‘What are you lads doing here? What do you want?’ He eyed them up – Frank, small and wiry but strong-looking, and Martin, more muscular but shuffling his feet awkwardly behind his friend, as is often the way of a lad with muscles but not much else who might feel uncomfortable when asked something more demanding than his name.
Frank said, ‘We need a job, sir. I’m Frank, and this is Martin, and we want to work on the flumes.’
The old boy gave them an assessing look, then held out an enormous calloused hand. ‘My name’s Slack – Mr Slack to you two. So, the flumes, is it? What do you know about flume-herding then?’
‘Not a lot,’ said Frank, ‘but my grandfather was on the flumes and he said it was a good life.’ He paused. ‘We hear there’s good money to be had,’ he added optimistically.
The problem for lumberjacks working this high up in the mountains was the distance from the remote camps to the main cart track. It was just not practical to have the huge, heavy logs dragged out of the forest by horse, and the solution was to send the logs down the mountain on a fas
t-running flume of water to the depot on the downs below. From there the logs could be transported to the towns and cities by mule cart.
It was a wonderful idea, and once the first flume got going, the idea spread. The men who became flume-herders lived in little sheds perched precariously on ledges dangerously close to turning points in the flumes, and they needed strength to be able to deal with blockages as several tons of wood came hurtling down the surging water towards them. There was no shortage of young men who would head to the mountains, determined to ride the flumes, if only to say they had done it! Some, of course, never got the chance to say anything to anyone ever again after an early mistake on the logs, but every camp had an Igor, so some parts of them might very well get a second chance. And occasionally you might meet a really old flume-herder who had been doing it for a long time, and might indeed be sporting a young man’s arms on his wiry old body.
‘The flumes don’t like babies,’ Mr Slack said. ‘It’s a man’s job and no mistake. I see you’ve got muscles, both of you, but I don’t care about that. There are lots of boys like you with muscles. What we need is boys with muscles in their heads. You never know what the flumes will do to you on a renegade turn.’ He frowned at them. ‘Do you know young Jack Abbott? Young lumberjack who lives down the mountain with his good mother and young sister? Near as anything chopped his own foot off just a week or so ago. Only just getting better, and that thanks to some lass with a squint who the witches sent on up to help. Think on that, lads, if you think you can take risks up here. Flume-herding is a lot more dangerous than lumberjacking.’
The boys looked downcast.
‘And it’s magic wood, some of this up here,’ Slack continued. ‘For the wizards. That’s why they need us, lads – can’t take it on trains, even once it’s down in the depot. You all right with that? Magic can do funny stuff to some of the men up here.’ He pointed at the snowy trees surrounding them and said, ‘These aren’t your ordinary pines, these are Predictive Pines. They know the future. Although dang me if I know why or how. What good is knowing the future for a pine tree? It can predict when it is going to be cut down – but you still do cut them down. Not like it can get away now, ha! But if you touch one, and it likes you, you’ll see what is about to happen. So, lads, you still interested?’
Martin wasn’t the kind to talk too much, but he said very simply, ‘I just need the money, boss. And the grub, of course.’
‘Oh, it’s good money. And you can buy all sorts and get it sent up here,’ said Mr Slack. He dug into a pocket of his checked jacket and pulled out a well-thumbed book. ‘Biggerwoods catalogue. We all swear by it. You can get anything you want.’
Frank peered at the catalogue, at its cover. ‘Says ’ere you can get a bride,’ he said in wonder. ‘Comes by train.’
‘Well, there ain’t no train gets up here – no iron near this wood. Nearest railhead’s down at Hot Dang. Near enough. And that there brides is a new offer. Just in time for you lads. It says that you can get a young lady – lots of fancy girls looking for men. Find yourself one, and on what you can make up here she can have a proper indoor privy and no messing and all the clothes she wants. That’s how good the money is.’ He paused and stuffed the catalogue back into his pocket, then added, ‘Women’s clothes are wonderful, don’t you think? Only the other day I met a man who said he travelled in ladies’ lingerie . . .’
