"Take the combination of a candidate for governor, some fool women, crazy men, love-sick idiots, and"--his eyes swept the scene in vain search for Tommy Eye--"a pooch-mouthed blabber, and it's enough to trig any decent, honest, sensible woods fight ever yarded down. Barrett, you're right! You'd better get home and get on your long-tailed coat and plug hat as soon as you can. You and your private"--he sneered the word--"business don't seem to fit in up here." He folded his arms and, with his men behind him, stood looking over the crew for the Enchanted, who, cheerfully and without question, stood blocking the way. "It may not happen just now," he grunted, "but it's on my mind to say that some day these two gangs will get together when there isn't a governor's boom to step on, nor women to get mussed up." And the gaze of fury that he bent on Dwight Wade was returned with interest. An imaginative man might have seen the new spirit of the woods facing the old. But there was no imaginative man there--there were only men who chewed tobacco and wondered what it all meant. CHAPTER XVIII THE OLD SOUBUNGO TRAIL "And never a knight in a tournament Rode lists with a jauntier mien, Than he of the drive who came alive Thro' the hell of the Hulling Machine." --The Spike-sole Knight. Larry Gorman, "the woodsman's poet," whose songs are known and sung in the camps from Holeb to Madawaska, was with Rodburd Ide's incoming crew. His three most notable lyrics are these: "I feed P.I.'s on tarts and pies," "Bushmen all, your ear I call until I shall relate," and "The Old Soubungo Trail." When Rodburd Ide's hundred men "met up" with the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt's hundred men at the foot of Pogey Notch, Larry Gorman displayed a true poet's obliviousness to the details of the wrangle between principals. He didn't understand why Pulaski Britt, blue with anger above his grizzled beard, and "Stumpage John" Barrett, mottled with rage, should object so furiously when Rodburd Ide's girl took away the tatterdemalion maid of the Skeets, nor did Larry ask any questions. If this be the attitude of a true poet, there was evidently considerable true poetry in both crews, for no one appeared to be especially curious as to the why of the quarrel. However, the imminence of a quarrel was a matter demanding woodsmen's attention. It might have been noted that Poet Gorman cut the biggest shillalah of any of them. And while he rounded its end and waited for more formal declaration of hostilities, he lustily sang the solo part of "The Old Soubungo Trail," with a hundred hearty voices to help him on the chorus: