The long backwoods winter was now drawing near its end, and the snow
in the open spaces was getting so soft at midday as to slump heavily
and hinder the work of the teams. Every one was working with feverish
haste to get the logs all out to the "landings," on the river banks
before the hauling should go to pieces. At night the tired lumbermen
would tumble into their bunks as soon as supper was over, too greedy
of sleep to think of songs or yarns. And Rosy-Lilly began to feel a
little aggrieved at the inadequate attention which she was now
receiving from all but Jimmy Brackett and the ever-faithful Johnson.
She began to forgive McWha, and once more to try her baby wiles upon
him. But McWha was as coldly unconscious as a stone.
One day, however, Fate concluded to range herself on Rosy-Lilly's
side. A dead branch, hurled through the air by the impact of a falling
tree, struck Red McWha on the head, and he was carried home to the
cabin unconscious, bleeding from a long gash in his scalp. The Boss,
something of a surgeon in his rough and ready way, as bosses need to
be, washed the wound and sewed it up. Then he handed over his own bunk
to the wounded man, declaring optimistically that McWha would come
round all right, his breed being hard to kill.
It was hours later when McWha began to recover consciousness, and just
then, as it happened, there was no one near him but Rosy-Lilly.
Smitten with pity, the child was standing beside the bunk, murmuring:
"Poor! poor! I so sorry!" and slowly shaking her head and lightly
patting the big, limp hand where it lay outside the blanket.
McWha half opened his eyes, and their faint glance fell on the top of
Rosy-Lilly's head as she bent over his hand. With a wry smile he shut
them again, but to his surprise, he felt rather gratified. Then Jimmy
Brackett came in and whisked the child away. "'S if he thought I'd
bite 'er!" mused McWha, somewhat inconsistently.
For a long time he lay wondering confusedly. At last he opened his
eyes wide, felt his bandaged head, and called for a drink of water in
a voice which he vainly strove to make sound natural. To his surprise
he was answered by Rosy-Lilly, so promptly that it was as if she had
been listening for his voice. She came carrying the tin of water in
both little hands, and, lifting it very carefully, she tried to hold
it to his lips. Neither she nor McWha was quite successful in this,
however. While they were fumbling over it, Jimmy Brackett hurried in,
followed by the Boss, and Rosy-Lilly's nursing was superseded. The
Boss had to hold him up so that he could drink; and when he had
feverishly gulped about a quart, he lay back on his pillow with a huge
sigh, declaring weakly that he was all right.
"Ye got off mighty easy, Red," said the Boss, cheerfully, "considerin'
the heft o' the knot 'at hit ye. But you McWhas was always hard to
kill."
McWha's hand was drooping loosely over the edge of the bunk. He felt
the child's tiny fingers brushing it again softly and tenderly. Then
he felt her lips upon it, and the sensation was so novel that he quite
forgot to reply to the Boss's pleasantry.
That night McWha was so much better that when he insisted on being
removed to his own bunk on the plea that he "didn't feel at home in a
cupboard like," the Boss consented. Next day he wanted to go back to
work, but the Boss was derisively inexorable, and for two days McWha
was kept a prisoner.
During this time Jimmy Brackett, with severe and detailed admonition,
kept Rosy-Lilly from again obtruding upon the patient's leisure; and
McWha had nothing to do but smoke and whittle. He whittled diligently,
but let no one see what he was making. Then, borrowing a small tin cup
from the cook, he fussed over the stove with some dark, smelly
decoction of tobacco-juice and ink. Rosy-Lilly was consumed with
curiosity, especially when she saw him apparently digging beads off an
Indian tobacco-pouch which he always carried. But she did not go near
enough to get enlightened as to his mysterious occupation.
On the following day McWha went to work again, but not till after
breakfast, when the others had long departed. Rosy-Lilly, with one
hand twisted in her little apron, was standing in the doorway as he
passed out. She glanced up at him with the most coaxing smile in her
whole armoury of allurements. McWha would not look at her, and his
face was as sullenly harsh as ever; but as he passed he slipped
something into her hand. To her speechless delight, it proved to be a
little dark-brown wooden doll, daintily carved, and with two white
beads, with black centres, cunningly set into its face for eyes.
Rosy-Lilly hugged the treasure to her breast. Her first proud impulse
was to run to Jimmy Brackett with it. But a subtler instinct withheld
her. The gift had been bestowed in such a surreptitious way that she
felt it to be somehow a kind of secret. She carried it away and hid it
in her bunk, where she would go and look at it from time to time
throughout the day. That night she brought it forth, but with several
other treasures, so that it quite escaped comment. She said nothing
about it to McWha, but she played with it when he could not help
seeing it. And thereafter her "nigger-baby" was always in her arms.
This compliment, however, was apparently all lost on McWha, who had
again grown unconscious of her existence. And Rosy-Lilly, on her part,
no longer strove to win his attention. She was content either with the
victory she had won, or with the secret understanding which, perforce,
now existed between them. And things went on smoothly in the camp,
with every one now too occupied to do more than mind his own
business.
It chanced this year that the spring thaws were early and unusually
swift, warm rains alternating with hot, searching sunshine which
withered and devoured the snow. The ice went out with a rush in the
rapidly rising Ottanoonsis; and from every brookside "landing" the
logs came down in black, tumbling swarms. Just below Conroy's Camp the
river wallowed round a narrow bend, tangled with slate ledges. It was
a nasty place enough at low water, but in freshet a roaring terror to
all the river-men. When the logs were running in any numbers, the bend
had to be watched with vigilance lest a jam should form, and the
waters be dammed back, and the lumber get "hung up" all over the
swamps of the upper reaches.
