Nan was greatly disturbed to hear so many references to fistic encounters and fighting of all sorts. These men of the woods seemed to be possessed of wild and unruly passions. What she heard the boys say caused her to believe that most of the spare time of the men in the lumber camps was spent in personal encounters.
“No, no, deary. They aren't so bad as they sound,” Aunt Kate told her, comfortably. “Lots of nice men work in the camps all their lives and never fight. Look at your Uncle Henry.”
But Nan remembered the “mess of words” (as he called it) that Uncle Henry had had with Gedney Raffer on the railroad station platform at the Forks, and she was afraid that even her aunt did not look with the same horror on a quarrel that Nan herself did.
The girl from Tillbury had a chance to see just what a lumber camp was like, and what the crew were like, on the fourth day after her arrival at her Uncle Henry's house. The weather was then pronounced settled, and word came for the two young men, Tom and Rafe, to report at Blackton's camp the next morning, prepared to go to work. Tom drove a team which was then at the lumber camp, being cared for by the cook and foreman; Rafe was a chopper, for he had that sleight with an ax which, more than mere muscle, makes the mighty woodsman.
“Their dad'll drive 'em over to Blackton's early, and you can go, too,” said Aunt Kate. “That is, if you don't mind getting up right promptly in the morning?”
“Oh, I don't mind that,” Nan declared. “I'm used to getting up early.”
But she thought differently when Uncle Henry's heavy hand rapped on the door of the east chamber so early the next morning that it seemed to Nan Sherwood that she had only been in bed long enough to close her eyes.
“Goodness, Uncle!” she muttered, when she found out what it meant. “What time is it?”
“Three o'clock. Time enough for you to dress and eat a snack before we start,” replied her uncle.
“Well!” said Nan to herself. “I thought the house was afire.”
Uncle Henry heard her through the door and whispered, shrilly: “Sh! Don't let your aunt hear you say anything like that, child.”
“About fire. Remember!” added Uncle Henry, rather sternly, Nan thought, as he went back to the kitchen.