Spiked boots

"In the days of log drives on the rivers of New England, whenever a riverman was killed on the drive, his comrades hung his spiked boots on a tree to mark the spot. As a youth, Robert Pike spotted such a pair of boots, and from that moment was born his lifelong fascination with the colorful history of the New England logging industry. The dozens of tales he collected are narrated here by "Old Vern," a cantankerous backwoods character. Here are legends and wild anecdotes of the loggers and rivermen who worked in the woods and on the Connecticut and Androscoggin Rivers, plying their romantic, dangerous trade in the early part of this century"--Edited from Amazon.com.