The next morning dawned clear and breathless. Before daylight the
pessimistic cook was out, his fire winking bravely against the darkness.
His only satisfaction of the long day came when he aroused the men from
the heavy sleep into which daily toil plunged them. With the first light
the entire crew were at the banks of the river.
As soon as the wind died the logs had begun to drift slowly out into
the open water. The surface of the pond was covered with the scattered
timbers floating idly. After a few moments the clank of the bars and
ratchet was heard as two of the men raised the heavy sluice-gate on the
dam. A roar of water, momently increasing, marked the slow rise of the
barrier. A very imaginative man might then have made out a tendency
forward on the part of those timbers floating nearest the centre of the
pond. It was a very sluggish tendency, however, and the men watching
critically shook their heads.
Four more had by this time joined the two men who had raised the
gate, and all together, armed with long pike poles, walked out on the
funnel-shaped booms that should concentrate the logs into the chute.
Here they prodded forward the few timbers within reach, and waited for
more.
These were a long time coming. Members of the driving crew leaped
shouting from one log to another. Sometimes, when the space across
was too wide to jump, they propelled a log over either by rolling it,
paddling it, or projecting it by the shock of a leap on one end. In
accomplishing these feats of tight-rope balance, they stood upright and
graceful, quite unconscious of themselves, their bodies accustomed
by long habit to nice and instant obedience to the almost unconscious
impulses of the brain. Only their eyes, intent, preoccupied, blazed out
by sheer will-power the unstable path their owners should follow. Once
at the forefront of the drive, the men began vigorously to urge the logs
forward. This they accomplished almost entirely by main strength, for
the sluggish current gave them little aid. Under the pressure of their
feet as they pushed against their implements, the logs dipped, rolled,
and plunged. Nevertheless, they worked as surely from the decks of these
unstable craft as from the solid earth itself.
In this manner the logs in the centre of the pond were urged forward
until, above the chute, they caught the slightly accelerated current
which should bring them down to the pike-pole men at the dam.
Immediately, when this stronger influence was felt, the drivers
zigzagged back up stream to start a fresh batch. In the meantime a great
many logs drifted away to right and left into stagnant water, where
they lay absolutely motionless. The moving of them was deferred for the
“sacking crew,” which would bring up the rear.
Jack Orde wandered back and forth over the work, his hands clasped
behind his back, a short pipe clenched between his teeth. To the edge of
the drive he rode the logs, then took to the bank and strolled down
to the dam. There he stood for a moment gazing aimlessly at the water
making over the apron, after which he returned to the work. No cloud
obscured the serene good-nature of his face. Meeting Tom North's
troubled glance, he grinned broadly.
“Told you we'd have Johnson on our necks,” he remarked, jerking his
thumb up river toward a rapidly approaching figure.
This soon defined itself as a tall, sun-reddened, very blond individual
with a choleric blue eye.
“What in hell's the matter here?” he yelled, as soon as he came within
hearing distance.
Orde made no reply, but stood contemplating the newcomer with a flicker
of amusement.
“What in hell's the matter?” repeated the latter violently.
“Better go there and inquire,” rejoined Orde drolly. “What ails you,
Johnson?”
“We're right at your rear,” cried the other, “and you ain't even made a
start gettin' through this dam! We'll lose the water next! Why in hell
ain't you through and gone?”
“Keep your shirt on,” advised Orde. “We're getting through as fast as
we can. If you want these logs pushed any faster, come down and do it
yourself.”
Johnson vouchsafed no reply, but splashed away over the logs, examining
in detail the progress of the work. After a little he returned within
hailing distance.
“If you can't get out logs, why do you take the job?” he roared, with
a string of oaths. “If you hang my drive, damn you, you'll catch it
for damages! It's gettin' to a purty pass when any old highbanker from
anywheres can get out and play jackstraws holdin' up every drive in the
river! I tell you our mills need logs, and what's more they're agoin' to
GIT them!”
He departed in a rumble of vituperation.
Orde laughed humorously at his foreman.
“Johnson gets so mad sometimes, his skin cracks,” he remarked.
“However,” he went on more seriously, “there's a heap in what he means,
if there ain't so much in what he says. I'll go labour with our old
friend below.”
He regained the bank, stopped to light his pipe, and sauntered, with
every appearance of leisure, down the bank, past the dam, to the mill
structure below.
