"Dalmas,.John.-.Lion.Of.Farside.2.-.Bavarian.Gate.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dalmas John)

"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."
Q Q
Axel sent him back into town to get boots and caulks-said it wasn't safe working
without them-and tin pants and whatever else he needed. After giving him a note
saying he was hired, in case he needed credit in the stores. Macurdy invested in
a toothbrush, too, but not a razor. Like most Macurdy men, he grew little hair
except on his skull-because of his ylvin genes, Varia had told him. He'd never
grown more than a faint down on cheeks and jaw.
By noon they were on their way to camp, in a truck hauling rigging gear. They
ate a late lunch of sandwiches in the messhall-the crew carried their
lunches-then were taken into the woods. Macurdy wondered how it was possible to
cut timber on such steep slopes. And the stumps! Most were between fifty and
ninety inches across, maybe twenty inches high on the uphill and five feet on
the downhill side. On this job, he would learn, most of the trees stood between
two hundred and two hundred eighty feet tall. He'd never imagined such forest.
They had to wait a few minutes while the foreman-the youngest Severtson brother,
Lars-finished marking out a new cutting strip for a pair of fallers. Then Lars
assigned a bucker to fell trees with Roy. Finally Macurdy was given the
ex-buckers long one-man saw and steel tape measure, and told what to do. He
realized now why buckers worked alone: Most of the prostrate trunks were too
large for men to work together on opposite sides.
"You ever do this before?" Lars asked. His accent was slight; he'd come over as
a child, and gone to school in Nehtaka.
"Not in trees like these," Macurdy answered.