ne, passionless, strong they seemed! It was only men who changed in
brief time. The long year of worry and dread and toil and pain had
passed. It was nothing. On the soft, fragrant, pine-scented breeze came
a whispering of welcome from the forestland: "You are here again. Live
now--in the present."

Takahashi beamed upon me: "More better place to camp," he said,
grinning. Already the Jap had won my admiration and liking. His ability
excited my interest, and I wanted to know more about him. As to this
camp-site being a joy compared to the ones stretched back along the road
he was assuredly right. That night we did no more than eat and unroll
our beds. But next day there set in the pleasant tasks of unpacking,
putting up tents and flies, cutting spruce for thick, soft beds, and a
hundred odd jobs dear to every camper. Takahashi would not have any one
help him. He dug a wide space for fires, erected a stone windbreak, and
made two ovens out of baked mud, the like of which, and the cleverness
of which I had never seen. He was a whirlwind for work.

The matter of firewood always concerned Nielsen and me more than any
one. Nielsen was a Norwegian, raised as a boy to use a crosscut saw; and
as for me I was a connoisseur in camp-fires and a lover of them. Hence
we had brought a crosscut saw--a long one with two handles. I remembered
from the former year a huge dead pine that had towered bleached and
white at the edge of the glade. It stood there still. The storms and
blasts of another winter had not changed it in the least. It was five
feet thick at the base and solid. Nielsen chopped a notch in it on the
lower side, and then he and Edd began to saw into it on the other. I saw
the first tremor of the lofty top. Then soon it shivered all the way
down, gave forth a loud crack, swayed slowly, and fell majestically, to
strike with a thundering crash. Only the top of this pine broke in the
fall, but there were splinters and knots and branches enough to fill a
wagon. These we carried up to our camp-fire.

Then the boys sawed off half a dozen four-foot sections, which served
as fine, solid, flat tables for comfort around camp. The method of using
a crosscut saw was for two men to take a stand opposite one another,
with the log between. The handles of the saw stood upright. Each man
should pull easily and steadily toward himself, but should not push back
nor bear down. It looked a rhythmic, manly exercise, and not arduous.
But what a