The Bavarian Gate

4

Severtson's Camp

They didn't go to the hiring hall. Instead they hiked a dusty road out of town, past yards of great dark logs, and acres of fragrant lumber stacked in the sun to dry. Past a sawmill, whose shrieking headrig and growling planers they could hear from the road four hundred yards away. Above the mill, a tall stack trailed a pennant of woodsmoke. A slab burner, like a fifty foot sheet-iron teepee, leaked more of it, from the top and every seam. Like the visual scene, the resinous pungencies charmed Macurdy. Oregon!

Roy led him to a large, shed-like building covered with asphalt siding. At one end was an office, and it was there they entered. A tall, rawboned blond woman sat at a desk, with a typewriter, a phone, and a pint-sized mug of coffee. On a nearby table sat an electric burner- something Macurdy had never seen before- topped with a large enameled coffee pot, robin's egg blue with black chips. Within the woman's reach was a battered file cabinet, another novelty; Macurdy didn't even know what it was.

"We come to see Axel," Roy told her. "We're looking for work."

This was a self-deprecatory Roy Klaplanahoo, figuratively with hat in hand. White men had left Europe to avoid such servility for themselves. She looked them over, then turned toward an open door. "Axel!" she called, "there's a couple of jacks out here looking for work. One's a Klaplanahoo."

A moment later a tall, big-shouldered, middle-aged man came through the door. He was bald as an egg, but a thatch of flaxen chest hair bushed from his open collar. "Vhere you been?" he said to Roy. "I ain't seen you for a year or more."

"I been to Oklahoma. I'd heard it was real Indian country, and I wanted to see it."

"Vas it? Indian country?"

"Outside the cities it was. The cities were like Portland, only hotter in summer and colder in winter. I didn't like it very much." Axel Severtson, turned to Macurdy. "Vhere you from?"

"Indiana."

"Indiana." Severtson frowned. "You know anything about the voods?"

"Yeah. I've cut timber off and on all my life."

The Swede appraised him, checking the heavy shoulders, the large beefy hands. "Come vit' me," he said, and beckoning, led the two of them through another door into the shed end of the building. Mostly it was storage. Tools hung on the walls; large, well-greased spools of cable lay on skids; and there were chests presumably holding other equipment. "You a faller?" Axel asked Macurdy.

"When we cut, my uncle and me, we did everything: felled, bucked, and skidded."

"Vhat did you cut?"

"White oak, more than anything else. Barrel stock."

The Swede grunted, as if oaks were beneath the attention of real loggers, then took down an axe and tested the blade with a thumb. "C'mon," he said, and led them out the back of the building. A log perhaps three feet in diameter lay there on skids. Someone had already cut into it with an axe; there was a pair of cuts a few feet apart, one of them ragged and rough. Severtson handed Macurdy the axe.

"Let's see vhat you can do vit' it."

Macurdy hefted it-the handle was longer than he was used to-checked an edge for himself, then stepped onto the log, planted his feet and began, his strokes measured and powerful, precise. Chips as big as books began to fly. Halfway through, the Swede called a halt. "Okay," he said, "you'll do. I got some guys didn't come back from the Memorial Day veekend, and I ain't vun of those that goes to Portland to bail them out of yail."