Nan and her uncle came out on the bluff that overlooked the sharp bend
which hid the upper reaches of the river from Pine Camp. Across the
stream, almost from bank to bank, a string of gravel flats made a
barrier that all the rivermen feared.
Blackton was no careless manager, and he had a good foreman in Tim
Turner. The big boss had ridden down to the bend in a mud-splashed
buggy, and was even prepared to take a personal hand in the work, if
need be. The foreman was coming down the river bank on the Pine
Camp side of the stream, watching the leading logs of the drive, and
directing the foreguard. Among the latter Nan spied Rafe.
“There he is, Uncle!” she cried. “Oh! He's jumped out on that log, see?”
“He's all right, girl, he's all right,” said Uncle Henry comfortingly.
“Rafe's got good calks on his boots.”
The boy sprang from log to log, the calks making the chips fly, and with
a canthook pushed off a log that had caught and swung upon a small bank.
He did it very cleverly, and was back again, across the bucking logs, in
half a minute.
Below, the foreman himself was making for a grounded log, one of the
first of the drive. It had caught upon some snag, and was swinging
broadside out, into the stream. Let two or three more timbers catch with
it and there would be the nucleus of a jam that might result in much
trouble for everybody.
Tim Turner leaped spaces of eight and ten feet between the logs, landing
secure and safe upon the stranded log at last. With the heavy canthook
he tried to start it.
“That's a good man, Tim Turner,” said Mr. Sherwood, heartily. “He's
worked for me, isn't afraid of anything, Ha! But that's wrong!” he
suddenly exclaimed.
Turner had failed to start the stranded log. Other logs were hurtling
down the foam-streaked river, aimed directly for the stranded one. They
would begin to pile up in a heap in a minute. The foreman leaped to
another log, turning as he did so to face the shore. That was when Uncle
Henry declared him wrong.
Turner was swinging his free arm, and above the roar of the river
and the thunder of the grinding and smashing logs they could hear him
shouting for somebody to bring him an axe. One of his men leaped to
obey. Nan and Mr. Sherwood did not notice just then who this second man
was who put himself in jeopardy, for both had their gaze on the foreman
and that which menaced him.
Shooting across on a slant was a huge log, all of three feet through at
the butt, and it was aimed for the timber on which Turner stood. He did
not see it. Smaller logs were already piling against the timber he had
left, and had he leaped back to the stranded one he would have been
comparatively safe.
Mr. Sherwood was quick to act in such an emergency as this; but he was
too far from the spot to give practical aid in saving Turner from the
result of his own heedlessness. He made a horn of his two hands and
shouted to the foreguard at the foot of the bluff:
“He's going into the water! Launch Fred Durgin's boat below the bend!
Get her! Quick, there!”
Old riverman that he was, Uncle Henry was pretty sure of what was about
to happen. The huge log came tearing on, butt first, a wave of troubled
water split by its on-rush. Turner was watching the person bringing him
the axe, and never once threw a glance over his shoulder.
Suddenly Nan cried out and seized Uncle Henry's arm. “Look! Oh, Uncle!
It's Rafe!” she gasped, pointing.
“Aye, I know it,” said her uncle, wonderfully cool, Nan thought, and
casting a single glance at the figure flying over the bucking logs
toward the endangered foreman. “He'll do what he can.”
Nan could not take her eyes from her cousin after that. It seemed to
be a race between Rafe and the charging log, to see which should first
reach the foreman. Rafe, reckless and harebrained as he was, flew over
the logs as sure-footed as a goat. Nan felt faint. Her cousin's peril
seemed far greater to her than that of the foreman.
A step might plunge Rafe into the foaming stream! When a log rolled
under him she cried out under her breath and clamped her teeth down on
to her lower lip until the blood almost came.
“He'll be killed! He'll be killed!” she kept repeating in her own mind.
But Uncle Henry stood like a rock and seemingly gave no more attention
to his son than he did to Turner, or to the men running down the bank to
seize upon and launch the heavy boat.
Rafe was suddenly balked and had to stop. Too great a stretch of water
separated him from the next floating log. Turner beckoned him on. It was
difficult to make the foreman hear above the noise of the water and the
continual grinding of the logs, but Rafe yelled some warning and pointed
toward the timber now almost upon Turner's foothold.
The man shot a glance behind him. The butt of the driving log rose
suddenly into the air as though it would crush him.
Turner leaped to the far end of the log on which he stood. But too
great a distance separated him from the log on which Rafe had secured a
foothold.
Crash!
Nan heard, on top of the bluff, the impact of the great timber as it was
flung by the current across the smaller log. Turner shot into the air
as though he were flung from a catapult. But he was not flung in Rafe's
direction, and the boy could not help him.
He plunged into the racing stream and disappeared. The huge timber rode
over the smaller log and buried it from sight. But its tail swung around
and the great log was headed straight down the river again.
As its smaller end swung near, Rafe leaped for it and secured a footing
on the rolling, plunging log. How he kept his feet under him Nan could
not imagine. A bareback rider in a circus never had such work as this.
Rafe rode his wooden horse in masterly style.
There, ahead of him in the boiling flood, an arm and head appeared.
Turner came to the surface with his senses unimpaired and he strove to
clutch the nearest log. But the stick slipped away from him.
Rafe ran forward on the plunging timber he now rode the huge stick that
had made all the trouble, and tried to reach the man in the water. No
use!
Of course, there was no way for Rafe to guide his log toward the
drowning man. Nor did he have anything to reach out for Turner to grasp.
The axe handle was not long enough, and the foreman's canthook had
disappeared.
Below, the men were struggling to get the big boat out from under the
bank into the stream. Two of them stood up with their canthooks to fend
off the drifting logs; the others plied the heavy oars.
But the boat was too far from the man in the river. He was menaced on
all sides by plunging logs. He barely escaped one to be grazed on the
shoulder by another. A third pressed him under the surface again; but
as he went down this second time, Rafe Sherwood threw away his axe and
leaped into the flood!