“It doesn’t matter what Joel thinks,” said Bess. “I’m glad we let him go.”
“You can’t help handing it to the old boy for pluck,” said Jack, with grudging admiration. “He was ready to fight the whole six of us.”
“If it had been a regiment, it would have been just the same,” remarked Paul.
“He kept that old buzzer of his working overtime,” laughed Walter. “No striking on the sly for him. He keeps telling you just what he hopes to do to you.”
“It’s the first time I’ve met a rattler under such circumstances, and I hope it will be the last,” said Bess.
“I guess his snakeship feels the same way about us, so honors are even,” laughed Paul.
The party kept a sharp lookout from that time on, but no other snakes were encountered, and a few minutes later the logging camp came into view.
The camp, which consisted of a sawmill, an immense bunk-house capable of accommodating more than a hundred men, and a number of scattered outbuildings, was picturesquely located in a depression between two great hills. A mountain stream that came tearing down the side of one of the hills furnished power for the mill. Later on, some of its waters would be diverted to the giant flumes, down which the logs would come hurtling to the valley below.
Just now it was by no means the scene of busy life that it would become in the late fall and throughout the winter. Then would come the bearded lumberjacks, hardy, red-faced giants of the woods, Swedes, Norwegians, Irishmen, Frenchmen, hard workers, hard fighters, hard drinkers, and the wood would ring with the clang of axes and the crash of falling trees.
At present there was little work going on. The sawmill, with a small force of men, was running in a languid sort of way, clearing up some of the by-products of the season before. The camp might be said to be in a state of suspended animation.
A sort of deputy foreman who was in charge gave the party a cordial greeting and showed them about the various points of interest, explaining volubly the processes through which the lumber passed from the standing tree to the shaped and finished product of the mills.
“We’ve got only a small force working in the woods just now,” he explained. “They’re nicking the trees, so that the men will know which ones are to be cut down this coming fall and winter.”