Читать книгу The Snow-Burner - Henry Oyen - Страница 11

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At daylight next morning began Toppy’s initiation as a blacksmith’s helper. For the next four days he literally earned his bread in the sweat of his brow, as Campbell had warned him he would. The dour old Scot took it as his religious duty to give his helper a severe introduction to the world of manual labour, and circumstances aided him in his aim.

Two dozen huge wooden sleighs had come from the “wood-butcher”—the camp carpenter-shop—to be fitted with cross-rods, brace-irons and runners. Out in the woods the ice-roads, carefully sprinkled each night, were alternately freezing and thawing, gradually approaching the solid condition which would mean a sudden call for sleighs to haul the logs, which lay mountain-high at the rollways, down to the river. One cold night and day now, and the call would come, and David Campbell was not the man to be found wanting—even if handicapped by a helper with hands as soft as a woman’s.

Toppy had no knowledge or skill in the trade, but he had strength and quickness, and the thoughts of Reivers’ masterfulness, and the “nice boy” in the mouth of the girl, spurred him to the limit. The heavy sledgework fell to his lot as a matter of course. A twenty-pound sledge was a plaything in Toppy’s hand—for the first fifteen minutes.

After that the hammer seemed to increase progressively in weight, until at the end of the first day’s work Toppy would gladly have credited the statement that it weighed a ton. Likewise the heavy runner-irons, which he lifted with ease on the anvil in the morning, seemed to grow heavier as the day grew older. Had Toppy been in the splendid condition that had helped him to win his place on the All-American eleven four years before, he might have gone through the cruel period of breaking-in without faltering. But four years of reckless living had taken their toll. The same magnificent frame and muscles were there; the great heart and grit and sand likewise. But there was something else there, too; the softening, weakening traces of decomposed alcohol in organs and tissues, and under the strain of the terrific pace which old Campbell set for Toppy, abused organs, fibres and nerves began to creak and groan, and finally called out, “Halt!”

It was only Toppy’s grit—the “great heart” that had made him a champion—and the desire to prove his strength before Reivers that kept him at work after the first day. His body had quit cold. He had never before undergone such expenditure of muscular energy, not even in the fiercest game of his career. That was play; this was torture. On the second morning his body shrank involuntarily from the spectacle of the torturing sledge, anvil and irons, but pride and grit drove him on with set jaw and hard eyes. Quit? Well, hardly. Reivers walked around the camp and smiled as he saw Toppy sweating, and Toppy swore and went on.

On the third day old Campbell looked at him with curiosity.

“Well, lad, have ye had enough?” he asked, smiling pityingly. “Ye can get a job helping the cookee if you find man’s work too hard for ye.”

Toppy, between clenched teeth, swore savagely. He was so tired that he was sick. The toxins of fatigue, aided and abetted by the effects of hard living, had poisoned him until his feet and brain felt as heavy as lead. It hurt him to move and it hurt him to think. He was groggy, all but knocked out; but something within him held him doggedly at the tasks which were surely mastering him.

That night he dragged himself to bed without waiting for supper. In the morning Campbell was amazed to see him tottering toward his accustomed place in the shop; for old Campbell had set a pace that had racked his own iron, work-tried body, and he had allowed Toppy two days in which to cry enough.

“Hold up a little, lad,” he grumbled. “We’re away ahead of our job. There’s no need laying yourself up. Take you a rest.”

“You go to——!” exploded the overwrought Toppy. “Take a rest yourself if you need one; I don’t.”

He was working on his nerve now, flogging his weary arms and body to do his bidding against their painful protests; and he worked like a madman, fearing that if he came to a halt the run-down machinery would refuse to start afresh.

It was near evening when a teamster drove up with a broken sleigh from which Campbell and the man strove in vain to tear the twisted runner. Reivers from the steps of the store looked on, sneering. Toppy, his lips drawn back with pain and weariness, laughed shrilly at the efforts of the pair.

“Yank it off!” he cried contemptuously. “Yank it off—like this.”

He drove a pry-iron under the runner and heaved. It refused to budge. Toppy gathered himself under the pry and jerked with every ounce of energy in him. The runner did not move. His left ankle felt curiously weak under the awful strain. Across the way he heard Reivers laugh shortly. Furiously Toppy jerked again; the runner flew into the air. Toppy felt the weak ankle sag under him in unaccountable fashion, and he fell heavily on his side and lay still.

“Sprained his ankle,” grunted the teamster, as they bore him to his bunk. “I knew something had to give. No man ever was made to stand up under that lift.”

“But I yanked it off!” groaned Toppy, half wild with pain. “I didn’t quit—I yanked the darn thing off!”

“Aye,” said old Campbell, “you yanked it off, lad. Lay still now till we have off your shoe.”

“And holy smoke!” said the teamster. “What a yank! Hey! Whoap! Holy, red-roaring—he’s gone and fainted!”

This latter statement was not precisely true. Toppy had not fainted; he had suddenly succumbed to the demands of complete exhaustion. The overdriven, tired-out organs, wrenched and abused tissues, and fatigue-deadened nerves suddenly had cried, “Stop!” in a fashion that not all of Toppy’s will-power could deny. One instant he lay flat on his back on the blankets of his bunk, wide awake, with Campbell tugging at the laces of his shoes; the next—a mighty sigh of peace heaved his big chest. Toppy had fallen asleep.

It was not a natural sleep, nor a peaceful one. The racked muscles refused to be still; the raw nerve-centres refused to soothe themselves in the peace of complete senselessness. His whole body twitched. Toppy tossed and groaned. He awoke some time in the night with his stomach crying for food.

“Drink um,” said a voice somewhere, and a sturdy arm went under his head and a bowl containing something savoury and hot was held against his lips.

“Hello, Tilly,” chuckled Toppy deliriously. It was quite in keeping with things that Tilly, the squaw, should be holding his head and feeding him in the middle of the night. He drank with the avidity of a man parched and starving, and the hot broth pleasantly soothed him as it ran down his throat.

“More!” he said, and Tilly gave him more.

“Good fellow, Tilly,” he murmured. “Good medicine. Who told you?”

“Snow-Burner,” grunted Tilly, laying his head on the pillow. “He send me. Sleep um now.”

“Sure,” sighed Toppy, and promptly fell back into his moaning, feverish slumber.