Just where the bridge knits together the two little villages of Pleasant
River and Edgewood, the glassy mirror of the Saco broadens suddenly,
sweeping over the dam in a luminous torrent. Gushes of pure amber mark
the middle of the dam, with crystal and silver at the sides, and from
the seething vortex beneath the golden cascade the white spray dashes
up in fountains. In the crevices and hollows of the rocks the mad water
churns itself into snowy froth, while the foam-flecked torrent, deep,
strong, and troubled to its heart, sweeps majestically under the bridge,
then dashes between wooded shores piled high with steep masses of rock,
or torn and riven by great gorges.
There had been much rain during the summer, and the Saco was very
high, so on the third day of the Edgewood drive there was considerable
excitement at the bridge, and a goodly audience of villagers from both
sides of the river. There were some who never came, some who had no
fancy for the sight, some to whom it was an old story, some who were
too busy, but there were many to whom it was the event of events, a
never-ending source of interest.
Above the fall, covering the placid surface of the river, thousands of
logs lay quietly “in boom” until the “turning out” process, on the last
day of the drive, should release them and give them their chance
of display, their brief moment of notoriety, their opportunity of
interesting, amusing, exciting, and exasperating the onlookers by their
antics.
Heaps of logs had been cast up on the rocks below the dam, where they
lay in hopeless confusion, adding nothing, however, to the problem of
the moment, for they too bided their time. If they had possessed wisdom,
discretion, and caution, they might have slipped gracefully over the
falls and, steering clear of the hidden ledges (about which it would
seem they must have heard whispers from the old pine trees along the
river), have kept a straight course and reached their destination
without costing the Edgewood Lumber Company a small fortune. Or, if
they had inclined toward a jolly and adventurous career, they could have
joined one of the various jams or “bungs,” stimulated by the thought
that any one of them might be a key-log, holding for a time the entire
mass in its despotic power. But they had been stranded early in the
game, and, after lying high and dry for weeks, would be picked off one
by one and sent downstream.
In the tumultuous boil, the foaming hubbub and flurry at the foot of
the falls, one enormous peeled log wallowed up and clown like a huge
rhinoceros, greatly pleasing the children by its clumsy cavortings. Some
conflict of opposing forces kept it ever in motion, yet never set it
free. Below the bridge were always the real battle-grounds, the scenes
of the first and the fiercest conflicts. A ragged ledge of rock,
standing well above the yeasty torrent, marked the middle of the
river. Stephen had been stranded there once, just at dusk, on a stormy
afternoon in spring. A jam had broken under the men, and Stephen, having
taken too great risks, had been caught on the moving mass, and, leaping
from log to log, his only chance for life had been to find a footing on
Gray Rock, which was nearer than the shore.
Rufus was ill at the time, and Mrs. Waterman so anxious and nervous
that processions of boys had to be sent up to the River Farm, giving the
frightened mother the latest bulletins of her son's welfare. Luckily,
the river was narrow just at the Gray Rock, and it was a quite possible
task, though no easy one, to lash two ladders together and make a narrow
bridge on which the drenched and shivering man could reach the shore.
There were loud cheers when Stephen ran lightly across the slender
pathway that led to safety--ran so fast that the ladders had scarce time
to bend beneath his weight. He had certainly “taken chances,” but when
did he not do that? The logger's life is one of “moving accidents by
flood and field,” and Stephen welcomed with wild exhilaration every
hazard that came in his path. To him there was never a dull hour from
the moment that the first notch was cut in the tree (for he sometimes
joined the boys in the lumber camp just for a frolic) till the later
one when the hewn log reached its final destination. He knew nothing
of “tooling” a four-in-hand through narrow lanes or crowded
thoroughfares,--nothing of guiding a horse over the hedges and through
the pitfalls of a stiff bit of hunting country; his steed was the
rearing, plunging, kicking log, and he rode it like a river god.
The crowd loves daring, and so it welcomed Stephen with bravos, but it
knew, as he knew, that he was only doing his duty by the Company, only
showing the Saco that man was master, only keeping the old Waterman name
in good repute. “Ye can't drownd some folks,” Old Kennebec had said, as
he stood in a group on the shore; “not without you tie sand-bags to 'em
an' drop 'em in the Great Eddy. I'm the same kind; I remember when I was
stranded on jest sech a rock in the Kennebec, only they left me there
all night for dead, an' I had to swim the rapids when it come daylight.”
“We're well acquainted with that rock and them rapids,” exclaimed one of
the river-drivers, to the delight of the company.
