“That’s how it is, Joe — surprises now and then. I’m taking my daughter around to see the parts of our operation. Go ahead, turn ’em back on — she wants to become acquainted with milling. She has a position in the company.”
The millman threw the lever and with a wet clatter water dumped onto the wheel outside and the muley saw began to gnaw slowly through the log with a steely nasal sound. A rain of sawdust fell below, the air thickened with the smell of pine, earth and hot metal. Lavinia saw how the log carriage was pulled forward by a cable and at the end of the log another small wheel gigged the carriage back. Two edger men put the fresh-cut boards on top of the log, Joe Push reset for the next cut and the saws began to bite again, removing the bark edges from the passenger planks. Men carried them outside to a stack. The pondman sent another log up the ramp.
“Slow, but she gets it done,” Joe Push said, pointing to the great ziggurats of boards outside, temples of wood boards. They walked about in the noise and dust, watching the men in the millpond harry the logs to the bottom of the ramp. In the yard a dozen men were buck-sawing small and crooked logs into firewood chunks, stacking them in drying sheds.
“A nice bit of extra income from waste wood,” said James. He pointed at a mountainous stack, said, “Lavinia, note the bottom front crosspiece. It ensures the pile slopes and allows rain and snow to run off. There’s an art to building a proper pile.”
“How long does it dry?”
The stacker spoke up. “For this here pine? Say a year for your one-inch boards, better two-three years or more for thick stuff.”
“Yes,” said James, “of course we want to get it onto the market as soon as we can, so drying sheds such as the men here are using for firewood are helpful to get your market lumber ready sooner rather than later. One of our problems with drying lumber on site is that when the cut is finished and the men move to another area the mill is usually dismantled and transported as well. Lumber thieves come and help themselves to untended drying stacks so we usually hire one of the shanty boys, an injured or older man not as strong as he was, to stay behind until we move the lumber ourselves.”
The stacker grunted.
“This is why some timbermen — not I — say it is better to move the logs to a permanent mill that is always guarded.”
They walked to the back of the mill and Lavinia glanced at a pile of something — shrieked and put her hands over her eyes.
“Great gods! Mr. Bouchard, come out here and explain this — this horror,” shouted James.
Joe Push hurried out, not knowing what they had found, a corpse or a ruined board, and then laughed. “That’s all them snakes the boys got last week. Had a big parade of frogs and ever snake for ten mile around showed up to eat on ’em.” There were thousands of huge muscular snakes in a six-foot pile, now beginning to rot and give off a memorable stench.
“Better pitch them into the river, Joe, or you’ll have a dozen bears on your hands.”
“Already shot two, but sure, we’ll give ’em the heave-ho.”
• • •
On the way back Lavinia asked James why they did not have circular saws in the mill. “I have read or heard that circular saws cut much more quickly as they are continuous and do not have to be reset.”
“Why, you are quite right, and we have them on order, but it is not so easy to do everything at once. This mill was already in operation and we bought it from Joe Push, whom we now employ. There will soon be hundreds of sawmills in the Michigan woods if it is anything like Maine. This old gang rig will be sold and replaced with circular blades as soon as they arrive. I would like to put turbines in place for the extra power and really cut some wood. This rig can only produce about three thousand board feet a day right now and the shanty boys cut trees so fast the mill can’t keep up — the weak link in the chain is the milling. I want to put a portable mill at every cut where it is convenient and transport lumber, not just logs. There is no reason why the mills cannot follow the lumber camps, cutting on site as we go. But a permanent mill near a town or city has several advantages beyond foiling thieves. Lennart and I once discussed someday adding a finishing mill to our operations that could sand planks smooth and even a wood-steaming oven to form stair balusters and such.”
Cyrus objected strongly to Lavinia’s plan to visit the lumber camps, and when she persisted in writing to the jobbers — Hobble Peterson and Vernon Roby — announcing her coming inspection he said that although he was terrible busy he would put his work aside and go with her as her protector. “You cannot go alone,” he said. “You are too young and too — too womanly beauteous. You simply cannot go alone.”
Lavinia blushed scarlet. “Uncle Cyrus, I am no such thing. And I will go. I will ride Black Robin. She will see me through safely. I know I can do this.”
But James agreed with Cyrus. “It is not just the trails. There are roughnecks in the woods everywhere. There are men who would — harm you, renegades and low fellows as well as stray Indians. You must have someone — a man — with you. You must. I mean it, Lavinia. It may be different when you are older but now it is not. No argument. The travel is arduous. You do not know the way, you cannot build a fire in the wilderness, you cannot defend yourself against wild beasts or human beasts. Cyrus is needed here so I will find a steady woods-wise man to go with you.”
He inquired of the Detroit hostler Paul Roque about a suitable travel companion and protector. On the next afternoon Roque suggested his oldest son, Andre Roque, a competent hunter who knew the ways of the forest and who had worked in both of the camps Lavinia proposed to visit. He could speak French and some Indian. James met the young man, taller than his father, very bashful and shy. But he answered all of James’s questions easily. Yes, the best way to make this journey was on horseback. His father, the hostler, could provide the best horses in the stable. They were used to the forest trails and so would be better than a Boston horse, however highly esteemed. He would cook all their food and serve it, groom and feed the horses, prepare the bedrolls and blankets, point out whatever local landmarks they passed. He would protect Lavinia with his life. He would do his best.
• • •
It was early October and the first inches of snow lay in the cold woods. The horses’ breath, their own breath steamed. The endless procession of huge trees aroused a new sensation in Lavinia — a powerful sense of ownership; they were her trees, she could cause these giants to fall and be devoured by the saws. She regarded their monolithic forms with scorn. Her trees — well, her trees with James and Cyrus. And the birds that rested in them, her birds, her squirrels and porcupines; all of it.
At the end of the day Andre built a lean-to shelter with the fire in front of it, their separate blankets at each end and the impedimenta and saddles stacked between them. She was asleep before he finished rubbing the legs of the horses. But she woke in the night to feel the youth embracing her from behind, his breath on her nape, one hand over her left breast.
“What are you doing?” she said fiercely.
Andre Roque was silent, breathing slowly and regularly. Stiff with outrage she lay still and gradually realized that he was asleep, not plotting rape, but deeply asleep. Did he fancy he was protecting her, or was this how he slept with all his siblings in the home bed? She would explain in the morning that proper people of opposite sexes did not lie together unless they were married. And fell asleep herself. In the morning Andre was some distance away making a fire, fetching water for tea, cutting hunks of bread from the loaf, feeding the horses. He seemed his shy, quiet self and handed her a cup of hot black pekoe. He said nothing about his presence under her blanket and although she opened her mouth to begin, somehow she said nothing. The most troubling part of the experience was the depth of his sleep; when she spoke he should have awakened. Suppose hostiles or predatory beasts had been creeping toward them? — he would have slept blissfully on while wolves gnawed her arm. And what if the fire had gone out in the small hours — such a deep sleeper as he could not replenish it. Perhaps he was even feigning sleep. These possibilities were marks against him. Still, in a few nights it seemed quite the ordinary way to sleep and she was glad of his warmth and closeness when branches cracked in the darkness and the owl called, and he was always up and at work by dawn.