man, as he saw it, was to do well and successfully what his life found ready.
Anything to further this fore-ordained activity was good; anything else was bad.These thoughts, aided by a disposition naturally fervent and single in purpose, hereditarily ascetic and conscientious --for his mother was of old New England stock--gave to him in the course of six years' striving a sort of daily and familiar religion to which he conformed his life.
Success, success, success.Nothing could be of more importance.
Its attainment argued a man's efficiency in the Scheme of Things, his worthy fulfillment of the end for which a divine Providence had placed him on earth.Anything that interfered with it--personal comfort, inclination, affection, desire, love of ease, individual liking,--was bad.
Luckily for Thorpe's peace of mind, his habit of looking on men as things helped him keep to this attitude of mind.His lumbermen were tools,--good, sharp, efficient tools, to be sure, but only because he had made them so.Their loyalty aroused in his breast no pride nor gratitude.He expected loyalty.He would have discharged at once a man who did not show it.The same with zeal, intelligence, effort --they were the things he took for granted.As for the admiration and affection which the Fighting Forty displayed for him personally, he gave not a thought to it.And the men knew it, and loved him the more from the fact.
Thorpe cared for just three people, and none of them happened to clash with his machine.They were Wallace Carpenter, little Phil, and Injin Charley.
Wallace, for reasons already explained at length, was always personally agreeable to Thorpe.Latterly, since the erection of the mill, he had developed unexpected acumen in the disposal of the season's cut to wholesale dealers in Chicago.Nothing could have been better for the firm.Thereafter he was often in the woods, both for pleasure and to get his partner's ideas on what the firm would have to offer.The entire responsibility at the city end of the business was in his hands.
Injin Charley continued to hunt and trap in the country round about.
Between him and Thorpe had grown a friendship the more solid in that its increase had been mysteriously without outward cause.Once or twice a month the lumberman would snowshoe down to the little cabin at the forks.Entering, he would nod briefly and seat himself on a cracker-box.
"How do, Charley," said he.
"How do," replied Charley.
They filled pipes and smoked.At rare intervals one of them made a remark, tersely, "Catch um three beaver las' week," remarked Charley.
"Good haul," commented Thorpe.
Or:
"I saw a mink track by the big boulder," offered Thorpe.
"H'm!" responded Charley in a long-drawn falsetto whine.
Yet somehow the men came to know each other better and better; and each felt that in an emergency he could depend on the other to the uttermost in spite of the difference in race.
As for Phil, he was like some strange, shy animal, retaining all its wild instincts, but led by affection to become domestic.He drew the water, cut the wood, none better.In the evening he played atrociously his violin,--none worse--,bending his great white brow forward with the wolf-glare in his eyes, swaying his shoulders with a fierce delight in the subtle dissonances, the swaggering exactitude of time, the vulgar rendition of the horrible tunes he played.And often he went into the forest and gazed wondering through his liquid poet's eyes at occult things.Above all, he worshipped Thorpe.And in turn the lumberman accorded him a good-natured affection.He was as indispensable to Camp One as the beagles.
And the beagles were most indispensable.No one could have got along without them.In the course of events and natural selection they had increased to eleven.At night they slept in the men's camp underneath or very near the stove.By daylight in the morning they were clamoring at the door.Never had they caught a hare.Never for a moment did their hopes sink.The men used sometimes to amuse themselves by refusing the requested exit.The little dogs agonized.
They leaped and yelped, falling over each other like a tangle of angleworms.Then finally, when the door at last flung wide, they precipitated themselves eagerly and silently through the opening.
A few moments later a single yelp rose in the direction of the swamp; the band took up the cry.From then until dark the glade was musical with baying.At supper time they returned straggling, their expression pleased, six inches of red tongue hanging from the corners of their mouths, ravenously ready for supper.
Strangely enough the big white hares never left the swamp.Perhaps the same one was never chased two days in succession.Or it is possible that the quarry enjoyed the harmless game as much as did the little dogs.
Once only while the snow lasted was the hunt abandoned for a few days.Wallace Carpenter announced his intention of joining forces with the diminutive hounds.
"It's a shame, so it is, doggies!" he laughed at the tried pack.
"We'll get one to-morrow."
