FOREST AND STREAM 
[Jan. 3P, 1904. 
ORT^PIAN TOIM. 
The Tough Side of It. 
■ Between the Seboomook and Northeast Carry region 
of the West Branch of the Penobscot on the west, and 
the tumult of the Hulling Machine Falls on the^ east, 
there is a stretch of shore that they still call the "Dark 
and Bloody Ground." In the old days before many of 
the rocks were blasted out it was of all river stretches 
-on -the Penobscot deadliest to drivers. And those who 
.were killed in the breaking of the jams here or who were 
drowned and. cast out of the vaporous throat of the Hull- 
"ing Machine were buried right on the bank. There arc 
now a score or more of up-ended stones or rude wooden 
crosses showing where these victims lie mouldering. 
In those days the State law allowed employes to bury 
men where they died. Now the bodies must be shipped 
. out to the nearest undertaker, who incloses it in a casket 
and sends it to the man's home. And more than that, it 
- is incumbent on lumber operators to get their sick men 
out to town if it is possible, or else to get the physicians 
in to attend the ill and the injured in the camp. Such 
reformations as these have helped out some of the hard 
features of Maine woods' life in the. winter, but there 
' are still big welts on the seamy side. The man who 
.groans because his doctor does not come slamming up to 
the door within ten minutes after the call is sent would 
find the lines in the woods pretty hard. ■ 
And for that matter, the physician who can only go 
■ about to "his duties in an automobile or behind the 
French plate of a brougham wouldn't be an amiable man 
bj the time he got to a woods patient. 
I have a friend who is a physician in one of the Maine 
towns located up near the jumping-off place. Every now 
and then he has a hurry-up call from some one of the 
big lumber operators to attend cases in their camps, and 
he drops his practice and goes, for there is money in it 
as well as infinite fatigue. 
One year it will be the grip that ravages the men m 
the camps and lays off scores out of the working forces. 
This year the smallpox has ducked over the line from 
' Canada and is causing all kinds of trouble. Dozens of 
camps have been peppered with it, and some of the game 
wardens of the State have been quarantined up there to 
tiie great detriment of their vocation and their temper. 
'T got one of those calls the other day," relates the 
physician. "First I jumped on the train and took a forty- 
mile ride to West Cove on Moosehead Lake. At the 
station were two brawny woodsmen, who approached me 
and asked if I were the doctor that had been wired for. 
When I owned up they said that they had been sent to 
• take me into camp. 
• ■■ "'Can ye skate?' asked one of the men, tucking bacK 
under . the flaming, strapped wool jacket his plug, from 
which he had wrenched a bracing chew. 
"Yes, I said. 
" 'Well, then, p'raps ye'd like better to skate than to 
ride,' said he, pointing to a moose sled pulled beside the 
station platform. He explained that when I got tired 
skating up the lake he and his chum would haul me on 
the sled. 
"So we strapped on our skates and started away for a 
fifteen-mile spin up the west shore of the lake. I hadn't 
skated for some time, and I was hardly a match for those 
woodsmen, but I didn't let on that I wasn't. 
"For that matter, they were a bit hampered, for one 
carried my medicine kit and the other my surgical outfit, 
and towed the sled between them. I did ten miles of it, 
and they said that I'd better take to the sled, for there were 
'riffles' ahead, and the ice wasn't exactly safe. A riffle, 
you understand, is where the ice has buckled up into a 
sort of ridge. Sometimes it's all right to cross, and some- 
times it isn't. You usually find out all about it after you 
get on to it. It's like eating toadstools, you know. 
• "I rode bundled up on the sled and the men went cau- 
tiously over the riffles, poking with long sticks into suspj- 
• cious places. Once one of them went down clean to his 
middle, and I yelled in fear. But he only laughed at 
me. He had gone through a coating of shell ice on to 
the -firmer ice beneath. But he admitted that half the 
■ time the hole went all the way to the bottom of the lake. 
"That was the way Pete Labree found it. He skated 
down to the village of Greenville after the mail for the 
lumber camp where he worked, and when coming bacK 
went down into one of the riffle holes. The ice broke 
so badly around him that he couldn't get out and felt 
himself chilling to death. He struggled to the edge of the 
ice arid though it wouldn't support him so that he could 
draw himself out, yet it would hold his cap and the let- 
ters. And even while dying there, he was thoughtful 
enough .to leave the mail where passers might- see it._ I 
tell you, my dear fellow, that's true bravery^ that can think 
" of others in the supreme moment of life. 
."Well, we finally got up the lake shore to the outlet 
- station of the Canaflian Pacific. Railroad that from here 
takes a direct line across the "State to the Canadian .line. 
' pur camp was up the railroad twenty miles. 
