When Newmark awoke once more to interest in affairs, the morning was
well spent. On the river the work was going forward with the precision
of clockwork. The six-foot lowering of the sluice-way had produced a
fine current, which sucked the logs down from above. Men were busily
engaged in “sacking” them from the sides of the pond toward its centre,
lest the lowering water should leave them stranded. Below the dam
the jam crew was finding plenty to do in keeping them moving in the
white-water and the shallows. A fine sun, tempered with a prophetic
warmth of later spring, animated the scene. Reed had withdrawn to the
interior of his mill, and appeared to have given up the contest.
Some of the logs shot away down the current, running freely. To these
the crews were not required to pay any attention. With luck, a few of
the individual timbers would float ten, even twenty, miles before some
chance eddy or fortuitous obstruction would bring them to rest. Such
eddies and obstructions, however, drew a constant toll from the ranks of
the free-moving logs, so that always the volume of timbers floating
with the current diminished, and always the number of logs caught and
stranded along the sides of the river increased. To restore these to
the faster water was the especial province of the last and most expert
crew--the rear.
Orde discovered about noon that the jam crew was having its troubles.
Immediately below Reed's dam ran a long chute strewn with boulders,
which was alternately a shallow or a stretch of white-water according
as the stream rose or fell. Ordinarily the logs were flushed over this
declivity by opening the gate, behind which a head of water had
been accumulated. Now, however, the efficiency of the gate had been
destroyed. Orde early discovered that he was likely to have trouble in
preventing the logs rushing through the chute from grounding into a bad
jam on the rapids below.
For a time the jam crew succeeded in keeping the “wings” clear. In the
centre of the stream, however, a small jam formed, like a pier. Along
the banks logs grounded, and were rolled over by their own momentum into
places so shallow as to discourage any hope of refloating them unless
by main strength. As the sluicing of the nine or ten million feet that
constituted this particular drive went forward, the situation rapidly
became worse.
“Tom, we've got to get flood-water unless we want to run into an awful
job there,” said Orde to the foreman. “I wonder if we can't drop that
gate 'way down to get something for a head.”
The two men examined the chute and the sluice-gate attentively for some
time.
“If we could clear out the splinters and rubbish, we might spike a
couple of saplings on each side for the gate to slide down into,”
speculated North. “Might try her on.”
The logs were held up in the pond, and a crew of men set to work to cut
away, as well as they might in the rush of water, the splintered ends of
the old sill and apron. It was hard work. Newmark, watching, thought it
impracticable. The current rendered footing impossible, so all the work
had to be done from above. Wet wood gripped the long saws vice-like,
so that a man's utmost strength could scarcely budge them. The water
deadened the force of axe-blows. Nevertheless, with the sure persistence
of the riverman, they held to it. Orde, watching them a few moments,
satisfied himself that they would succeed, and so departed up river to
take charge of the rear.
This crew he found working busily among some overflowed woods. They
were herding the laggards of the flock. The subsidence of the water
consequent upon the opening of the sluice-gate had left stranded and in
shallows many hundreds of the logs. These the men sometimes, waist deep
in the icy water, owing to the extreme inequality of the bottom, were
rolling over and over with their peavies until once more they floated.
Some few the rivermen were forced to carry bodily, ten men to a side,
the peavies clamped in as handles. When once they were afloat, the task
became easier. From the advantage of deadwood, stumps, or other logs
the “sackers” pushed the unwieldy timbers forward, leaping, splashing,
heaving, shoving, until at last the steady current of the main river
seized the logs and bore them away. With marvellous skill they topped
the dripping, bobby, rolling timbers, treading them over and over, back
and forth, in unconscious preservation of equilibrium.
There was a good deal of noise and fun at the rear. The crew had been
divided, and a half worked on either side the river. A rivalry developed
as to which side should advance fastest in the sacking. It became
a race. Momentary success in getting ahead of the other fellow was
occasion for exultant crowing, while a mishap called forth ironic cheers
and catcalls from the rival camp. Just as Orde came tramping up the
trail, one of the rivermen's caulks failed to “bite” on an unusually
smooth, barked surface. His foot slipped; the log rolled; he tried in
vain to regain his balance, and finally fell in with a heavy splash.