And here, now, in spite of the frantic efforts of Dave Logan and his
crew, the logs suddenly began to jam. Pitching downward as if
propelled by a pile-driver, certain great timbers drove their ends
between the upstanding strata of the slate, and held against the
torrent till others came and wedged them securely. The jam began
between two ledges in midstream, where no one could get near it. In a
few minutes the interlocked mass stretched from bank to bank, with the
torrent spurting and spouting through it in furious milk-white jets.
Log after log was chopped free by the axemen along the shore, but the
mass remained unshaken. Meanwhile the logs were gathering swiftly
behind, ramming down and solidifying the whole structure, and damming
back the flood till its heavy thunder diminished to the querulous
rattling of a mill-race. In a short time the river was packed solid
from shore to shore for several hundred yards above the brow of the
jam; and above that again the waters were rising at a rate which
threatened in a few hours to flood the valley and sweep away the camp
itself.
At this stage of affairs the Boss, axe in hand, picked his way across
the monstrous tangle of the face of the jam between the great white
jets, till he gained the centre of the structure. Here his practised
eye, with the aid of a perilous axe-stroke here and there,--strokes
which might possibly bring the whole looming mass down upon him in a
moment,--presently located the timbers which held the structure firm,
"the key-logs," as the men call them. These he marked with his axe.
Then, returning to the shore, he called for two volunteers to dare the
task of cutting these key-logs away.
Such a task is the most perilous that a lumberman, in all his daring
career, can be called upon to perform. So perilous is it that it is
always left to volunteers. Dave Logan had some brilliant feats of
jam-breaking to his credit, from the days before he was made a Boss;
and now, when he called for volunteers, every unmarried man in camp
responded, with the exception, of course, of Walley Johnson, whose
limited vision unfitted him for such a venture. The Boss chose Bird
Pigeon and Andy White, because they were not only "smart" axemen, but
also adepts in the river-men's games of "running logs."
With a jaunty air the two young men spat on their hands, gripped their
axes, and sprang out along the base of the jam. Every eye in camp was
fixed upon them with a fearful interest as they plied their heavy
blades. It was heroic, of a magnificence of valour seldom equalled on
any field, the work of these two, chopping coolly out there in the
daunting tumult, under that colossal front of death. Their duty was
nothing less than to bring the toppling brow of the jam down upon
them, yet cheat Fate at the last instant, if possible, by leaping to
shore before the chaos quite overwhelmed them.
Suddenly, while the two key-logs were not yet half cut through, the
trained eye of the Boss detected a settling near the top of the jam.
His yell of warning tore through the clamour of the waters. At the
instant came a vast grumbling, like underground thunder, not loud
apparently, yet dulling all other sounds. The two choppers sprang
wildly for shore, as the whole face of the jam seemed to crumble in a
breath.
At this moment a scream of terror was heard--and every heart stopped.
Some thirty yards or so upstream, and a dozen, perhaps, from shore,
stood Rosy-Lilly, on a log. While none were observing her she had
gleefully clambered out over the solid mass, looking for spruce-gums.
But now, when the logs moved, she was so terror-stricken that she
could not even try to get ashore. She just fell down upon her log, and
clung to it, screaming.
A groan of horror went up. The awful grinding of the break-up was
already under way. To every trained eye it was evident that there was
no human possibility of reaching the child, much less of saving her.
To attempt it would be such a madness as to jump into the hopper of a
mill. The crowd surged to the edge--and sprang back as the nearest
logs bounded up at them. Except Walley Johnson. He leaped wildly out
upon the nearest logs, fell headforemost, and was dragged back,
fighting furiously, by a dozen inexorable hands.
Just as Johnson went down, there arose a great bellowing cry of rage
and anguish; then Red McWha's big form shot past, leaping far out upon
the logs. Over the sickening upheaval he bounded this way and that,
with miraculous sure-footedness. He reached the pitching log whereon
Rosy-Lilly still clung. He clutched her by the frock. He tucked her
under one arm like a rag-baby. Then he turned, balancing himself for
an instant, and came leaping back towards shore.
A great shout of wonder and joy went up--to be hushed in a second as a
log reared high in McWha's path and hurled him backwards. Right down
into the whirl of the dreadful grist he sank. But with a strength that
seemed more than human he recovered himself, climbed forth dripping,
and came on again with those great, unerring leaps. This time there
was no shout. The men waited with dry throats. They saw that his ruddy
face had gone white as chalk. Within two feet of shore a log toward
which he had jumped was jerked aside just before he reached it, and,
turning in the air as he fell, so as to save the child, he came down
across it on his side with stunning violence. As he fell the Boss and
Brackett and two of the others sprang out to meet him. They reached
him somehow, and covered with bruises which they did not feel,
succeeded in dragging him, with his precious burden, up from the
grinding hell to safety. When his feet touched solid ground he sank
unconscious, but with his arm so securely gripped about the child that
they had difficulty in loosing his hold.
Rosy-Lilly, when they picked her up, was quivering with terror, but
unharmed. When she saw McWha stretched out upon the bank motionless,
with his eyes shut and his white lips half open, she fought savagely
to be put down. She ran and flung herself down beside her rescuer,
caught his big white face between her tiny hands, and fell to kissing
him. Presently McWha opened his eyes, and with a mighty effort rose
upon one elbow. A look of embarrassment passed over his face as he
glanced at the men standing about him. Then he looked down at
Rosy-Lilly, grinned with a shamefaced tenderness, and pulled her
gently towards him.
"I'm right--glad--ye--" he began with painful effort. But before he
could complete the sentence his eyes changed, and he fell back with a
clicking gasp.
Jimmy Brackett, heedless of her wailing protests, snatched up
Rosy-Lilly, and carried her back to the camp.