Joe Smeaton's regard for Swickey had been increased rather than
diminished by her kindly but decisive answer to his suit. "If they ever
was angels what wore blue dresses, she's one of 'em," he confided to
himself, as he beckoned mysteriously to the cookee. The rest of the men
had already filed out of the camp and down toward the river.
"Here, Sliver, want to make a quarter?" The lad ambled toward him. "Sure
ting, Joe,--it's up to you."
"When you git through here I want you to skin over to Hoss Avery's place
and tell his gal Swickey--now quit grinnin' and git this straight--thet
they's goin' to be some doin's down the gorge to-day. Harrigan's got his
back up and says he'll bust thet jam or every log-roller on the
drive--which means, speakin' easy-like, thet he's goin' to _try_. Tell
Swickey Avery to bring her picture-takin' machine, with the compliments
of Joe Smeaton. Savvy? Here's the two-bits."
"I'm on, Red," replied the cookee, dodging a lunge from the lumberman
and pocketing the quarter. "Fix up purty, for she'll be lookin' at you."
The cookee sped or rather fled on his errand. Smeaton looked about, then
went to his bunk and drew out a soft, pearl-gray hat with silk-bound
edges and wide band. He had purchased it in a moment of exuberance when
the possibility of Swickey's saying "yes" was unclouded. He straightened
it out, gazed at it admiringly for a moment, and then, flinging his old
hat in the corner, he set the pearl-gray felt jauntily on his shock of
red hair.
"'T ain't every day a feller gits his picture tooken by a gal, or thet
kind of a gal," he muttered, as he strode from the camp with a fine
swagger.
"And look who's here!" cried one of the men, as he joined them at the
riverside.
"Whoo-pee!" came in a Piute chorus from the boys.
"Where you goin' to preach nex' Sunday?" cried one.
"President of the new railroad!" shouted another.
"Oh, mother, but ain't she a lovely lid!"
Smeaton jammed the hat down about his eyes, grinned sheepishly, and held
his peace. Meanwhile the cookee was retailing to Swickey the recent
happenings at Camp Fifteen-Two, including a vivid account of the
"scrap," in which his share, he emphasized, was not the least.
"Hit me when I wasn't lookin'," he concluded, with a tone which
suggested that had he been looking some one else would have regretted
it. "But Joe Smeaton, he fixed him. Slammed him one and Andy went to
sleep on it. Said you was to come down to the jam and take his picture,"
he added untruthfully, "with Joe Smeaton's compliments--fer a quarter."
"Thank you, Mr. ----?"
"Hines is my name."
"Mr. Hines."
The cookee, feeling that he had been rather abruptly dismissed, returned
to camp to finish his morning's work. Swickey locked the cabin and,
tapping a farewell to Smoke, who stood watching her at the window, she
walked briskly down the road, swinging her camera and humming. Harrigan
had called her father early that morning. Avery had handled the dynamite
for the Great Western for years before he came to Lost Farm, and
although practically retired from this class of work, his ability to
"get things moving" was appreciated by Harrigan, who was an experienced
driver himself. The old man was sitting on a log, bending busily over
something, when Swickey appeared.
"Hello, Swickey. Thought mebby you'd be comin' along. Joe Smeaton jest
went by with some of the boys."
"Yes, I want to see Joe. I've got something to say to him."
Avery looked at her for a moment, scratched his elbow, and mumbled,
"M-m-um, ya-a-s, pussibly you have."
He was toying carelessly with a bundle of dynamite sticks. He would
unwrap one, punch a hole in it with his knife, insert a fuse, and wrap
up the soapy-looking stuff again. He attached one stick to another until
he had a very impressive-looking giant firecracker. This he tied to a
long maple sapling, round which he wound the loose end of the black
fuse. Swickey appreciated her father's society, but not enough to tarry
with him just then. Their ideas regarding Providence were dissimilar in
a great many details.
Avery liked to tease her. "If you ain't in a hurry to see Joe, you kin
carry one of these here fireworks down to the jam fur me. I'll take this
one. You kin take the one you're settin' on."
She heard her father guffawing as she walked away. Suddenly he choked
and spluttered. "Swallowed his tobacco, and I'm glad of it." With this
unfilial expression she hurried toward the river.
The jam lay in an angle of the gorge like a heap of titanic jackstraws.
Behind it the water was backing up and widening. Every few minutes the
upper edge would start forward, crowding the mass ahead. The river,
meeting stubborn resistance, would lift a fringe of logs up on the slant
of the jam and then the whole fabric would settle down with a grinding
heave and a groan. Once in a while a single log would shoot into the air
and fall back with a thump. Up on the edges of the gorge the birches
were twinkling in the sun, and vivid, quick pine warblers were flitting
about. Below was chaos, and groups of little men--pygmies--tugged and
strained at their peaveys, striving to rearrange things as they thought
they should be. The choked river growled and vomited spurts of yellow
water from the face of the jam. Gray-shirted men leaped from log to log,
gained the centre beneath that tangled, sagging wall of destruction, and
labored with a superb unconsciousness of the all-too-evident danger.