The entire river suspended work to send up a howl of delight. As the
unfortunate crawled out, dripping from head to foot, he was greeted by
a flood of sarcasm and profane inquiry that left no room for even his
acknowledged talents of repartee. Cursing and ashamed, he made his way
ashore over the logs, spirting water at every step. There he wrung out
his woollen clothes as dry as he could, and resumed work.
Hardly had Orde the opportunity to look about at the progress making,
however, before he heard his name shouted from the bank. Looking up, to
his surprise he saw the solemn cook waving a frantic dish-towel at him.
Nothing could induce the cook to attempt the logs.
“What is it, Charlie?” asked Orde, leaping ashore and stamping the loose
water from his boots.
“It's all off,” confided the cook pessimistically. “It's no good. He's
stopped us now.”
“What's off? Who's stopped what?”
“Reed. He's druv the men from the dam with a shotgun. We might as well
quit.”
“Shotgun, hey!” exclaimed Orde. “Well, the old son of a gun!” He thought
a moment, his lips puckered as though to whistle; then, as usual, he
laughed amusedly. “Let's go take a look at the army,” said he.
He swung away at a round pace, followed rather breathlessly by the cook.
The trail led through the brush across a little flat point, up over a
high bluff where the river swung in, down to another point, and across a
pole trail above a marsh to camp.
A pole trail consists of saplings laid end to end, and supported three
or four feet above wet places by means of sawbuck-like structures at
their extremities. To a river-man or a tight-rope dancer they are easy
walks. All others must proceed cautiously in contrite memory of their
sins.
Orde marched across the first two lengths confidently enough. Then he
heard a splash and lamentations. Turning, he perceived Charlie, covered
with mud, in the act of clambering up one of the small trestles.
“Ain't got no caulks!” ran the lamentations. “The ---- of a ---- of a
pole-trail, anyways!”
He walked ahead gingerly, threw his hands aloft, bent forward, then
suddenly protruded his stomach, held out one foot in front of him,
spasmodically half turned, and then, realising the case hopeless, wilted
like a wet rag, to clasp the pole trail both by arm and leg. This saved
him from falling off altogether, but swung him underneath, where he
hung like the sloths in the picture-books. A series of violent wriggles
brought him, red-faced and panting, astride the pole, whence, his
feelings beyond mere speech, he sadly eyed his precious derby, which
lay, crown up, in the mud below.
Orde contemplated the spectacle seriously.
“Sorry I haven't got time to enjoy you just now, Charlie,” he remarked.
“I'd take it slower, if I were you.”
He departed, catching fragments of vows anent never going on any more
errands for nobody, and getting his time if ever again he went away from
his wanigan.
Orde stopped short outside the fringe of brush to utter another
irrepressible chuckle of amusement.
The centre of the dam was occupied by Reed. The old man was still in
full regalia, his plug hat fuzzier than ever, and thrust even farther
back on his head, his coat-tails and loose trousers flapping at his
every movement as he paced back and forth with military precision. Over
his shoulder he carried a long percussion-lock shotgun. Not thirty
feet away, perched along the bank, for all the world like a row of
cormorants, sat the rivermen, watching him solemnly and in silence.
“What's the matter?” inquired Orde, approaching.
The old man surveyed him with a snort of disgust.
“If the law of the land don't protect me, I'll protect myself, sir,” he
proclaimed. “I give ye fair warning! I ain't a-going to have my property
interfered with no more.”
“But surely,” said Orde, “we have a right to run our logs through. It's
an open river.”
“And hev ye been running your logs through?” cried the old man
excitedly. “Hev ye? First off ye begin to tear down my dam; and then,
when the river begins a-roarin' and a-ragin' through, then you tamper
with my improvements furthermore, a-lowerin' the gate and otherwise
a-modifyin' my structure.”