Rose had reason to remember Stephen's adventure, for he had clambered
up the bank, smiling and blushing under the hurrahs of the boys, and,
coming to the wagon where she sat waiting for her grandfather, had
seized a moment to whisper: “Did you care whether I came across safe,
Rose? Say you did!”
Stephen recalled that question, too, on this August morning; perhaps
because this was to be a red-letter day, and some time, when he had a
free moment,--some time before supper, when he and Rose were sitting
apart from the others, watching the logs,--he intended again to ask her
to marry him. This thought trembled in him, stirring the deeps of his
heart like a great wave, almost sweeping him off his feet when he held
it too close and let it have full sway. It would be the fourth time
that he had asked Rose this question of all questions, but there was
no unerceptible difference in his excitement, for there was always the
possible chance that she might change her mind and say yes, if only for
variety. Wanting a thing continuously, unchangingly, unceasingly, year
after year, he thought,--longing to reach it as the river longed to
reach the sea,--such wanting might, in course of time, mean having.
Rose drove up to the bridge with the men's luncheon, and the under boss
came up to take the baskets and boxes from the back of the wagon.
“We've had a reg'lar tussle this mornin', Rose,” he said. “The logs
are determined not to move. Ike Billings, that's the han'somest and
fluentest all-round swearer on the Saco, has tried his best on the side
jam. He's all out o' cuss-words and there hain't a log budged. Now, stid
o' dog-warpin' this afternoon, an' lettin' the oxen haul off all them
stubborn logs by main force, we're goin' to ask you to set up on the
bank and smile at the jam. 'Land! she can do it!' says Ike a minute ago.
'When Rose starts smilin',' he says, 'there ain't a jam nor a bung in
_me_ that don't melt like wax and jest float right off same as the logs
do when they get into quiet, sunny water.'”
Rose blushed and laughed, and drove up the hill to Mite Shapley's, where
she put up the horse and waited till the men had eaten their luncheon.
The drivers slept and had breakfast and supper at the Billings house, a
mile down-river, but for several years Mrs. Wiley had furnished the
noon meal, sending it down piping hot on the stroke of twelve. The boys
always said that up or down the whole length of the Saco there was
no such cooking as the Wileys', and much of this praise was earned by
Rose's serving. It was the old grandmother who burnished the tin
plates and dippers till they looked like silver; for--crotchety and
sharp-tongued as she was--she never allowed Rose to spoil her hands with
soft soap and sand: but it was Rose who planned and packed, Rose who
hemmed squares of old white table-cloths and sheets to line the baskets
and keep things daintily separate, Rose, also, whose tarts and cakes
were the pride and admiration of church sociables and sewing societies.
Where could such smoking pots of beans be found? A murmur of ecstatic
approval ran through the crowd when the covers were removed. Pieces of
sweet home-fed pork glistened like varnished mahogany on the top of the
beans, and underneath were such deeps of fragrant juice as come only
from slow fires and long, quiet hours in brick ovens. Who else could
steam and bake such mealy loaves of brown bread, brown as plum-pudding,
yet with no suspicion of sogginess? Who such soda biscuits, big,
feathery, tasting of cream, and hardly needing butter? And green-apple
pies! Could such candied lower crusts be found elsewhere, or more
delectable filling? Or such rich, nutty doughnuts?--doughnuts that had
spurned the hot fat which is the ruin of so many, and risen from its
waves like golden-brown Venuses.
“By the great seleckmen!” ejaculated Jed Towle, as he swallowed his
fourth, “I'd like to hev a wife, two daughters, and four sisters like
them Wileys, and jest set still on the river-bank an' hev 'em cook
victuals for me. I'd hev nothin' to wish for then but a mouth as big as
the Saco's.”
“And I wish this custard pie was the size o' Bonnie Eagle Pond,” said
Ike Billings. “I'd like to fall into the middle of it and eat my way
out!”
“Look at that bunch o' Chiny asters tied on t' the bail o' that
biscuit-pail!” said Ivory Dunn. “That's the girl's doin's, you bet;
women-folks don't seem to make no bo'quets after they git married. Let's
divide 'em up an' wear 'em drivin' this afternoon; mebbe they'll ketch
the eye so 't our rags won't show so bad. Land! it's lucky my hundred
days is about up! If I don't git home soon, I shall be arrested for
goin' without clo'es. I set up 'bout all night puttin' these blue
patches in my pants an' tryin' to piece together a couple of old
red-flannel shirts to make one whole one. That's the worst o' drivin' in
these places where the pretty girls make a habit of comin' down to the
bridge to see the fun. You hev to keep rigged up jest so stylish; you
can't git no chance at the rum bottle, an' you even hev to go a leetle
mite light on swearin'.”