Comes a Time for Burning Read online

  Their dwellings were ordered in loose groups. Most of them were within staggering distance of the creek, and here and there, bathing pools had been scooped and dammed.

  The largest structure in the valley, tucked up close to the tree line on the far side of the meadow, had managed slabwood all the way up to the eaves, with cedar shakes on the roof. Two bent stovepipes thrust up through the shakes with no visible thimbles to prevent the hall from bursting into flames.

  Fifty feet uphill from the hall, a large privy had been constructed, long enough for five or six holes, and like most of the other buildings that showed signs of carpentry, not a straight line graced its architecture.

  Thomas drew out his watch and saw that it was nearly three. In another hour, the sun would be obscured by the promontory west of the camp. Between that hill and the blockade of timber to the east, days here would be short—a late dawn through the timber, and no lingering sunset.

  A man emerged from the doorway of the large hall and pitched a basinful of water into the grass, then ducked back inside. A slender tendril of fragrant cedar smoke issued from one of the chimneys. Not another soul stirred in the camp, and Thomas urged the gelding forward, taking the shortest route across the meadow.

  When he dismounted in front of the mess hall, he took a moment to turn and survey the camp again. Thomas recalled some meadows in Connecticut that had smelled divine—so sweet that they begged a man to lie down and stretch out, listening to the symphony of bees and birds. This meadow, home to a hundred hard working, hard playing loggers, wasn’t one of those. It stank.

  The privy stank. The mildew on the canvas walls stank. What should have been a bubbly, happy little brook stank in half a dozen ponds daisy-chained the length of the clearing.

  “You lost, friend?”

  Thomas turned and found he was being surveyed from head to toe by a stout fellow. His enormous beard perfectly mirrored the thickets of salt and pepper hair on top of his head. The usual woolen trousers and the gray top of his long johns were much mended, touched here and there with interesting stains or remnants from the kitchen.

  “Good afternoon,” Thomas said. “I’m Dr. Parks, from the village.”

  “Yep.” The man retreated into the hall, apparently assuming Thomas would follow. The physician did, but stopped just inside the door. Fifty feet long, twenty wide, the structure included only two windows high on the south end, neither with glass. Twenty-four slab wood tables with benches were arranged in two rows, and the end of each was graced with a stack of tin plates and a scattering of forks and spoons, as if in tribute to the possibility of organization. Half a dozen oil lanterns hung from ceiling cross-beams.

  At the opposite end of the hall, an enormous iron cook stove presided with a high table beside it. Thomas could feel the heat rolling from the cast iron stove, the cedar snapping in one of the chambers. At the table, a young man worked, and when his eyes adjusted to the dim light, Thomas saw that the lad, perhaps fourteen at most, was working his way through an enormous colander of onions, mincing them into another blackened pot. His left arm was withered, with an elbow that didn’t work properly. The arm was useful enough that the clawed left hand could hold the onion steady for the flailing knife.

  “You want coffee?”

  “No thanks, sir. Your name?”

  “Name’s Lawrence.”

  “Actually, sir, I was looking for a young fellow. Buddy Huckla? I was wondering if you could tell me which cabin was his.”

  Lawrence stepped back to the doorway, and as Thomas drew closer, he almost recoiled from the man’s odor—an amazing amalgam of kitchen and foul hygiene. Food poisoning was not a distant possibility.

  “See the second bath?” the cook asked, pointing at the puddles where the stream had been dammed. “Just up yonder from it is where he stays.”

  ‘Up yonder’ could have been any of a dozen tents. “You mean the one right by the creek?”

  “Yep. He ain’t there right now, though. He come back from town all distressed, and after I helped him take off that damn thing he was wearing on his hand, well, he went out to where the flume crew is workin’. That’s where he’s supposed to be.”

  “He took it off? The bandages and splint?”

  “Yep.”

  Thomas stared at the cook in wonder. “Whatever did he—” He bit it off. “Have you seen his partner? Ben Sitzberger?”