Orde stepped forward to say something further. Immediately Reed wheeled,
his thumb on the hammer.
“All right, old Spirit of '76,” replied Orde. “Don't shoot; I'll come
down.”
He walked back to the waiting row, smiling quizzically.
“Well, you calamity howlers, what do you think of it?”
Nobody answered, but everybody looked expectant.
“Think he'd shoot?” inquired Orde of Tom North.
“I know he would,” replied North earnestly. “That crazy-headed kind are
just the fellers to rip loose.”
“I think myself he probably would,” agreed Orde.
“Surely,” spoke up Newmark, “whatever the status of the damage suits,
you have the legal right to run your logs.”
Orde rolled a quizzical eye in his direction.
“Per-fect-ly correct, son,” he drawled, “but we're engaged in the happy
occupation of getting out logs. By the time the law was all adjusted and
a head of steam up, the water'd be down. In this game, you get out logs
first, and think about law afterward.”
“How about legal damages?” insisted Newmark.
“Legal damages!” scoffed Orde. “Legal damages! Why, we count legal
damages as part of our regular expenses--like potatoes. It's lucky it's
so,” he added. “If anybody paid any attention to legal technicalities,
there'd never be a log delivered. A man always has enemies.
“Well, what are you going to do?” persisted Newmark.
Orde thrust back his felt hat and ran his fingers through his short,
crisp hair.
“There you've got me,” he confessed, “but, if necessary, we'll pile the
old warrior.”
He walked to the edge of the dam and stood looking down current. For
perhaps a full minute he remained there motionless, his hat clinging to
one side, his hand in his hair. Then he returned to the grimly silent
rivermen.
“Boys,” he commanded briefly, “get your peavies and come along.”
He led the way past the mill to the shallows below.
“There's a trifle of wading to do,” he announced. “Bring down two
logs--fairly big--and hold them by that old snag,” he ordered. “Whoa-up!
Easy! Hold them end on--no, pointing up stream--fix 'em about ten foot
apart--that's it! George, drive a couple of stakes each side of them
to hold 'em. Correct! Now, run down a couple dozen more and pile them
across those two--side on to the stream, of course. Roll 'em up--that's
the ticket!”
Orde had been splashing about in the shallow water, showing where
each timber was to be placed. He drew back, eyeing the result with
satisfaction. It looked rather like a small and bristly pier.
Next he cast his eye about and discovered a partially submerged boulder
on a line with the newly completed structure. Against this he braced
the ends of two more logs, on which he once more caused to be loaded
at right angles many timbers. An old stub near shore furnished him the
basis of a third pier. He staked a thirty-inch butt for a fourth; and
so on, until the piers, in conjunction with the small centre jam already
mentioned, extended quite across the river.
All this was accomplished in a very short time, and immediately below
the mill, but beyond sight from the sluice-gate of the dam.
“Now, boys,” commanded Orde, “shove off some shore logs, and let them
come down.”
“We'll have a jam sure,” objected Purdy stupidly.
“No, my son, would we?” mocked Orde. “I surely hope not!”
The stray logs floating down with the current the rivermen caught and
arranged to the best possible advantage about the improvised piers.
A good riverman understands the correlation of forces represented by
saw-logs and water-pressure. He knows how to look for the key-log in
breaking jams; and by the inverse reasoning, when need arises he can
form a jam as expertly as Koosy-oonek himself--that bad little god
who brings about the disagreeable and undesired--“who hides our pipes,
steals our last match, and brings rain on the just when they want to go
fishing.”
So in ten seconds after the shore logs began drifting down from above,
the jam was taking shape. Slowly it formed, low and broad. Then, as the
water gathered pressure, the logs began to slip over one another. The
weight of the topmost sunk those beneath to the bed of the stream. This
to a certain extent dammed back the water. Immediately the pressure
increased. More logs were piled on top. The piers locked the structure.
Below the improvised dam the water fell almost to nothing, and above it,
swirling in eddies, grumbling fiercely, bubbling, gurgling, searching
busily for an opening, the river, turned back on itself, gathered its
swollen and angry forces.
