e supply team. Now quit your hollerin' for a chore-boy for a few
days."

"All right," snorted Marshall, "take that ax and split some dry wood
that you'll find behind the house."

"I'm very much obliged to you," began Thorpe to the walking-boss,
"and--"

"That's all right," interrupted the latter, "some day you can give me a
job."

Chapter V

For five days Thorpe cut wood, made fires, drew water, swept floors, and
ran errands. Sometimes he would look across the broad stump-dotted plain
to the distant forest. He had imagination. No business man succeeds
without it. With him the great struggle to wrest from an impassive and
aloof nature what she has so long held securely as her own, took on the
proportions of a battle. The distant forest was the front. To it went
the new bands of fighters. From it came the caissons for food, that
ammunition of the frontier; messengers bringing tidings of defeat or
victory; sometimes men groaning on their litters from the twisting and
crushing and breaking inflicted on them by the calm, ruthless enemy;
once a dead man bearing still on his chest the mark of the tree that had
killed him. Here at headquarters sat the general, map in hand, issuing
his orders, directing his forces.

And out of the forest came mystery. Hunters brought deer on sledges.
Indians, observant and grave, swung silently across the reaches on their
snowshoes, and silently back again carrying their meager purchases. In
the daytime ravens wheeled and croaked about the outskirts of the town,
bearing the shadow of the woods on their plumes and of the north-wind
in the somber quality of their voices; rare eagles wheeled gracefully
to and fro; snow squalls coquetted with the landscape. At night the
many creatures of the forest ventured out across the plains in search
of food,--weasels; big white hares; deer, planting daintily their little
sharp hoofs where the frozen turnips were most plentiful; porcupines in
quest of anything they could get their keen teeth into;--and often the
big timber wolves would send shivering across the waste a long whining
howl. And in the morning their tracks would embroider the snow with many
stories.

The talk about the great stove in the boarding-house office also
possessed the charm of balsam fragrance. One told the other occult facts
about the "Southeast of the southwest of eight." The second in turn
vouchsafed information about another point of the compass. Thorpe heard
of many c