Burned Bridges

Along with this incidental light upon the ways of his fellow working-men

he learned properly how to swing an axe; he grew accustomed to dragging

all day on the end of a seven-foot crosscut saw, to lift and strain with

a cant hook. The hardening process, begun at Lone Moose, continued

unceasingly. If mere physical hardihood had been his end, he could

easily have passed for a finished product. He could hold his own with

those broad-shouldered Swedes and Michigan loggers at any turn of the

road. And that was a long way for a man like Thompson to come in the

course of twelve months. If he could have been as sure of a sound,

working philosophy of life as he was of the fitness of his muscles he

would have been well satisfied. Sometimes it was a puzzle to him why men

existed, why the will to live was such a profound force, when living was

a struggle, a vexation, an aimless eating and sleeping and working like

a carthorse. Where was there any plan, any universal purpose at all?

Having never learned dissipation as a form of amusement, nor having yet

been driven to it by the sheer deadliness of incessant, monotonous

labor, Thompson was able to save his money. When he went to Wrangel once

a month he got a bath, a hair-cut, and some magazines to read, perhaps

an article or two of necessary clothing. That was all his financial

outlay. He came back as clear-eyed as when he left, with the bulk of his

wages in his pocket, where some of his fellows returned with empty

pockets and aching heads.

Wherefore, when the winter snows at last closed down the pile camp

Thompson had accumulated four hundred dollars. Also he had made an

impression on the contractor by his steadiness, to such an extent that

the man offered him a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month to come

back and take charge of a similar camp in the spring. But Thompson, like

Tommy Ashe, had grown troubled with the wandering foot. The money in

hand gave him security against want in strange places. He would not

promise to be on hand in the spring. Like Tommy, he had a notion to try

town, to see for himself what opportunity town afforded. And he pitched

on Vancouver, not alone because Tommy Ashe was there, but because it was

the biggest port on Canada's western coast. He had heard once from

Tommy. He was a motor-car salesman now, and he was doing well. But

Tommy's letter was neither long nor graphic in its descriptions. It left

a good deal of Vancouver to Thompson's imagination. However, like the

bear that went over the mountain, Thompson thought he would go and see

what he could see.

Wrangel lies well within the Inside Passage, that great waterway which

is formed between the mainland and a chain of islands that sweeps from

Cape Flattery in the south to the landward end of the Aleutians. All the

steamers that ply between Puget Sound and Skagway take that route.

Seldom do the vessels plying between southern ports and the far beaches

of Nome come inside. They are deep-sea craft, built for offshore work.

So that one taking a steamer at Wrangel can travel in two directions

only, north to Skagway, south to Puget Sound.