“That will do, boys,” said Orde with satisfaction.
He led the way to the bank and sat down. The men followed his example.
Every moment the water rose, and each instant, as more logs came down
the current, the jam became more formidable.
“Nothing can stand that pressure,” breathed Newmark, fascinated.
“The bigger the pressure the tighter she locks,” replied Orde, lighting
his pipe.
The high bank where the men sat lay well above the reach of the water.
Not so the flat on which stood Reed's mill. In order to take full
advantage of the water-power developed by the dam, the old man had
caused his structure to be built nearly at a level with the stream.
Now the river, backing up, rapidly overflowed this flat. As the jam
tightened by its own weight and the accumulation of logs, the water
fairly jumped from the lowest floor of the mill to the one above.
Orde had not long to wait for Reed's appearance. In less than five
minutes the old man descended on the group, somewhat of his martial air
abated, and something of a vague anxiety manifest in his eye.
“What's the matter here?” he demanded.
“Matter?” inquired Orde easily. “Oh, nothing much, just a little jam.”
“But it's flooding my mill!”
“So I perceive,” replied Orde, striking a match.
“Well, why don't you break it?”
“Not interested.”
The old warrior ran up the bank to where he could get a good view of his
property. The water was pouring into the first-floor windows.
“Here!” he cried, running back. “I've a lot of grain up-stairs. It'll be
ruined!”
“Not interested,” repeated Orde.
Reed was rapidly losing control of himself.
“But I've got a lot of money invested here!” he shouted. “You miserable
blackguard, you're ruining me!”
Orde replaced his pipe.
Reed ran back and forth frantically, disappeared, returned bearing an
antiquated pike-pole, and single-handed and alone attacked the jam!
Astonishment and delight held the rivermen breathless for a moment. Then
a roar of laughter drowned even the noise of the waters. Men pounded
each other on the back, rolled over and over, clutching handfuls of
earth, struggled weak and red-faced for breath as they saw against the
sky-line of the bristling jam the lank, flapping figure with the old
plug hat pushing frantically against the immovable statics of a mighty
power. The exasperation of delay, the anxiety lest success be lost
through the mulish and narrow-minded obstinacy of one man, the
resentment against another obstacle not to be foreseen and not to be
expected in a task redundantly supplied with obstacles of its own--these
found relief at last.
“By Jove!” breathed Newmark softly to himself. “Don Quixote and the
windmills!” Then he added vindictively, “The old fool!” although, of
course, the drive was not his personal concern.
Only Orde seemed to see the other side. And on Orde the responsibility,
uncertainty, and vexation had borne most heavily, for the success of the
undertaking was in his hands. With a few quick leaps he had gained the
old man's side.
“Look here, Reed,” he said kindly, “you can't break this jam. Come
ashore now, and let up. You'll kill yourself.”
Reed turned to him, a wild light in his eye.
“Break it!” he pleaded. “You're ruining me. I've got all my money in
that mill.”
“Well,” said Orde, “we've got a lot of money in our logs too. You
haven't treated us quite right.”
Reed glanced frantically toward the flood up stream.
“Come,” said Orde, taking him gently by the arm. “There's no reason you
and I shouldn't get along together all right. Maybe we're both a little
hard-headed. Let's talk it over.”
He led the old man ashore, and out of earshot of the rivermen.
At the end of ten minutes he returned.
“War's over, boys!” he shouted cheerfully. “Get in and break that jam.”
At once the crew swarmed across the log barrier to a point above the
centre pier. This they attacked with their peavies, rolling the top logs
off into the current below. In less than no time they had torn out
quite a hole in the top layer. The river rushed through the opening.
Immediately the logs in the wings were tumbled in from either side.
At first the men had to do all of the work, but soon the river itself
turned to their assistance. Timbers creaked and settled, or rose
slightly buoyant as the water loosened the tangle. Men trod on the edge
of expectation. Constantly the logs shifted, and as constantly the men
shifted also, avoiding the upheavals and grindings together, wary eyes
estimating the correlation of the forces into whose crushing reach a
single misstep would bring them. The movement accelerated each instant,
as the music of the play hastens to the climax. Wood fibres smashed.
