UP IN “CASTLE CUT ’EM”

“Oh, the road to ‘Castle Cut ’Em’ is mostly all uphill. You can dance along all cheerful to the sing-song of a mill; King Cole he wanted fiddles, and so does old King Spruce, But it’s only gashin’-fiddles that he finds of any use.  “Oh, come along, good lumbermen, oh, come along I say! Come up to ‘Castle Cut ’Em,’ and pull your wads and pay. King Cole he liked his bitters, and so does old King Spruce, But the only kind he hankers for is old spondulix-juice.”

—From song by Larry Gorman, “Woods Poet.”

—From song by Larry Gorman, “Woods Poet.”

The young man on his way to “Castle Cut ’Em” was a clean-cut picture of self-reliant youth. But he was not walking as one who goes to a welcome task. He saw two men ahead of him who walked with as little display of eagerness; men whose shoulders were stooped and whose hands swung listlessly as do hands that are astonished at finding themselves idle.

T

A row of mills that squatted along the bank of the canal sent after them a medley of howls from band-saws and circulars. The young man, with the memory of his college classics sufficiently fresh to make him [Pg 2]fanciful, found suggestion of chained monsters in the aspect of those shrieking mills, with slip-openings like huge mouths.

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That same imagery invested the big building on the hill with attributes that were not reassuring. But he went on up the street in the sunshine, his eyes on the broad backs of the plodders ahead.

King Spruce was in official session.

Men who were big, men who were brawny, yet meek and apologetic, were daily climbing the hill or waiting in the big building to have word with the Honorable John Davis Barrett, who was King Spruce’s high chamberlain. Dwight Wade found half a dozen ahead of him when he came into the general office. They sat, balancing their hats on their knees, and each face wore the anxious expectancy that characterized those who waited to see John Barrett.

Wade had lived long enough in Stillwater to know the type of men who came to the throne-room of King Spruce in midsummer. These were stumpage buyers from the north woods, down to make another season’s contract with the lord of a million acres of timber land. Their faces were brown, their hands were knotted, and when one, 

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