THE PICTURE THAT WALKED 



A STORY OF A MICHIGAN LUMBER TOWN THAT WENT DEAD AND WHAT HAPPENED WHEN 



RUBE POTTLE GOT A VISION 



By Harold Titus 



Author of "Timber" 



TVTHEN the Company finished its cut, junked the saw- 

 '' mill and pulled out for the southern pineries, Blue- 

 berry, Michigan, went completely to pot. 



No one had foreseen this calamity unless it was Rube 

 Pottle. No one had had any definite idea that the tim- 

 ber would ever be exhausted and Michigan timber towns 

 left stranded by the receding economic tide unless it 

 was Rube Pottle. Every man who had established a 

 business in the community had done exceedingly well. 

 Small capital started an enterprise ; the boys were good 

 spenders ; high profits ruled ; the picking was good . . . 

 until the last feather came off and left the business bird 

 as bare as the once timbered hills which the Company 

 had stripped. 



No one had saved a great deal, either. They were 

 mostly young men, with the improvidence of the pioneer 



Of course, the scavengers were left. Cedar camps 

 were established in the swamps ; a shingle mill ran the 

 year around down by the big sawdust pile ; some Norway 

 and sap pine remained ; here and there tar paper farm 

 houses and wire fences appeared in the back country and 

 hopeful young farmers or hopeless old ones came to 

 town to do their meager trading. It kept the breath of 

 life in Blueberry. That was all. 



"Where there's life there's hope," growled Art Bisbee, 

 the clothing man as the boys sat in front of the station 

 waiting for Number Nine one May evening. 



"And where there's danged little life there's danged 

 little hope," said Mel Corbin, the shoe man. 



"Movin' any land, Rube?" asked Mclntyre, the hard- 

 ware dealer. 



They looked at Pottle who sat on the baggage truck, 



"HE HAD BEEN WATCHING OTHER TOWNS THAT HAD HAD THE PROPS KNOCKED OUT FROM UNDER THEM." 



generally characteristic. They had staked their all in 

 Blueberry, encumbered themselves with families and 

 taken root in the community. And then when the big 

 burner went cold and the carriage stopped and the mill 

 fell silent there was something funereal in the air and in 

 the hearts of those men. 



Blueberry had boasted four thousand people once. A 

 year after the mill shut down its population was cut in 

 half ; in two more, abandoned houses were commencing 

 to warp and sag, just as the spirit of those who had been 

 forced to hang on for lack of means to get out, was 

 warping and sagging. Half the stores on Main street 

 were empty of stocks and the rest were empty of cus- 

 tomers too much of the time to keep alarming quantities 

 of red ink out of the various ledger balances. 



squinting off at a red glow in the night where smoke had 

 been rising for a day or two. 



"Two forties on twenty-seven last week," said Rube. 

 "It ain't so bad. Them dudes that fished here 're comin' 

 back in June an' say they'll bring a big bunch with 

 'em. . . . That fire, now, she'd ought to be put out." 



Corbin raised his eyes toward the soft glow. 



"Let her burn," he mumbled. "Makes it easier to 

 clear. Farmers, not dudes, is what this town needs." 



Now, Rube Pottle, who had run the boarding house, 

 was the last real representative of the Company left in 

 Blueberry. He still ran the boarding house, but was 

 designated as Land Agent and his real job was to take 

 the prospective settlers, who were sent in by a coloniza- 

 tion company, and sell off the cut-over land to them. It 