‘Are you sure he was all right?’ Martin asked Mr Slack a bit dubiously. He had heard talk of one very remote camp where the tough, strong lumberjacks apparently chose to dress in women’s clothing as they sang songs about their big choppers, but he hadn’t believed it. Until now, anyway.
The lumberjack ignored his question. ‘Well, Martin, you are a fine boy, aren’t you?’ he said, then turned to Frank. ‘You, lad, why do you want to take your chances up here?’
‘Well, Mr Slack, I was going out with this girl, but there was this other lad, you know . . .’ He hesitated.
Mr Slack held a hand in front of his face. ‘Don’t tell me anything more, kid. These hills are full of people who really wanted to be somewhere else, and it sounds like you might fancy taking a look at Biggerwoods then, once you’ve got some money in your pocket. Well, you two seem strong enough. Just sign up and we’ll say no more. You can start in the morning, and then we’ll see. If you ain’t stupid, you’ll come away with good wages. And if you go messing about around the flumes, I’ll give your dear old mothers your wages, so she’ll have enough to bury you with.’
He spat on his thumb, and man and boys made the thumb bargain so common amongst men of the world.
‘And I’ll tell you what’s going to happen to you in the next thirty minutes,’ Mr Slack said with a wide grin. ‘You’ll be over where the logs go into the flumes, watching and learning. And I don’t need no Predictive Pine to tell me that!’ He laughed, and patted the nearest pine.
But as his fingers touched the bark, his jaw dropped open and his hood fell back from a face frozen with fear.
‘Lads,’ he stammered – and that in itself was terrifying, that a man so grizzled should have such a thing as a stammer in his voice – ‘get out of here. Now! Get down the mountain. We’ve got a fight coming our way – in about five minutes! – and I need only men who know what to do with an axe up here.’ And he turned and ran into the camp, shouting to the lumberjacks.
Martin and Frank looked at each other, shocked, and then Frank reached out tentatively and poked a finger onto the tree. A sudden flash of images shot into his mind – gloriously colourful creatures in velvet and feathers, their bodies painted with woad, came tumbling down out of the trees. But there was nothing glorious about the pain and death they were bringing with them. Then he saw a fur-lined hood bobbing in the waters of a flume, a hood that framed the head of Mr Slack. A Mr Slack who seemed to have somehow been slack enough to lose his body . . .
The two boys stumbled through the lumberjacks, heading for the trees, for the snowy ground that offered a chance of escape.
Not quickly enough. For with a sudden whistle, a storm of elves came dancing from the trees – large, nasty elves, the feathers and velvets of their tunics making them seem like predatory birds swooping from the shadowy heights. The two boys shrank back, frozen to the spot.
And for a few minutes it was lumberjack versus elf, helped by the camp Igor, who said, ‘Keep touching the pineth, it troubleth them and they won’t know what day it is. And while they are finding out, you can give them a real rollocking.’
The lumberjacks were not men who would run away from a fight, and the terrible metal of their axes destroyed more than one elf. But more and more elves were pouring into the camp, tipping over the little sheds, kicking at the logs so that they tumbled into the flumes any which way, the elves swinging into the heights of the trees and laughing down at the camp. And there was something enchanting about them . . . something that crept behind the hard exteriors of the lumberjacks and made them fall to their knees, sobbing for their mothers, dropping their axes, easy prey for the victorious fairy folk . . .
‘I told you. Get yourselves away, get to the flumes, boys,’ Mr Slack shouted, chopping with his axe at an elf creeping up behind him. ‘Them flumes are faster than elves. I’ll be OK.’
Martin took him at his word – though Frank had seen the future and knew that ‘OK’ wasn’t really going to happen for Mr Slack – and leaped into the first bucket, Frank close on his heels, and Mr Slack pushed a lever – and the bucket was off! Down the flume snaking its way down the steep mountainside, round corners so terrible that they had to lean from one side to the other to avoid falling. Soaked to the skin, a jumble of logs in front of them, behind them, alongside them, they tore along deep gorges, dodging arrows from arriving elves who were heading up the mountain like a deadly swarm of insects.
It was wild, it was exhilarating, it was almost getting killed – and the almost bit is what made it something they would feel able to talk about later, though clearly getting killed woul