In the previous episode, Caribou Joe awakes in a strange bed and the terrible smell of toe-rags that are hung up to dry by a stove.
For the first few weeks of 1913 the snow fall left a two foot deep white blanket covering the Tte Jaune Cache area.
Joe bunked with the Wall brothers and worked for them, piling lumber and cleaning up the mill-yard. In the process of sorting out the reject slab piles, he managed to collect enough material to build a shelter for both of his horses.
The new horse stable consisted of three walls, a shed roof and a door, all joined to another existing out-building. Joe had gained permission from a neighbor to build on to his storage shed which was situated about halfway between the banks of the Fraser River and the Wall brothers' pit-sawmill. The neighbour, Mr. Bjorn Anderson, had no objection to the addition. Anderson was one of Joe's former moonshine customers.
As soon as Bjorn heard that Joe was moving in next door he was over to visit. Joe and he soon worked out an agreement-of-exchange.
Bjorn would supply feed and hay, shipped in from Edmonton, for Joe's horses, in exchange for the use of the animals during the winter. Joe promised to let Bjorn know when moonshine whiskey was available in town.
Bjorn and the Wall brothers had worked together during the winter of 1911 and part of the summer of 1912 logging on the hills overlooking Moose Lake, near Red Pass. Now, at Tte Jaune, they were all contracting for a scow-building company.
Bjorn's contract was to supply logs to all the little pit-sawmills in the Mile 52 area. There were rumours that individuals from somewhere out east had plans to build a regular sawmill on a site across the Fraser River from Mile 53. These were only rumours, mind you.
Joe was offered a job in the bush working in Bjorn Anderson's logging operation. As the production at the Wall Brothers' pit-sawmill was painfully slow, Joe decided to become a logger. He continued to bunk at the mill-shack and Bill and John let Joe store his Winchester and other riding gear there as well.
The Anderson operation started about half a mile up the hill behind Mile 52. There were two cross-cut fallers in the bush, who worked at selecting trees on either side of a narrow skid trail. They would fall trees, cut them to length and maneuvered them over to the skid trail. The lumber made from these logs would be used for scow construction and was anywhere from 10 feet to 24 feet long.
Once lined up on the skid trail, a log was connected to the horse harness by a wire cable. The shorter logs were often laid end to end and fastened together with dogs before connecting to the horse. A set of dogs consisted of six hook-shaped spikes, each connected to a short section of chain, two metal rings and joined by a swivel hackle. Each group of three spikes was hammered into the end of each of the short logs to be joined together end to end.
The heavy weight limited each load to three logs. Joe was eager to start work for Mr. Anderson and hired on to the bush crew the same day he was offered the job.
In the next episode, Snub-line logging, Joe learns all about the dangers of this primative, but effective, form of logging and also makes a mysterious discovery on the hill just above Mile 52.