■ "There would be no train till morning. But the woods- 
men got hold of a handcar and we started for a twenty- 
mile pump. You Vnow how those pars are fixed. It's 
easier to stand up and pi.imp at the handles than to sit 
and let your feet \^\^g down. And also it's warmer when 
liie thermometef if at ?^fb and a littk Mpyf, I thotiglit 
my back would give out before we got there, but by 
soldiering a little on the upstrokes I managed to make 
"Then the men loaded me on to another moose sled 
and started away up a tote road for an eight-mile tramp 
—and a woods mile is an old linger. Whenever my feet 
got cold I got off the sled and hoofed it. 
"And that's the way we got into that camp ! It was 
well into the night when we came over the rise of land 
and gave them a 'Hullo !' f u a 
"Nineteen men were sick there. Eight of them had 
smallpox and were isolated in the wangan camp. 1 
worked all night, and though I was pretty near dead the 
poor chaps appreciated it. A woods cook is a pretty busy 
man, you understand, and he hasn't much time for mess- 
ing up medicines. Ginger tea is the extent of his phar- 
maceutical attainments, usually, and he'll make that 
strong and hot enough to parboil a man from teeth to 
duodenum. You can readily appreciate that the men were 
glad to shift doctors. . 
"The cook had long whiskers and a squint eye. He 
got me a special breakfast after the well men had eaten 
and gone away into the woods. While I was stuffing 
cream of tartar biscuit into me and swoofing up hot tea 
the cook stood there with his red hands rolled m his 
apron and regaled me with conversation. 
" 'Quite a joke on me a few days ago, he said. Mc- 
Connell's tote team came down the road and the fellow 
pulled up out there and come in for a snack and a sip of 
something warm. . 
" 'He said he was going down to the station after a 
load of cracked corn and baled hay. 'Takin' down a sick 
man, too,' he said. 'It's one of them Foster boys of 
Shirley. He's been sick for a week or so with some kind 
of a fever— typhus, I reckon— an' he thinks if he can only 
get out of that old bunk and into his mother's feather bed 
with her to nuss him, he'll be all right. But he's ter- 
mendous sick to start oflf for a ja'nt like what s before 
him.' 
"'P'raps he'd like a bite,' says I. ^ 
"'Mebbe,' says he. So I took a pannikm o tea and a 
new-laid doughnut and went out to the team. He laid 
there all wropped up and the blanket drawed over his 
face. 
'"Wake up, Foster boy,' says I, 'an' take a.soof of 
something good for your in'nards.' 
'"He didn't say northin', an' so I drawed down the 
blanket— an', as I told ye back along, it was a good joke 
on me. There I stood with my hot tea an a doughnut, 
an' the cuss was deader'n a rail. Was all cold. Had 
prob'ly been dead a ha'f hour an' that driver never 
knowed northin' 'bout it. He took him right along, 
though, an' sent him home in the baggage car instead of 
the smokin' car.' , , j 
"It struck me," went on the doctor, that the woods 
idea of a jest was a little stout for the consumption of 
the squeamish. id 
"Early that morning two men from McConnell s camp 
came for me with a moose sled, for the word had gone 
abroad in that section that I was coming. There was no 
way of avoiding that call— ten men sick and one near to 
death I found him dead when I got there. And be- 
fore I finished with the McConnell camp the Petersons 
came for me, and I rode half a dozen miles further into 
the woods on a jumper drawn by a pair of horses who 
bumped us over stones and stumps at a great rate. 
"I was up there five days in that country— about from 
camp to camp— and when you talk about busy doctoring ! 
Say, it beat a week's run of stork cases all out and 
hollow ! 
"One of the most pathetic cases that ever came under 
my observation was when I was on my way out. A 
couple of men from one of the Spencer Bay camps away 
up to the east of Moosehead brought out one of their 
comrades to take the train -at West Cove. The man was 
loaded into the baggage car and some blankets were 
spread for him. I saw the men putting him in and 1 
went forward. They were just shaking his hand m fare- 
well and bidding him to be of good cheer. I think the 
two of them would have cried like babies if the crowd 
had not been standing around. One of them told me 
that he was afraid the trip out had killed Jim, but m their 
own defense he said that the man had begged and prayed 
so frenziedly in camp to be taken home so that he might 
see his wife again that there was no withstanding his 
appeals. The man anxiously wanted to know if J thought 
Tim would get there— a station about twenty miles down 
the line— before he died. Jhe poor fellow was gasping 
then in most alarming fashion. ■ , 1 . 
"I examined him and found that he was in the last 
sta<^es of pneumonia. The excitement and the effort of 
the trip had set his heart to pumping in such a way that 
it was too much for even his rugged constitution. There 
was where the trouble was going to be— his- heart, . i 
pushed the strychnia to him and stayed right by him 
the baggage car. As we drew near the station where, he 
was to leave the train, I felt as much excitement as 
though I were at a race. And was it not a race— a race 
with Death himself? , n 
"In spite of all I could do or say, that fellow would 
bounce about and keep talking about his wife=-how she 
^9ViJd be &t thf itation \q meet him, and all tha^. 
