They Like 'Em Rough

A headstrong foundling, Katherine Trowbridge, is cornered by her guardians’ sly matrimonial choreography: the Curtises feign horror at the very union they secretly crave, gambling that the girl’s defiant streak will drive her straight into the arms of their chosen drone, Weathersbee. The ruse combusts when Katherine, smelling deceit, bolts into the wilderness with nothing but spite for dowry and a reckless vow—wed the first taker who crosses her path. That taker is a hirsute giant of the sawmills, in reality Dick Wells, the very sweetheart she once spurned, now cloaked in bark-brown whiskers and taciturn swagger. Their shotgun covenant drags her from lace-parlor privilege to a pine-scented purgatory where cauldrons, axes, and leering loggers replace chaperones. When she bolts a second time, the camp’s rabble-rouser, Kelly, seizes her as both hostage and bargaining chip, dragging her deeper into timbered darkness. A primordial struggle—fists, knives, and splintered cedar—ends with Dick’s bloodied triumph, his false beard ripped away by the field-surgeon’s scissors, revealing the visage Katherine once dismissed but now, through ordeal and hunger, has learned to crave. Recognition collides with desire; the sham marriage transmutes into fierce, earned devotion beneath the dripping boughs.