The Golden Boys With the Lumber Jacks

In Short

Set in the bitter Maine woods around Lilly Bay, The Golden Boys With the Lumber Jacks follows college brothers Bob and Jack Golden as they assist camp foreman Tom Bean against industrial poacher Big Ben Donahue. When Ben deploys fake forest ghosts, illicit liquor runs, timber sabotage, and arson attempts, the brothers combine college resourcefulness with Indian woodcraft learned from Kernertok. The plot escalates from psychological intimidation to physical peril when Jack is captured by saboteurs. Lasting as a specimen of 1920s juvenile industrial adventure fiction, it valorizes grit, fair play, and technical cleverness.

The Story

During a snowy Christmas holiday journey from Boston via Skowhegan and Kingsbury with driver Mike, Bob and Jack Golden overhear Big Ben Donahue plotting illegal timber cutting despite an active court injunction. Arriving at the camp twenty miles north of Lilly Bay, they report to Irish foreman Tom Bean ("heart as big as an ox") and rapidly integrate with the crew.

Soon, a spectral "ghost" threatens to stampede the lumbermen. Undeterred, Bob and Jack rig a camera with magnesium wire flash outside the office window, capturing a plate that reassures the terrified crew. Meanwhile, local tensions surface: Jean Larue, after losing a fair fight to a boy, attempts to drop a heavy tree on Bob via a jammed wedge. Bob says nothing to protect Jack, scaling the timber at an estimated eight hundred feet.

On Sunday, visiting Indian mentor Kernertok ("he is black") anchors woodcraft competence. When notorious hunchback Nip smuggles liquor ("hooch") across the frozen landscape, Bob tracks him, shoots his glass jug to pieces with a warning, and later confronts a sober, revolver-holding Nip trailing west of north. Wolves attack the brothers' provision toboggan in deep snow, tearing the canvas cover, devouring or scattering supplies, and leaving canned coffee, milk, bacon, beef tongue, soup, and an egg tin crushed into an accidental omelet that the boys salvage.

After navigating with dog-driver Jacques Lamont—whose wolf-like team covers ground at a brutal pace—the boys reach Ezra Kimball's store at Carry to retrieve legal documentation. Back at camp, temperature drops hit thirty below. Bob, waking at two o'clock, finds the camp office door ajar. Later, investigating mysterious crust sounds near the bunk house while wearing soft doeskin moccasins, Bob stumbles upon a gallon gasoline can. Jack, disappearing separately to check perimeter noises, is captured by two Frenchmen who play cards, wait out the night, and tie Jack securely (hands behind chair back, feet to legs) in an isolated cabin before falling asleep to heavy snoring.

Bob pairs up with Jacques, finding an unlabeled bottle suspected of containing arsenic in Donahue's possession as key evidence. After a forced sleep, Bob, Jacques, and Tom hit the trail north after fresh morning snow buries tracks. Losing the trail after twelve miles, Bob proposes turning toward Kernertok’s cabin three miles away to enlist the master woodsman and his dog Sicum. The narrative breaks off mid-search, leaving Jack bound and the hunt for the kidnappers pending.

How It Unfolds

The snowbound transit Bob and Jack miss their Boston train, hitch a ride with Mike into roaring winter drifts, and overhear Big Ben dismissing a legal injunction at Kingsbury. The phantom photographic trap A terrifying night apparition menaces the camp crew until Bob triggers a magnesium flash camera, snapping a plate that restores morale. Undercover hostility Jean Larue spitefully drives a wedge to drop a falling tree dangerously close to Bob, who maintains a stoic silence to shield Jack. The wilderness trail and wolf wreck Tracking Nip over frozen terrain, the brothers endure a midnight wolf siege that ruins their canvas toboggan gear, leaving scrambled tin eggs. Dog-sled dash to Carry Jacques Lamont pushes his sharp-toothed husky team at a punishing pace to reach Ezra Kimball’s store and secure critical legal documents. Arson and abduction Investigating a suspicious gallon gasoline can outside the bunk house, Bob loses track of Jack, who is cornered and tightly corded to a chair by two Frenchmen. Arsenic evidence and north pursuit Recovering an unlabeled arsenic bottle from Donahue, Bob, Jacques, and Tom follow faint snow breaks northward toward Kernertok’s cabin.