  “Saw him early this morning. Not since then.” The cook turned away from the door. “I ain’t looked, though. What do you want with him?” The man’s large brown eyes, surrounded by abundant wrinkles that hinted at laughter when called for, gazed at Thomas without much interest.

  “Early this morning, when he brought Mr. Huckla to the clinic, it appeared that he was ill. Huckla suggested it was something he ate.”

  “Well, that ain’t strange.”

  “I thought to check on him while I was here. And on Mr. Huckla at the same time.”

  “They’re out in the timber someplace. Most likely at the flume. Other than that, I couldn’t tell you.” Lawrence wiped his beard, drawing it together before releasing it like a tangled spring. “They’ll all be here at dark, if that’s what you want.”

  “Perhaps you can direct me.”

  “Direct you?”

  “To the flume project. If it’s not far, I’d like to visit the construction.”

  Lawrence frowned, and stepped to the doorway again. “Nice horse you got yourself, Doc.” Thomas couldn’t tell if the man was assessing the animal as transportation or for victuals. “You see right off that way? Right past Larson’s tent, there. The last one? Well, right there’s a trail big enough for an army. Just get on there and it’ll take you where you want to go.”

  “How far is it?”

  “Don’t know. I suppose one, maybe two miles. Ain’t never measured it.” He turned back inside. “I got bread risin’, so if you get lost, just ask somebody.” Lawrence plodded off toward the stove, scratching the small of his back as he walked. Thomas shook off the nauseating image of those hands kneading the bread dough.

  “Thank you, sir,” Thomas muttered. He turned to his horse. “You probably know right where it is, don’t you, nice horse.” The gelding’s ears wandered in opposite directions, and the physician laughed.

  Lawrence was perfectly correct, however. The trail had been beaten into a fair road by the ebb and flow of a hundred loggers, and Thomas made rapid progress. After half an hour, he reached the bluff. In the distance, he could see the great billows of fog rising off the inlet, but the beehive of activity below him drew his astonished attention.

  The skid troughs snaked here and there out of the timber, sometimes just gouges in the hillside, sometimes logs laid side by side, sometimes a corduroy roadway for mules or oxen. The wasteland where the harvest had been completed reminded Thomas of photographs taken of a Civil War battlefield after a week of unrelenting bombardment.

  The flume below was nothing more than an enormous gutter, like one of the eaves troughs on his father’s Connecticut house. The structure originated at a two acre holding pond, fed by waters from three creeks that spilled into the valley. Sometimes supported by sturdy trestles, sometimes running on grade, the flume was the simplest of structures—bottom planks assembled to form a shallow V, heavy timbers rising to form the sides.

  The boom of logs, or what Thomas had learned the loggers were fond of referring to as ‘sticks’, floated in the pond, waiting their turn to be nudged through the sluice gate at the end of the pond for their ride down the flume. The sluice gate blocked the logs, but not much of the water overflow from the three eager streams. The flume, nearly full, dripped and leaked its entire length.

  Far off on a hillside, he heard shouts and then the protracted roar of one of the spruce or fir giants crashing to earth. Rather than riding into the middle of the confusion, he nudged the gelding down the slope toward the holding pond where, standing near the sluice gate, he saw two men who appeared to be doing nothing other than
relaxing in the sun.

  One of them, his hat pushed back on his head and a big grin on his face in response to some personal joke, was Buddy Huckla. And even as Thomas watched, the man bent over the gate and slid his bandaged hand into the water.

  Chapter Ten

  “Hullo!” Huckla called out as Thomas approached. “You lost, Doc?”

  Thomas didn’t say anything until he had ridden right up to the sluice gate. The gelding swung his head down and gulped water. Thomas sat quietly, regarding Huckla and his friend, a man whose left hand was missing all the fingers at the first joint. Huckla’s bright grin widened. “Damn, you got a day for it. Ain’t it something?”

  “Yes, it is,” Thomas said. “Do you remember nurse Auerbach’s instructions, Mr. Huckla? And my instructions?” A momentary look of puzzlement slipped across the young man’s face. “I thought we had been quite clear when we asked you to keep that hand clean and dry.”

  Huckla pulled the bandaged hand out of the water. “This cold water feels mighty good,” he said, “Don’t see how that can hurt.”

  Thomas saw that the original wrappings and splint had been replaced by what appeared to be a portion of an old shirt. He looked out across the storage pond and sighed.

  “Feels good, must be good,” Huckla chirped. “That’s what my ma always said, bless her soul.”

  What kind of logic was this, Thomas wondered, that replaced a perfectly good and perfectly clean splint and bandage with filthy flannel? Why was it necessary to look as if tending the injury was such a trifle?

  The sun glinted off the water, and for a moment he had visions of the swarm of interesting things lurking there, waiting to examine Huckla’s hand more closely. It would be instructive to collect a vial of the water and examine it under the microscope.

  “It’s all right,” Huckla said, seeing the doctor’s vexed expression. “It don’t hurt none, Doc.”

  “It will, my friend,” Thomas replied. “And when it does, it is going to be much more difficult—and more painful—to treat. I hope you appreciate that.” The open, engaging expression on Huckla’s face hinted that he didn’t appreciate his danger at all. Thomas shifted in the saddle, surveying the pond and the gate structure.

  “So, what happens here?”

  “Well, me and Barney here are waitin’,” Huckla offered. “It’s a hell of a thing to be paid for just waitin’ in the sun, don’t you think?”

  “And for what do you wait?”

  Huckla withdrew his hand from the soak and stood up. “See, all them logs are comin’ into the pond, here. And when the boss man is ready to start sendin’ logs down the flume, all them logs you see floatin’ there will go through this gate here. Me and Barney count ’em when that happens. We both know our numbers pretty good. End of the day, we write it all down.” He shrugged. “Don’t know just why we do all that, but that’s what Paul Bertram wants, so that’s what he gets.”

  “What all happened to Sonny Malone?” Barney asked. “I heard he got hung up, and that he’s down at your place.”

  “We have him in the clinic, yes.”

  “He going to make it?”

  “We hope so.” Apparently he didn’t feign sufficient optimism, because Barney’s eyebrow lifted skeptically.

  “Not likely, though, eh?”

  “Probably not likely.” He stood in the stirrups, stretching. Fats took a last guzzle, sensing that something was about to be asked of him. “The famous flume,” he said. He looked down the serpentine path that the wooden flume traced through the timber, sweeping in graceful curves to avoid terrain.

  “Somethin’, ain’t it,” Huckla said. “I’m bettin’ a man could straddle one of them sticks and ride it all the way down to the chute.”

  “Another dollar bet?” Thomas offered.

  “I’m thinkin’ on it.” Despite the wide, silly grin, Buddy Huckla was completely serious.

  Barney nodded downhill. “You follow it along for about two miles…that about right, Buddy? Follow it along and you’ll come to the headlands where they got the chute project. And that’s something to see, Doc.” He angled his hand downward sharply. “Logs tip from the flume into the chute. Seventy-five degrees down for sixteen hundred and seventy-nine feet. Logs run so fast they smoke. That’s what the engineers say.”

  “Bet a man could ride that, too,” Huckla said.

  “Make it for more than a dollar if you do, Mr. Huckla. Gentlemen, I’ll be on my way. I don’t look forward to riding off the bluff after dark.”

  “Good luck to you, Doc,” Barney said. “Down about a mile, you’ll come to a log deck, where they’re workin’ right along the flume. Don’t go gettin’ in the way. One of them sticks will smash you flat. Can’t have that.” He nodded at Fats, who was dozing, eyelids at half mast. “Smart horse you got yourself there.”

  “He doesn’t spook,” Thomas said. “He gives me time to think.”

  “Nothin’ wrong in that. Look, there’s a photographer workin’ down at the chute this afternoon. You’ll see him, too. Everybody wants their pichure took. Maybe he’ll get you, too.”

  “Obliged,” Thomas said.

  “You’ll find Bertram down there, if you was lookin’ for him. Stick close to the trail along the flume. That’s the safest way.”