"In his poor weakness he got fairly wild with anxiety 
as the train, v, cnt on. 'I'm going to see her— I'rn going to 
see her 1' he cried, and then blest if he didn't try to get 
up, under the spur of the medicine, and look out of the 
window. He gave one flop, and his heart stopped on him 
like that!" The doctor snapped his fingers. 
"They loaded him out at the station, and tossed his 
dunnage bag after him, and when the train pulled away 
I saw a little woman kneeling on those old duds and 
weeping her heart out over the poor fellow. 
"If ever you want to get next to the tough side o£ 
sickness and suffering and death, you just come along; 
with me up into the woods some time. Arid yet the con- 
ditions are now paradise beside what they were in the 
days when a man died where he suffered, and was braried 
where he died." Holman F. Day.. 
In Old Virginia. 
XVI. -A Little too Close. 
The Esquire made an engagement for us to hunt with; 
a young gentleman who was recuperating on a neighbor- 
ing plantation, and a few days after the last trip detailed, 
we set forth early in the morning to go by for him. 
I was not especially enthusiastic about going out with 
an untried shooting companion, as the mote experience 
I have in the use of firearms, the less inclination I feel 
to get out with a man who may not exercise due caution, 
in handling a gun.~ Looking into the muzzle of a loaded 
gun was never a favorite pastime with me, and it gives 
me little real pleasure to hunt with a man who, with, any 
degree of frequency, affords such opportunities. - 
Our man came forth armed with a single barrel, 12 
gauge, breechloader, and after the formality of intro- 
duction was got through with, we planned the course of 
our hunt. Eddie, as the Esquire called our friend, was 
a big man all round. A little less than six feet in height, 
and four feet in breadth, he was what the Irish would 
C7.11 a "broth of a boy." „ 
"I have only been hunting squirrels and rabbits, he 
said, "as I have no bird dog, but I know where there are 
any number of birds, and as you have your dog we will 
go after them. Biggest covey I ever saw, about a hun- 
dred of them, get up with a roar like thunder every time 
I go through the field. Come on, now, and we will get 
them right up." Thus discoursing the young man led us 
to a small field of thin stubble between the orchard and 
barn that looked anything but a promising place to find 
either a large or small covey of quail. "Here we are, 
said he, approaching the fence at a low place, "right over 
in this field I see them every day, never fail." / 
The fence protested, but stood the strain without 
breaking, and we were soon lined out and crossing the 
sure shot preserve. The dog went straight across andl 
back, and then back again to the far side, where he took 
the fence' and went on to the next field. 
Half across the field some doves flew up, and our young- 
friend shouted enthusiastically, "There they are! See, 
there they go !" 
We told him that the birds he saw were doves. _ He 
looked hard after them for a moment, and then admitted 
his mistake. A little further on larks began flying^up, 
two or three at first, and then a great flock. "There ! he 
shouted. "Now you see them.. Didn't I tell you it was a 
big covey? Call the dog back." . 
"They are field larks, Eddie," said the Esquire, kindly 
yet firmly. 
"Field larks," was the reply, "well, I believe they are, 
now that T come to see them plain." . 
"Perhaps they are the birds you saw before and mis- 
took for quail," I suggested. 
"No, indeed," he insisted, "they were certainly quail 
that I saw. I have seen them here every day, a big flock. 
They flv up every time I pass through the field. I know 
they were quail, and they flew up and lit in the trees. 
Ouail light in trees, don't they?" 
"""Not often," said the Esquire, dryly. / 
We found no quail in the field, and it was really 
pathetic to see the mental strain through which the young 
man passed in his effort to figure out the puzzle of why 
the birds had absented themselves from their invariable 
haunt on that particular morning; nor would he spare 
himself or give up the task. As we tramped mile after 
mile, and worked cover after cover where, he "knew posi- 
tively" the birds were, the only rest he gave his over- 
taxed intellect was the fitting of his excuses and explana- 
tions to new localities. ' , , j • • 
It was high noon when we finally concluded to give it 
up, and we had not seen a single bird. It realy was a 
puzzle to all of us how we could cover as much good 
ground as we had and not find birds, and- as pur sanguine 
guide had exhausted the last shot in his excuse locker, we 
concluded to compromise by simply salying he- was 
"Jonah." I have hunted small game for many years, and 
have walked more weary miles than I care to tell with 
the accommodating individual who knew exactly where 
they "never under any circumstances failed to find them,' 
generally adding only to my fatigue thereby. _ , 
While seated on the fence in front of our friend s 
house, visiting and resting before going Jiome, we he^rd | 