Here he found the owner occupying a chair tilted back against the wall
of the building. His ruffled plug hat was thrust, as usual, well away
from his high and narrow forehead; the long broadcloth coat fell back to
reveal an unbuttoned waistcoat the flapping black trousers were hitched
up far enough to display woollen socks wrinkled about bony shanks. He
was whittling a pine stick, which he held pointing down between his
spread knees, and conversing animatedly with a young fellow occupying
another chair at his side.
“And there comes one of 'em now,” declaimed the old man dramatically.
Orde nodded briefly to the stranger, and came at once to business.
“I want to talk this matter over with you,” he began. “We aren't making
much progress. We can't afford to hang up the drive, and the water is
going down every day. We've got to have more water. I'll tell you what
we'll do: If you'll let us cut down the new sill, we'll replace it in
good shape when we get all our logs through.”
“No, sir!” promptly vetoed the old man.
“Well, we'll give you something for the privilege. What do you think is
fair?”
“I tell ye I'll give you your legal rights, and not a cent more,”
replied the old man, still quietly, but with quivering nostrils.
“What is your name?” asked Orde.
“My name is Reed, sir.”
“Well, Mr. Reed, stop and think what this means. It's a more serious
matter than you think. In a little while the water will be so low in the
river that it will be impossible to take out the logs this year. That
means a large loss, of course, as you know.”
“I don't know nothin' about the pesky business, and I don't wan to,”
snorted Reed.
“Well, there's borers, for one thing, to spoil a good many of the logs.
And think what it will mean to the mills. No logs means no lumber. That
is bankruptcy for a good many who have contracts to fulfil. And no logs
means the mills must close. Thousands of men will be thrown out of their
jobs, and a good many of them will go hungry. And with the stream full
of the old cutting, that means less to do next winter in the woods--more
men thrown out. Getting out a season's cut with the flood-water is
a pretty serious matter to a great many people, and if you insist on
holding us up here in this slack water the situation will soon become
alarming.”
“Ye finished?” demanded Reed grimly.
“Yes,” replied Orde.
The old man cast from him his half-whittled piece of pine. He closed his
jack-knife with a snap and thrust it in his pocket. He brought to earth
the front legs of his chair with a thump, and jammed his ruffled plug
hat to its proper place.
“And if the whole kit and kaboodle of ye starved out-right,” said he,
“it would but be the fulfillin' of the word of the prophet who says,
'So will I send upon you famine and evil beasts, and they shall bereave
thee, and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee; and I will bring
the sword upon thee. I the Lord have spoken it!'”
“That's your last word?” inquired Orde.
“That's my last word, and my first. Ye that make of God's smilin' land
waste places and a wilderness, by your own folly shall ye perish.”
“Good-day,” said Orde, whirling on his heel without further argument.
The young man, who had during this colloquy sat an interested and silent
spectator, arose and joined him. Orde looked at his new companion
a little curiously. He was a very slender young man, taut-muscled,
taut-nerved, but impassive in demeanour. He possessed a shrewd, thin
face, steel-gray, inscrutable eyes behind glasses. His costume was quite
simply an old gray suit of business clothes and a gray felt hat. At the
moment he held in his mouth an unlighted and badly chewed cigar.
“Nice, amiable old party,” volunteered Orde with a chuckle.
“Seems to be,” agreed the young man drily.
“Well, I reckon we'll just have to worry along without him,” remarked
Orde, striking his steel caulks into the first log and preparing to
cross out into the river where the work was going on.
“Wait a minute,” said the young fellow. “Have you any objections to my
hanging around a little to watch the work? My name is Newmark--Joseph
Newmark. I'm out in this country a good deal for my health. This thing
interests me.”
“Sure,” replied Orde, puzzled. “Look all you want to. The scenery's
free.”
“Yes. But can you put me up? Can I get a chance to stay with you a
little while?”
“Oh, as far as I'm concerned,” agreed Orde heartily. “But,” he
supplemented with one of his contagious chuckles, “I'm only river-boss.
You'll have to fix it up with the doctor--the cook, I mean,” he
explained, as Newmark look puzzled. “You'll find him at camp up behind
that brush. He's a slim, handsome fellow, with a jolly expression of
countenance.”
He leaped lightly out over the bobbing timbers, leaving Newmark to find
his way.
In the centre of the stream the work had been gradually slowing down to
a standstill with the subsidence of the first rush of water after the
sluice-gate was opened. Tom North, leaning gracefully against the shaft
of a peavy, looked up eagerly as his principal approached.
“Well, Jack,” he inquired, “is it to be peace or war?”
“War,” replied Orde briefly.