  “I shall.” Fats started to saunter down the slick slope under the flume’s trestle, and Thomas called back to Buddy Huckla, “Someone will be at the clinic this evening, Mr. Huckla, should you decide to have the hand looked at.”

  “It’s fine, Doc. You done good with it.”

  As he rode down hill with the flume now above his head, Thomas could hear the gentle gurgle of the water and the steady drizzle of leaks pattering on the duff under the trestle. When the sluice gates were open, the rampaging water and logs would be a sight…and he could imagine Buddy Huckla trying to find hand and toe holds on the slick spruce giant as it careened through the flume.

  In a mile, the valley first narrowed and then opened up. He could see the log deck, an area where the tract of timber was close enough to the flume that logs could be dragged there by steam donkey and cable on simple skid trails.

  Up above, another spar towered, rigged with cables that ran every which way on the slope. The loggers were as ants, swarming through the timber and on the hillside. For some moments, Thomas watched in fascination, then urged Fats onward. The valley narrowed again, the trees thinned, and he could see the brilliant horizon far ahead. As he rode toward the headland, it was with a sense of relief, a sense of release from the dark, rank timber behind him. Below, the waters of Jefferson Inlet were cut by half a dozen ships, and he could see far to the north, almost to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

  To the south, looking like a small wart on the end of the hook of land, Bert Schmidt’s sawmill dominated the inlet, smoke from the chip burner and the various boilers a thick plume that drifted across the spit. A bluff domed just high enough to hide Port McKinney from view. Thomas started to turn away, then stopped.

  He stood tall in the stirrups, squinting against the bright sun. Bert and Carlotta Schmidt lived in a comfortable two-story home on a rise above the mill.

  From where Thomas sat on his horse, he could see that the plume of bluish-white smoke from the various burners drifted east, out over the water. But there were times, he assumed, when the plume drifted elsewhere…or hung over the quiet countryside like a flannel blanket. A nose not numbed to the aroma—the evergreen bouquet—would be able to identify every species of wood burned.

  “Of course,” Thomas said aloud. When Carlotta Schmidt had journeyed to Portland, her sinuses had finally enjoyed blissful relief from the continual smoke, flushed out by fresh sea breezes. Back home, it was only a matter of time before she was assaulted anew.

  Thomas left the headland and returned to the flume, following a long curve as it skirted a series of rock ledges. He did not see the chute at first, but did see a dozen men gathered near the last sluice gate in the flume. Behind the men towered an enorm
ous deck of logs, hundreds of sticks harvested, Thomas supposed, near at hand during the construction. In the flume itself, he could see a string of logs, nose to tail, pushing against the gate like cattle waiting to enter a pasture.

  Three of the men stood on a mammoth log, so huge that Thomas couldn’t imagine it floating down the flume like a great, cylindrical railroad car. The rest of the crew was gathered here and there in an interesting group as a slight fellow behind a bulky tripod and camera orchestrated them.

  Dismounting, Thomas led Fats the last few yards, waiting patiently while the photographer took what appeared to be his final exposure. Finished at last, the photographer tipped his cap, and the men climbed down. One of them Thomas recognized immediately. Paul Bertram said something to the photographer, and then made his way toward the young physician.

  “You’re out and about.” Bertram extended his hand.

  “A perfect afternoon,” Thomas replied.

  “Givin’ Kinsey here a show.” The foreman nodded at the photographer. “Sometimes I think we got us more photographers in the timber than we do loggers. Could have used him this mornin’, don’t you think?” He started to smile, then turned serious. “You brung word about Sonny?”

  “The word is not good,” Thomas said. “If he survives the day, I’ll be surprised. The nurses are with him constantly, but there’s nothing to be done. The brain has been concussed, and there is nothing to be done for that.”

  “Just too damn bad.”

  “I rode out first to visit the camp…I was interested to chat with Buddy Huckla.”

  “Useless as tits on a boar hog,” Bertram muttered.

  “The surgery on his hand was successful, but he’s in the process of undoing all the good work.” Thomas waved a hand up-flume. “He’s at the holding pond, soaking his hand in the filthy water.”