The People

Bob Golden: College brother who wants fair play and safe operations. Stands against Big Ben’s illegal cutting and Jean Larue’s sabotage. Ends up a cool-headed tactician managing flash-cameras, shoot-out warnings, and rescue tracks. Jack Golden: College brother seeking active fellowship. Impeded by cold and perimeter traps. Ends up tempered from joking quips into silent, rope-bound endurance inside a kidnapper's cabin. Tom Bean: Generous Irish foreman wanting peak output with minimal trouble. Impeded by crew panic and bad actors. Ends up steadfast ally rallying men and joining winter hunts. Big Ben Donahue: Poaching ringleader wanting illegal timber. Impeded by court injunctions and exposure. Ends up cornered by hooch proof, flash evidence, and an arsenic bottle. Jean Larue: Sulky French-Canadian laborer seeking quiet vengeance after a lost fistfight. Impeded by Bob’s guard. Ends up nearly perishing from cold after a broken snow-shoe before receiving coffee resuscitation. Nip: Hunchback whiskey runner carrying an ugly revolver. Impeded by Bob’s tracking. Ends up checked in the rough timber. Jacques Lamont: Swift dog-team driver providing vital transit to Carry and midnight tracking support.

In Its Own Voice

"Looks as though we're stuck, Mike."

Bob shouts through the heavy snow of a winter sedan ride.

"Stuck is right, begorra... how could ye expect inything on wheels to git through sich drifts, I dunno."

Mike shouts back the reality of the Skowhegan trail.

"I deny the allegation and can lick the alligator"

Jack gasps after rubbing congealed frost from his nose tip.

"Hurrah! We've got it all right... and it's a dandy too."

Jack celebrates the wet plate capturing the forest apparition.

"Now I guess you stay put"

A kidnapper grunts after double-lashing Jack's limbs to a cabin chair.

What It's Really About

The narrative asks whether industrial capitalism under rule of law can withstand frontier brute force, intimidation, and chemical corruption. Wyman uses juvenile adventure tropes to explore civic duty versus lawless extraction: injunctions matter less than physical presence, technological cleverness (flash photography, wristwatches, tracking signs), and moral steadiness under zero-degree exposure. The clash between Anglo-American collegiate grit and French-Canadian/regional underworld friction stages a Victorian-efficiency argument. Physical labor—scaling 800-foot trees, hauling toboggans through wolf packs, nursing freezing rivals with black coffee—acts as an ethical crucible. Respect is earned not by birthright, but by bearing cold without complaint, protecting partners blindly, and treating defeated antagonists with proportional mercy rather than vindictive escalation. Beneath the boy's-own-paper exterior lies a conservative working-frontier ethic: civilization survives where competence meets backbone.

Why Read It Today

Readers who love tactile regional realism, old-school brisk plotting, and earnest fraternal loyalty will savor this snapshot of 1920s timberland action. It feels bracingly tactile—crunching snow crust, cold magnesium flashes, smelling gas cans in thirty-below air, and eating scrambled tin-can omelets by a dying spruce fire. What stays with you is the chilling stillness of midnight woods and Jack's quiet, rope-bound stoicism.

Honesty requires acknowledging structural hurdles. The prose carries period dialect markers ("begorra", "Kanucks") and cultural hierarchies typical of 1923 pulp boys' fiction. Character psychology is externalized into action rather than internal depth: villains sneer, heroes grin, and French-Canadian laborers occupy ambiguous spaces between grievance and villainy, though mitigated by sudden rescues like Jean Larue's coffee revival. Pacing jerks slightly between domestic telegrams, technical woodcraft lore learned from Kernertok, and sudden pulp melodrama.

It rewards modern readers not as high literature, but as an artifact of clean mechanics: how a cold camp runs, how a camera fools superstitious crews, and how brotherhood functions as mechanical redundancy. If you appreciate historical genre juvenilia that treats wilderness survival with technical precision rather than magical shortcuts, this short pulp cut punches well above its weight.