Louisa Rawlings (41 page)

Nat had almost enjoyed the back-breaking work. It made him so bone-tired, so sapped at the end of a fifteen-hour day, he had no energy left to think of Willough. To curse her.

The autumn had been a busy one at the Ordway tract. When a tree was felled, it was trimmed of its branches with the duller side of a double ax, then hauled—skidding along the leafy floor of the forest—by a team of oxen until it reached one of the many skidways scattered through the tract. After the wood had been stacked by the lumberjacks, who jacked the logs onto the skidway with the help of a spiked pole, the logs were measured to standard (thirteen feet in length and nineteen inches around) and marked on the ends with an embossing hammer, which identified the owner of the tract. Ordway’s mark was the number 34.

Now, deep into winter, it was time to take the logs to the banking ground. They’d had to wait until enough snow had fallen so the roads could hold the weight of a loaded sled while easing the burden for the horses. A light sled had been sent on ahead to pack down the snow and provide an even path. On the straight stretches they had sprinkled water, which froze and turned the ruts into smooth ice to facilitate the haul; but on the often steep hills, the problem was reversed. Here they needed sand or straw to slow the progress of the sled. And the job had to be done at night. If the sun melted a patch of snow, the horses could stumble, the sled tilt and slide dangerously.

The banking ground, where the sleds were headed, was a frozen lake that Ordway’s men called simply the Flow. It was dammed at the outlet to the Rock River. In the spring, when the Flow melted, the dam would be removed, and the floating logs, borne on the flood, would travel down the Rock River to the Cedar River, and finally into the Hudson, where they joined the cuttings of hundreds of other logging operators in the mountains. The white pine and spruce and fir, which made up the bulk of the trees that were cut in the Adirondack Wilderness, were light enough to float easily on the current. Their ultimate destination was Glens Falls, where nearly four thousand sawmills were in operation.

Nat stood beside the skidway, pike in hand, and helped to roll the giant logs onto the sled. Glens Falls. Ordway had his sawmill there. Nat cursed softly, remembering. And so did Brian Bradford.

Bradford! Damn the lot of them! Once he’d thought that the war was the only evil that man was capable of. It had taken his involvement with the Bradfords to show him that evil came with power. “Sorry, Stanton,” he’d been told. At every ironworks in the region, from Crown Point to Essex, from Ticonderoga to Lake Henderson. “We can’t use you.” Eight years.
Eight years
he’d put into learning everything there was to know about iron. And there wasn’t a job to be had. “Not for
you
, Stanton.” He’d finally got at least a partial answer to his baffled questions. From some flunky at Port Henry who’d been given “instructions.” He wasn’t high enough up on the echelon to know the whole story, but the word had come from MacCurdyville, presumably Brian Bradford himself. And there were whispers about
Miss
Bradford—now Mrs. Arthur Gray—and insults of a personal nature.

Mrs. Arthur Gray. The cold bitch wasn’t content with walking out on him. She wanted to rub his nose in it as well.
I’ll ruin you
, she’d said, that last night at Gray’s house. Nat laughed bitterly. She was doing one hell of a job trying!

In the end, he’d been lucky. He couldn’t leave the region—because of Gramps—go out to Pennsylvania where they were operating furnaces and forges. But Ordway was still hiring late in the season. Nat didn’t know a damn thing about lumbering, but he’d learn. And Ordway paid well, at least. Thirty dollars a month. And room and board. It wasn’t what he’d been earning as Bradford’s manager, of course. But it was enough to keep Gramps in food and firewood.

Gramps had been a real problem. It had been difficult to get down to Ingles and back every Sunday. He’d arrive back at the lumber camp exhausted and have to put in a full day’s work And once or twice he’d failed to get a ride back to Ordway’s tract and had been docked a day’s pay. At last, though his grandfather had made a bit of a fuss, Nat had worked out an arrangement that provided for Gramps and salved his own conscience as well. One of the lumbermen, Joe Corinth, lived in North Creek. Every Saturday night he left the lumber camp to be with his wife. If Nat saw that he wasn’t going to be able to get away to see Gramps, he’d give Corinth an envelope with some money in it. Corinth would pass it on to Tom, the stationmaster at North Creek, who’d send it on the first train to Crown Point. The stationmaster there would give it to Ed Harold, who had agreed to buy food and firewood for Gramps and take it out to Ingles.

