From this position Tommy's persuasion failed to move him. Tommy was
earnest enough, and perfectly sincere in promising to see him through.
But that was not what Thompson wanted. He was determined that in so far
as he was able he would make his own way unaided. He wanted to be
through with props forever. That had become a matter of pride with him.
He went back and told the pile-camp boss that he would report in two
days.
A southbound steamer sailed forty-eight hours later. She backed away
from the Wrangel wharf with Tommy waving his hand to his partner on the
pierhead. Thompson went back to their room feeling a trifle blue, as one
does at parting from a friend. But it was not the moodiness of
uncertainty. He knew what he was going to do. He had simply got used to
Tommy being at his elbow, to chatting with him, to knowing that some one
was near with whom he could try to unravel a knotty problem or hold his
peace as he chose. He missed Tommy. But he knew that although they had
been partners over a hard country, had bucked a hard trail like men and
grown nearer to each other in the stress of it, they could not be
Siamese twins. His road and Tommy's road was bound to fork. A man had to
follow his individual inclination, to live his own life according to his
lights. And Tommy's was for town and the business world, while his--as
yet--was not.
So for the next four months Thompson lived and worked on a wooded
promontory a few miles north of Wrangel, very near the mouth of the
river down which he and Tommy Ashe had come to the sea. He was housed
with thirty other men in a bunkhouse of hand-split cedar; he labored
every day felling and trimming tall slender poles for piling that would
ultimately hold up bridges and wharves. The crew was a cosmopolitan lot
so far as nationality went. In addition they were a tougher lot than
Thompson had ever encountered. He never quite fitted in. They knew him
for something of a tenderfoot, and they had not the least respect for
his size--until he took on and soundly whipped two of them in turn
before the bunkhouse door, with the rest of the thirty, the boss and the
cook for spectators. Thompson did not come off scathless, but he did
come off victor, although he was a bloody sight at the finish. But he
fought in sheer desperation, because otherwise he could not live in the
camp. And he smiled to himself more than once after that fracas, when he
noted the different attitude they took toward him. Might was perhaps not
right, but unless a man was both willing and able to fight for his
rights in the workaday world that was opening up to him, he could never
be very sure that his rights would be respected.