Burned Bridges

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.