It was complicated, but it worked. Nat still managed to get to Gramps fairly often. When there was no envelope, everyone on the chain went about his business because that meant Nat was making the trip himself.

Nat threw down his pike and wiped the sweat from his forehead. They’d finished loading the logs onto the sled. About fifty or sixty logs, which was about all that the team of horses could manage. Using heavy chains, they fastened the lumber to the sled, twisting a small log through the chain as a binder at the last, to pull up the slack.

The burly drover who was to take this load jammed his knitted cap more tightly to his head and looked around the clearing. “Where the hell’s my road monkey? Where’s Frankie?”

“Take it easy, George,” said Nat quietly. “He’ll be here in a minute. I sent him on an errand.”

“What the hell’d you do that for? You’re not running this show, Stanton. You’re just helping me. Check that goddam chain one more time. And if that kid don’t show up soon, I’m going to beat the tar out of him.”

“Christ! He’s only a kid.”

“He’s doing a man’s job. And pulling down a man’s pay! So he better get here.”

Nat smiled tightly. “You’re a prince, George. You could make a stone squirt lemonade. Here’s your road monkey.” He pointed as Frankie came panting up to the sled and team. “Get your tools, lad.”

Frankie nodded and slung an ax and a shovel over his shoulder. George climbed up to the top of the logs in the front of the sled, grabbing the horse reins that Nat tossed up to him. Nat clambered aboard the stack of lumber and took his position near the fastening chain in the middle. While George maneuvered the sled on its runners—avoiding the deep ruts in the road—Nat’s job was to keep an eye on the load itself, to be sure that a chain didn’t loosen or a log slip. Frankie went on ahead to make the road smooth, stopping every few yards to chop at an icy bump or fill in a deep rut with snow.

The first couple of miles was fairly level; Nat found his glance and his thoughts wandering. The land around here had been worked over long since. By the light of the flickering torches, the tree stumps looked like stubble on a giant’s beard. He remembered Brian Bradford and the land at New Russia. How many more government tracts, he wondered, had been leased over to greedy men like Bradford? And all quite legally.

Way off in the distance, an owl hooted. Nat thought, Enjoy your night, you bird. While you can. While there’s still a tree left to perch in. It had started off with man pitted against Nature. The pioneers in the Wilderness. The age-old struggle. But lately the odds seemed to be changing.

“Look alive,” said George. “We’re coming to a slope.” He hauled on the reins and stopped the team. Nat checked the lumber, twisted the binder log one more turn to tighten the chain, and fastened down the binder with its own small chain. The hill was quite steep. Using his shovel, Frankie dug into the mounds of sand that had been left at the side of the road, and sprinkled it on the icy ruts. When Frankie had just about reached the bottom of the long hill, George started the team again. The sled creaked under the strain of its load, seemed to pause for a second at the crest of the hill, then began its cautious descent. The iron-clad runners of the sled scraped on the sand; the horses snorted, their hot breath suspended in the frosty night air. In spite of George’s hold on the reins, the sled began to pick up speed, propelled by the heavy load. One of the horses stumbled in a hidden rut. The sled tipped dangerously, wobbled once, then righted itself. Nat clung to the rocking logs, checked the binder log again. But that sudden lurch had been enough; the heavy sled was now traveling at its own pace, picking up momentum as it hurtled down the slope. Faster, and still faster, while the icy wind whistled past their ears and the horses trotted furiously. “Jesus!” said George hoarsely. “The son of a bitch is going to go!” His face was white. “Jump!” he yelled, and threw himself off the logs into a snowbank.

Nat scrambled to his feet, prepared to leap. The horses were now galloping in fear, manes streaming, in a mad contest to outrace the careening sled to the bottom of the hill. “Frankie!” shouted Nat. The boy looked up, his eyes wide with terror, to see horses and sled bearing down on him. He cried out; tried to run; slipped and fell, hitting his head on his own shovel. He lay in the middle of the road, dazed. Without a moment’s hesitation, Nat sprang to the edge of the logs and leaped onto the flank of one of the racing animals. He leaned forward, grabbed the horse’s bit in his fist, pulled with all his might. The horse screamed in pain and terror. But he turned—rearing violently so Nat was thrown from his back—and ploughed into a snowbank on the side of the road. The sled, stopped short in its headlong flight, shuddered and lurched sideways. There was a sharp snap as the chain gave way, and then the rumbling of the logs as they tumbled off the sled.