Some one shouted. The pygmies sprang away from the centre, each in a
different direction like young quail running for cover. The mountain of
timbers moved a few feet, settled, and locked again. Harrigan looked
worried.
"Did you meet your Dad comin' down?" he asked Swickey, who sat perched
on a ledge overlooking the river.
"Yes. He asked me to help him carry his 'fireworks'."
"Here, Bill!" shouted Harrigan, "you go up and help Hoss. You know where
he is."
Meanwhile the men loafed round in little groups, joking and laughing,
apparently unconscious of having done anything unusual. Their quarrel
with the river was one of long-standing and regular recurrence. They
were used to it. They leaned on their peaveys or squatted on the rocks,
watching the river nonchalantly. Hardened by habit to any acute sense of
danger, and keyed to a pitch of daring by pride in their physical
ability, they more than defied destruction,--they ignored it. Yet each
riverman knew when he stepped out on the logs beneath the face of the
jam that the next moment might be his last. Undiluted courage raced in
their veins and shone in their steady eyes.
"Here comes Hoss, fellers. Give him the stage. We's only the awjence
now;" and the boys, with much jesting and make-believe ceremony, made
way for the old "giant-powder deacon," as they called him. Hoss carried
his grotesque sky-rocket with the business end held before him. He
walked out on the slippery logs easily, inspecting the conglomeration
with an apparently casual eye. Presently he hitched one suspender,
rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, and inserted the dynamite in
a crevice between the logs, pushing it down slowly with the sapling. He
fumbled with the fuse a minute, and then hastened to shore.
Swickey, kneeling, snapped the camera as the rock beneath her trembled,
and up rose a geyser of brown foam and logs, pieces of logs, splinters,
bark, and stones. The jam moved forward, hesitated, and locked again. A
second and third shot produced no apparent effect.
"Three times and out," said Harrigan. "Hey, Andy! Where's Andy Slocum?"
"Over talkin' to Hoss," said a driver, as he went for a new peavey. His
was at the bottom of the river, pinched from his hands by two herculean
pine fingers.
"Thought that last shot would fetch her," said Harrigan, as he came up
to Slocum and Avery. "But she's got her back up. Now, see if you can
coax her along, my buck. She didn't even smile when Hoss persented his
bokay."
Avery grinned. "Thet's right. I was just tellin' Andy mebby if he was to
go out and _sing_ to her, she might walk right along a'ter him like thet
gal up in--"
But the rest of what promised to be of entertainment to the boys
remained untold. Slocum skirmished among the men, quietly picking out
six of them to go with him and "loosen her up."
They strode deliberately out on the logs, laughing and talking. Swickey
noticed that Joe Smeaton was one of those chosen.
They tried timber after timber, working carefully. There was a
directness and unity in their movements that showed they meant to "pick
her or bust," as Avery expressed it. Swickey, pale and trembling so that
she could scarcely hold the camera steady enough to find the men,
followed with glowing eyes the little band as they moved from spot to
spot. Their evident peril reacted on her till even she, used to such
things, felt like calling to them to come back. She felt rather than saw
their danger. Presently Slocum and Joe Smeaton were working shoulder to
shoulder. Smeaton paused to wipe his face on his sleeve. Evidently he
said something, for Andy Slocum laughed.
"They's goin' to fetch her," said Avery, as he came to where his
daughter stood.
She questioned him with a look.
"I can't jest explain, Swickey, but git your camera ready. They got a
grip on her now."
Then, amid shouts from the men on the bank there came a crack like a
rifle-shot. The entire fabric bulged up and out. A long roar, a
thundering and groaning of tons of liberated logs and water, and five of
the seven men ran like squirrels from log to log toward shore. Where
were the other two? Joe was coming--no, he was going back. Swickey
raised her arms and shrieked to him. He turned as though he had heard
and flung out one arm in an indescribable gesture of salutation and
farewell to the blue-gowned figure on the rocks above him. Then he ran
down a careening log and reached for something in the water. He caught
an upraised arm and struggled to another log. He stooped to lift the
inert something he had tried so fearlessly to save, but before he could
straighten up, the loosened buttress of timbers charged down upon him
and brushed him from sight. The crest of the jam sunk and dissolved in
the leaping current.
"Gone, by God!" said Avery.
Men looked at each other and then turned away.
Above, the pine warblers darted back and forth across the chasm in the
sun.
Swickey slid from the rock where she had been standing and grasped her
father's arm. "It was Joe, wasn't it?" she gasped, although she knew.
"Yes--and Andy," replied Avery. "Joe might of got out, but Andy slipped
and Joe went back to git the leetle skunk. Thet was Joe all over--dam
his ole hide."
She dropped to her knees and crossed her arms before her face. With one
accord the rivermen turned and walked away. Avery stooped and lifted her
to her feet.
"Thar, thar, leetle gal--"
"Oh, father," she sobbed, "I thought mean of Joe this morning--I didn't
understand--and I can't tell him now."
"If God-A'mighty's what we think He be," said Avery reverently, "He'll
make it up to Joe."