FitzPatrick kicked aside the blankets and set foot on the floor.
"Le' me stay," pleaded the cook, "I won't bother you; I won't even make a noise. I'm skeered!"
"Course you can stay," replied the scaler. "Come here."
He washed the man's forehead, and bound up the cut with surgeon's plaster from the van. The man fell silent, looking at him in wonderment for such kindness.
Four hours later, dimly, through the mist of his broken sleep, FitzPatrick heard the crew depart for the woods in the early dawn. On the crest of some higher waves of consciousness were borne to him drunken shouts, maudlin blasphemies. After a time he arose and demanded breakfast.
The cook, pale and nervous, served him. The man was excited, irresolute, eager to speak. Finally he dropped down on the bench opposite FitzPatrick, and began.
"Fitz," said he, "don't go in th' woods to-day. The men is fair wild wid th' drink, and th' Rough Red is beside hi'self. Las' night I heerd them. They are goin' to skid the butt log again, and they swear that if you cull it again, they will kill you. They mean it. That's all why they wint to th' woods this day."
FitzPatrick swallowed his coffee in silence. In silence he arose and slipped on his mackinaw blanket coat. In silence he thrust his beechwood tablets into his pocket, and picked his pliable scaler's rule from the corner.
"Where are ye goin'?" asked the cook, anxiously.
"I'm goin' to do th' work they pay me to do," answered FitzPatrick.
He took his way down the trail, his face set straight before him, the smoke of his breath streaming behind. The first skidway he scaled with care, laying his rule flat across the face of each log, entering the figures on his many-leaved tablets of beech, marking the timbers swiftly with his blue crayon.
The woods were empty. No ring of the axe, no shout of the driver, no fall of the tree broke the silence. FitzPatrick comprehended. He knew that at the next skidway the men were gathered, waiting to see what he would do; gathered openly at last in that final hostility which had been maturing all winter. He knew, besides, that most of them were partly drunk and wholly reckless, and that he was alone. Nevertheless, after finishing conscientiously skidway number one, he moved on to skidway number two.