Nat looked up. He saw the logs falling. He saw Willough’s face. And then he saw nothing.

He awoke to the scent of flowers. They smelled like Willough’s hair. That silken glory, black as a raven’s wing. “Willough,” he whispered. It didn’t sound like his own voice.

“There, there, Mr. Stanton. Don’t try to move.”

He opened his eyes and blinked. He seemed to be in a room full of flowers, bright pink roses that danced across the walls, yellow lilies that hovered above his head. He blinked again. The lilies were attached to a bosom, the bosom to a gray dress, the whole giving off the strong odor of flower-scented perfume.

“Are you feeling better?”

He allowed his eyes to stray upward from the lilies and the bosom. A cheerful-looking woman, with bright cheeks and a snowy head of hair, was beaming down at him. “Where…” he croaked, then cleared his threat and started again. “Where is this?”

“You’re reposing in my house, Mr. Stanton. In my sister’s room.” She laughed, a birdlike chirp. “Though Mabel would be as amused as I am to see a big, strapping fellow like you in the pretty little room where she spent so many happy hours. And never will again.”

He frowned. Was she expecting sympathy? “Has she…passed on, ma’am?” he asked delicately.

“Bless my soul, no! She’s just married and gone to live in Boston! So when my nephew—that’s Dr. Mortimer, you might just remember him, though I’m not certain you were lucid when they brought you in…” She drifted off, her bright eyes on his face. “You must be thirsty. Would you care for something to drink?”

“Please.”

“Don’t try to get up.” She took a glass of water from the bedside stand, lifted his head with one hand, and brought the glass to his lips. “As I was saying…when my nephew wanted a place for you to stay—he has such a tiny house, and far too many children—I naturally thought, why not Mabel’s old room?”

He closed his eyes and turned away from the glass. There were things he had to remember. “But where is this house?”

“Why, in North Creek. They brought you here after that dreadful accident in the woods. Mr. Ordway was quite beside himself. He seemed to feel that the boy, and the team of horses too, would have been done for, but for your quick action. He said you were not to worry about a thing. He will pay you your wages during the period of your convalescence, and until you are completely recovered.”

He stirred restlessly under the quilts. He ached all over, and his left leg felt strangely stiff and numb. “Recovered from what? I remember the logs falling on me. That’s all.”

She looked uncomfortable. “Well, of course you had rather a lot of cuts and bruises about you. A very nasty blow to the head, and several broken ribs…”

He felt a coldness in the pit of his stomach. “And…?”

“You were pinned under the logs for a long time and lost a great deal of blood—we’ll set that to rights in no time, now that you’re yourself again.” Her snowy head bobbed vigorously. “A few weeks of my calves’ foot jelly will have you fit as a fiddle in no time.”

“Is that all?”

“You must face these things with pluck,” she said. “God sends us trials…”

“In the name of God, woman,” he burst out, “what is it?”

“Your leg…it was very badly crushed…”

His eyes widened in horror, anxious hands searching under the covers. “My God, have I lost it?”

“Oh, no, Mr. Stanton. Not at all! My nephew—Dr. Mortimer—set the bones as best he could. But he fears that you’ll limp for the rest of your days.”

He exhaled in relief, managing a small smile. “I never was one for dancing, ma’am. Ma’am…?”

“Mrs. Mortimer. Mrs. Grace Mortimer.”

He was suddenly very tired. “I’d like to sleep again, ma’am, if I may.” No. There was something he had to remember.

“That’s wise of you, Mr. Stanton. And when you wake up again, I’ll give you a nice sponge bath and perhaps a shave. I used to do it for Mr. Mortimer all the time when he was alive.”

He rubbed at his chin. It was a very heavy growth. One might even call it…the beginnings of a beard. He looked at Grace Mortimer with fresh panic.
That’s
what he had to remember! “How long have I been here?”