Time was when the lumber-jack who had the misfortune to fall sick or to meet with an accident was in a sorry plight indeed.If he possessed a "stake," he would receive some sort of unskilled attention in one of the numerous and fearful lumberman's boarding-houses,--just so long as his money lasted, not one instant more.
Then he was bundled brutally into the street, no matter what his condition might be.Penniless, without friends, sick, he drifted naturally to the county poorhouse.There he was patched up quickly and sent out half-cured.The authorities were not so much to blame.
With the slender appropriations at their disposal, they found difficulty in taking care of those who came legitimately under their jurisdiction.It was hardly to be expected that they would welcome with open arms a vast army of crippled and diseased men temporarily from the woods.The poor lumber-jack was often left broken in mind and body from causes which a little intelligent care would have rendered unimportant.
With the establishment of the first St.Mary's hospital, I think at Bay City, all this was changed.Now, in it and a half dozen others conducted on the same principles, the woodsman receives the best of medicines, nursing, and medical attendance.From one of the numerous agents who periodically visit the camps, he purchases for eight dollars a ticket which admits him at any time during the year to the hospital, where he is privileged to remain free of further charge until convalescent.So valuable are these institutions, and so excellently are they maintained by the Sisters, that a hospital agent is always welcome, even in those camps from which ordinary peddlers and insurance men are rigidly excluded.Like a great many other charities built on a common-sense self-supporting rational basis, the woods hospitals are under the Roman Catholic Church.
In one of these hospitals Thorpe lay for six weeks suffering from a severe concussion of the brain.At the end of the fourth, his fever had broken, but he was pronounced as yet too weak to be moved.
His nurse was a red-cheeked, blue-eyed, homely little Irish girl, brimming with motherly good-humor.When Thorpe found strength to talk, the two became friends.Through her influence he was moved to a bed about ten feet from the window.Thence his privileges were three roofs and a glimpse of the distant river.
The roofs were covered with snow.One day Thorpe saw it sink into itself and gradually run away.The tinkle tinkle tank tank of drops sounded from his own eaves.Down the far-off river, sluggish reaches of ice drifted.Then in a night the blue disappeared from the stream.
It became a menacing gray, and even from his distance Thorpe could catch the swirl of its rising waters.A day or two later dark masses drifted or shot across the field of his vision, and twice he thought he distinguished men standing upright and bold on single logs as they rushed down the current.
"What is the date?" he asked of the Sister.
"The eleventh of March."
"Isn't it early for the thaw?"
"Listen to 'im!" exclaimed the Sister delightedly."Early is it!
Sure th' freshet co't thim all.Look, darlint, ye kin see th' drive from here.""I see," said Thorpe wearily, "when can I get out?""Not for wan week," replied the Sister decidedly.
At the end of the week Thorpe said good-by to his attendant, who appeared as sorry to see him go as though the same partings did not come to her a dozen times a year; he took two days of tramping the little town to regain the use of his legs, and boarded the morning train for Beeson Lake.He did not pause in the village, but bent his steps to the river trail.
Chapter XIII
Thorpe found the woods very different from when he had first traversed them.They were full of patches of wet earth and of sunshine; of dark pine, looking suddenly worn, and of fresh green shoots of needles, looking deliciously springlike.This was the contrast everywhere--stern, earnest, purposeful winter, and gay, laughing, careless spring.It was impossible not to draw in fresh spirits with every step.
He followed the trail by the river.Butterballs and scoters paddled up at his approach.Bits of rotten ice occasionally swirled down the diminishing stream.The sunshine was clear and bright, but silvery rather than golden, as though a little of the winter's snow,--a last ethereal incarnation,--had lingered in its substance.Around every bend Thorpe looked for some of Radway's crew "driving" the logs down the current.He knew from chance encounters with several of the men in Bay City that Radway was still in camp; which meant, of course, that the last of the season's operations were not yet finished.Five miles further Thorpe began to wonder whether this last conclusion might not be erroneous.The Cass Branch had shrunken almost to its original limits.Only here and there a little bayou or marsh attested recent freshets.The drive must have been finished, even this early, for the stream in its present condition would hardly float saw logs, certainly not in quantity.
Thorpe, puzzled, walked on.At the banking ground he found empty skids.Evidently the drive was over.And yet even to Thorpe's ignorance, it seemed incredible that the remaining million and a half of logs had been hauled, banked and driven during the short time he had lain in the Bay City hospital.More to solve the problem than in any hope of work, he set out up the logging road.
Another three miles brought him to camp.It looked strangely wet and sodden and deserted.In fact, Thorpe found a bare half dozen people in it,--Radway, the cook, and four men who were helping to pack up the movables, and who later would drive out the wagons containing them.The jobber showed strong traces of the strain he had undergone, but greeted Thorpe almost jovially.He seemed able to show more of his real nature now that the necessity of authority had been definitely removed.