The whole mass seemed to sink down and forward into a boiling of waters.
Then, with a creak and a groan, the jam moved, hesitated, moved again;
finally, urged by the frantic river, went out in a majestic crashing and
battering of logs.
At the first movement Newmark expected the rivermen to make their
escape. Instead, they stood at attention, their peavies poised, watching
cat-eyed the symptoms of the break. Twice or thrice several of the
men, observing something not evident to Newmark's unpractised eye, ran
forward, used their peavies vigorously for a moment or so, and stood
back to watch the result. Only at the very last, when it would seem that
some of them must surely he caught, did the river-jacks, using their
peavy-shafts as balancing poles, zigzag calmly to shore across the
plunging logs. Newmark seemed impressed.
“That was a close shave,” said he to the last man ashore.
“What?” inquired the riverman. “Didn't see it. Somebody fall down?”
“Why, no,” explained Newmark; “getting in off those logs without getting
caught.”
“Oh!” said the man indifferently, turning away.
The going out of the jam drained the water from the lower floors of the
mill; the upper stories and the grain were still safe.
By evening the sluice-gate had been roughly provided with pole guides
down which to slide to the bed of the river. The following morning saw
the work going on as methodically as ever. During the night a very
good head of water had gathered behind the lowered gate. The rear crew
brought down the afterguard of logs to the pond. The sluicers with their
long pike-poles thrust the logs into the chute. The jam crew, scattered
for many miles along the lower stretches, kept the drive going; running
out over the surface of the river like water-bugs to thrust apart logs
threatening to lock; leaning for hours on the shafts of their peavies
watching contemplatively the orderly ranks as they drifted by, sleepy,
on the bosom of the river; occasionally gathering, as the filling of
the river gave warning, to break a jam. By the end of the second day the
pond was clear, and as Charlie's wanigan was drifting toward the chute,
the first of Johnson's drive floated into the head of the pond.
V
Charlie's wanigan, in case you do not happen to know what such a thing
may be, was a scow about twenty feet long by ten wide. It was
very solidly constructed of hewn timbers, square at both ends, was
inconceivably clumsy, and weighed an unbelievable number of pounds.
When loaded, it carried all the bed-rolls, tents, provisions, cooking
utensils, tools, and a chest of tobacco, clothes, and other minor
supplies. It was managed by Charlie and his two cookees by means of
pike-poles and a long sweep at either end. The pike-poles assured
progress when the current slacked; the sweeps kept her head-on when
drifting with the stream.
Charlie's temperament was pessimistic at best. When the wanigan was
to be moved, he rose fairly to the heights of what might be called
destructive prophecy.
The packing began before the men had finished breakfast. Shortly after
daylight the wanigan, pushed strongly from shore by the pike-poles,
was drifting toward the chute. When the heavy scow threatened to turn
side-on, the sweeps at either end churned the water frantically in an
endeavour to straighten her out. Sometimes, by a misunderstanding, they
worked against each other. Then Charlie, raging from one to the other of
his satellites, frothed and roared commands and vituperations. His voice
rose to a shriek. The cookees, bewildered by so much violence, lost
their heads completely. Then Charlie abruptly fell to an exaggerated
calm. He sat down amidships on a pile of bags, and gazed with
ostentatious indifference out over the pond. Finally, in a voice fallen
almost to a whisper, and with an elaborate politeness, Charlie proffered
a request that his assistants acquire the sense God gave a rooster.
Newmark, who had elected to accompany the wanigan on its voyage,
evidently found it vastly amusing, for his eyes twinkled behind his
glasses. As the wanigan neared the sluice through which it must shoot
the flood-water, the excitement mounted to fever pitch. The water boiled
under the strokes of the long steering oars. The air swirled with the
multitude and vigour of Charlie's commands. As many of the driving crew
as were within distance gathered to watch. It was a supreme moment. As
Newmark looked at the smooth rim of the water sucking into the chute, he
began to wonder why he had come.
