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Page 82
The boys said I was poor company that first week, and I shouldn't wonder
if I was. I couldn't seem to get over it any way, to think I couldn't
let her know.
If I could have sent her a scrap of a letter, or a message, or
something, I should have felt better. But there wasn't any chance of
that this long time, unless we got out of pork or fodder, and had to
send down,--which we didn't expect to, for we'd laid in more than usual.
We had two pretty rough weeks' work to begin with, for the worst storms
of the season set in, and kept in, and I never saw their like, before or
since. It seemed as if there'd never be an end to them. Storm after
storm, blow after blow, freeze after freeze; half a day's sunshine, and
then at it again! We were well tired of it before they stopped; it made
the boys homesick.
However, we kept at work pretty brisk,--lumber-men aren't the fellows to
be put out for a snow-storm,--cutting and hauling and sawing, out in
the sleet and wind. Bob Stokes froze his left foot that second week, and
I was frost-bitten pretty badly myself. Cullen--he was the boss--he was
well out of sorts, I tell you, before the sun came out, and cross enough
to bite a tenpenny nail in two.
But when the sun _is_ out, it isn't so bad a kind of life, after all. At
work all day, with a good hot dinner in the middle; then back to the
shanties at dark, to as rousing a fire and tiptop swagan as anybody
could ask for. Holt was cook that season, and Holt couldn't be beaten on
his swagan.
Now you don't mean to say you don't know what swagan is? Well, well! To
think of it! All I have to say is, you don't know what's good then.
Beans and pork and bread and molasses,--that's swagan,--all stirred up
in a great kettle, and boiled together; and I don't know anything--not
even your mother's fritters--I'd give more for a taste of now. We just
about lived on that; there's nothing you can cut and haul all day on
like swagan. Besides that, we used to have doughnuts,--you don't know
what doughnuts are here in Massachusetts; as big as a dinner-plate those
doughnuts were, and--well, a little hard, perhaps. They used to have it
about in Bangor that we used them for clock pendulums, but I don't know
about that.
I used to think a great deal about Nancy nights, when we were sitting up
by the fire,--we had our fire right in the middle of the hut, you know,
with a hole in the roof to let the smoke out. When supper was eaten, the
boys all sat up around it, and told stories, and sang, and cracked their
jokes; then they had their backgammon and cards; we got sleepy early,
along about nine or ten o'clock, and turned in under the roof with our
blankets. The roof sloped down, you know, to the ground; so we lay with
our heads in under the little eaves, and our feet to the fire,--ten or
twelve of us to a shanty, all round in a row. They built the huts up
like a baby's cob-house, with the logs fitted in together. I used to
think a great deal about your mother, as I was saying; sometimes I would
lie awake when the rest were off as sound as a top, and think about her.
Maybe it was foolish, and I'm sure I wouldn't have told anybody of it;
but I couldn't get rid of the notion that something might happen to her
or to me before five months were out, and I with those words unforgiven.
Then, perhaps, when I went to sleep, I would dream about her, walking
back and forth, up and down, in her nightgown and little red shawl, with
the great heavy baby in her arms.
So it went along till come the last of January, when one day I saw the
boys all standing round in a heap, and talking.
"What's the matter?" says I.
"Pork's given out," says Bob, with a whistle. "Beadle got that last lot
from Jenkins there, his son-in-law, and it's sp'ilt. I could have told
him that beforehand. Never knew Jenkins to do the fair thing by anybody
yet."
"Who's going down?" said I, stopping short. I felt the blood run all
over my face, like a woman's.
"Cullen hasn't made up his mind yet," says Bob, walking off.
Now you see there wasn't a man on the ground who wouldn't jump at the
chance to go; it broke up the winter for them, and sometimes they could
run in home for half an hour, driving by; so there wasn't much of a hope
for me. But I went straight to Mr. Cullen.
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