Blackwater Ben by William Durbin

Author:William Durbin [Durbin, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-51459-2
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2003-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

Of all the new arrivals, the jack who impressed Ben the most was Percy Cantwell. Cantwell was a lanky top loader known as Slim, though some of the fellows called him Sky Hook. Slim had cool gray eyes, and he didn't joke around like the other fellows. When Ben asked Windy why Slim never strung more than a half dozen words together, Windy said, “Slim is one jack who lets his loading do his talking. It takes a special touch to top off a sled that's decked out with twenty thousand feet of wood.”

No matter how cold it got, Slim wore a short jacket. His staged pants had been cut off above the ankles so the cuffs couldn't trip him up, and his leather boots were fitted with low lumbermen's overshoes for good traction. Slim preferred a Stetson hat over the usual wool cap.

The first time Ben saw Slim at work, he understood what Windy meant about Slim's loading doing his talking. The crews hadn't moved a stick of timber to the landing yet, and Ben knew that if the logs couldn't be floated downstream in the spring, the company wouldn't get paid. But once Ben saw Slim working on a load, he knew it would be a cinch for them to make their contract.

Ben had just pulled up to the cut, but nobody noticed him. Since the jacks normally ran the minute they saw the lunch sled, Ben thought something was wrong. Then he saw that everyone was watching Slim.

When Ben climbed down, Ed Day pointed at the loading crew. “The groundhogs are sending a blue butt up to the Sky Hook.”

Ben knew that the groundhogs or sending-up men were the fellows who guided the logs up the skid poles that leaned against the sled. He asked Day, “What's a blue butt?”

“Log with a big bell,” Day said. “Taper makes 'em tough to control. Some call 'em big blues. They can be two-ton killers if you don't know your stuff.”

Slim was straddling the top of a two-story-tall load. Logging sleds were dangerous because the logs were held in place only with corner binds and wrapper chains. The whole load could be dumped by two men hammering loose the fid hooks, U-shaped pieces of iron that held the chains.

Slim was about to top off the load with a monster log. The groundhogs had wrapped a rope around the blue butt, and the cross-haul teamster was ready to pull from the other side.

At a signal from Slim, the teamster started his horses. As the log rolled up the skids, the groundhogs guided each end, while Slim stood on top with his cant hook in his hand and a pipe jutting out of his mouth. “He's always got that stub pipe between his teeth,” Day said. “You can tell how hard he's concentrating by the angle of the pipe stem.”

Ben figured this must be a tricky load, for as the log shot up the skids, Slim's jaw tightened, and his pipe stood straight up.

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