However, the noble ship was pointed right at last, and caught the faster
water head-on. Even Charlie managed to look cheerful for an instant, and
to grin at his passenger as he wiped his forehead with a very old, red
handkerchief.
“All right now,” he shouted.
Zeke and his mate took in the oars. The wanigan shot forward below the
gate--
WHACK! BUMP! BANG! and the scow stopped so suddenly that its four men
plunged forward in a miscellaneous heap, while Zeke narrowly escaped
going overboard. Almost immediately the water, backed up behind the
stern, began to overflow into the boat. Newmark, clearing his vision
as well as he could for lack of his glasses, saw that the scow had
evidently run her bow on an obstruction, and had been brought to a
standstill square beneath the sluice-gate. Men seemed to be running
toward them. The water was beginning to flow the entire length of the
boat. Various lighter articles shot past him and disappeared over the
side. Charlie had gone crazy and was grabbing at these, quite uselessly,
for as fast as he had caught one thing he let it go in favour of
another. The cookees, retaining some small degree of coolness, were
pushing uselessly with pike-poles.
Newmark had an inspiration. The more important matters, such as the
men's clothes-bags, the rolls of bedding, and the heavier supplies of
provisions, had not yet cut loose from their moorings, although the
rapid backing of the water threatened soon to convert the wanigan into
a chute for nearly the full volume of the current. He seized one of the
long oars, thrust the blade under the edge of a thwart astern laid the
shaft of the oar across the cargo, and by resting his weight on the
handle attempted to bring it down to bind the contents of the wanigan
to their places. The cookees saw what he was about, and came to his
assistance. Together they succeeded in bending the long hickory sweep
far enough to catch its handle-end under another, forward, thwart. The
second oar was quickly locked alongside the first, and not a moment too
soon. A rush of water forced them all to cling for their lives. The poor
old wanigan was almost buried by the river.
But now help was at hand. Two or three rivermen appeared at the edge of
the chute. A moment later old man Reed ran up, carrying a rope. This,
after some difficulty, was made fast to the bow of the wanigan. A dozen
men ran with the end of it to a position of vantage from which they
might be able to pull the bow away from the sunken obstruction, but
Orde, appearing above, called a halt. After consultation with
Reed, another rope was brought and the end of it tossed down to the
shipwrecked crew. Orde pointed to the stern of the boat, revolving his
hands in pantomime to show that the wanigan would be apt to upset if
allowed to get side-on when freed. A short rope led to the top of the
dam allowed the bow to be lifted free of the obstruction; a cable astern
prevented the current from throwing her broadside to the rush of waters;
another cable from the bow led her in the way she should go. Ten
minutes later she was pulled ashore out of the eddy below, very much
water-logged, and manned by a drenched and disgruntled crew.
But Orde allowed them little chance for lamentation.
“Hard luck!” he said briefly. “Hope you haven't lost much. Now get a
move on you and bail out. You've got to get over the shallows while this
head is on.”
“That's all the thanks you get,” grumbled Charlie to himself and the
other three as Orde moved away. “Work, slave, get up in the night,
drownd yourself--”
He happily discovered that the pails under the forward thwart had not
been carried away, and all started in to bail. It was a back-breaking
job, and consumed the greater part of two hours. Even at the end of that
time the wanigan, though dry of loose water, floated but sluggishly.
“'Bout two ton of water in them bed-rolls and turkeys,” grumbled
Charlie. “Well, get at it!”
Newmark soon discovered that the progress of the wanigan was looked upon
in the light of a side-show by the rivermen. Its appearance was
signal for shouts of delighted and ironic encouragement; its
tribulations--which at first, in the white-water, were many--the
occasion for unsympathetic and unholy joy. Charlie looked on all
spectators as enemies. Part of the time he merely glowered. Part of the
time he tried to reply in kind. To his intense disgust, he was taken
seriously in neither case.
In a couple of hours' run the wanigan had overtaken and left far behind
the rear of the drive. All about floated the logs, caroming gently one
against the other, shifting and changing the pattern of their brown
against the blue of the water. The current flowed strongly and smoothly,
but without obstruction. Everything went well. The banks slipped by
silently and mysteriously, like the unrolling of a panorama--little
strips of marshland, stretches of woodland where the great trees leaned
out over the river, thickets of overflowed swampland with the water
rising and draining among roots in a strange regularity of its own. The
sun shone warm. There was no wind. Newmark wrung out his outer
garments, and basked below the gunwale. Zeke and his companion pulled
spasmodically on the sweeps. Charlie, having regained his equanimity
together with his old brown derby, which he came upon floating sodden
in an eddy, marched up and down the broad gunwale with his pike-pole,
thrusting away such logs as threatened interference.
“Well,” said he at last, “we better make camp. We'll be down in the jam
pretty soon.”
The cookees abandoned the sweeps in favour of more pike-poles. By
pushing and pulling on the logs floating about them, they managed to
work the wanigan in close to the bank.
Charlie, a coil of rope in his hand, surveyed the prospects.
“We'll stop right down there by that little knoll,” he announced.
He leaped ashore, made a turn around a tree, and braced himself to snub
the boat, but unfortunately he had not taken into consideration the
“two ton” of water soaked up by the cargo. The weight of the craft
relentlessly dragged him forward. In vain he braced and struggled. The
end of the rope came to the tree; he clung for a moment, then let go,
and ran around the tree to catch it before it should slip into the
water.
By this time the wanigan had caught the stronger current at the bend and
was gathering momentum. Charlie tried to snub at a sapling, and broke
the sapling; on a stub, and uprooted the stub. Down the banks and
through the brush he tore at the end of his rope, clinging desperately,
trying at every solid tree to stop the career of his runaway, but in
every instance being forced by the danger of jamming his hands to let
go. Again he lost his derby. The landscape was a blur. Dimly he made
out the howls of laughter as the outfit passed a group of rivermen. Then
abruptly a ravine yawned before him, and he let go just in time to save
himself a fall. The wanigan, trailing her rope, drifted away.
Nor did she stop until she had overtaken the jam. There, her momentum
reduced by the closer crowding of the logs, she slowed down enough so
that Newmark and the cookees managed to work her to the bank and make
her fast.
That evening, after the wanigan's crew had accomplished a hard
afternoon's work pitching camp and drying blankets, the first of the
rear drifted in very late after a vain search for camp farther up
stream.
“For God's sake, Charlie,” growled one, “it's a wonder you wouldn't run
through to Redding and be done with it.”
Whereupon Charlie, who had been preternaturally calm all the afternoon,
uttered a shriek of rage, and with a carving-knife chased that man out
into the brush. Nor would he be appeased to the point of getting supper
until Orde himself had intervened.
“Well,” said Orde to Newmark later, around the campfire, “how does
river-driving strike you?”
“It is extremely interesting,” replied Newmark.
“Like to join the wanigan crew permanently?”
“No, thanks,” returned Newmark drily.
“Well, stay with us as long as you're having a good time,” invited Orde
heartily, but turning away from his rather uncommunicative visitor.
“Thank you,” Newmark acknowledged this, “I believe I will.”
“Well, Tommy,” called Orde across the fire to North, “I reckon we've got
to rustle some more supplies. That shipwreck of ours to-day mighty near
cleaned us out of some things. Lucky Charlie held his head and locked in
the bedding with those sweeps, or we'd have been strapped.”
“I didn't do it,” grumbled Charlie. “It was him.”
“Oh!” Orde congratulated Newmark. “Good work! I'm tickled to death you
belonged to that crew.”
“That old mossback Reed was right on deck with his rope,” remarked
Johnny Simms. “That was pretty decent of him.”
“Old skunk!” growled North. “He lost us two days with his damn nonsense.
You let him off too easy, Jack.”
“Oh, he's a poor old devil,” replied Orde easily. “He means well enough.
That's the way the Lord made him. He can't help how he's made.”