Orde had reconnoitred the river as a general reconnoitres his
antagonist, and had made his dispositions as the general disposes of his
army, his commissary, his reserves. At this point five men could keep
the river clear; at that rapid it would require twenty; there a dozen
would suffice for ordinary contingencies, and yet an emergency might
call for thirty--those thirty must not be beyond reach. In his mind's
eye he apportioned the sections of the upper river. Among the remoter
wildernesses every section must have its driving camp. The crews of
each, whether few or many, would be expected to keep clear and running
their own “beats” on the river. As far as the rear crew should overtake
these divisions, either it would absorb them or the members of them
would be thrown forward beyond the lowermost beat, to take charge of a
new division down stream. When the settled farm country or the little
towns were reached, many of the driving camps would become unnecessary;
the men could be boarded out at farms lying in their beats. A continual
advance would progress toward the Lake, the drive crews passing and
repassing each other like pigeons in the sown fields. Each of these
sections would be in charge of a foreman, whose responsibility ceased
with the delivery of the logs to the men next below. A walking boss
would trudge continually the river trail, or ride the logs down stream,
holding the correlation of these many units. Orde himself would drive up
and down the river, overseeing the whole plan of campaign, throwing the
camps forward, concentrating his forces here, spreading them elsewhere,
keeping accurately in mind the entire situation so that he could say
with full confidence: “Open Dam Number One for three hours at nine
o'clock; Dam Number Two for two hours and a half at ten thirty,” and so
on down the line; sure that the flood waters thus released would arrive
at the right moment, would supplement each other, and would so space
themselves as to accomplish the most work with the least waste. In that
one point more than in any other showed the expert. The water was his
ammunition, a definite and limited quantity of it. To “get the logs out
with the water” was the last word of praise to be said for the river
driver. The more logs, the greater the glory.
Thus it can readily be seen, this matter was rather a campaign than a
mere labour, requiring the men, the munitions, the organisation, the
tactical ability, the strategy, the resourcefulness, the boldness, and
the executive genius of a military commander.
To all these things, and to the distribution of supplies and implements
among the various camps, Orde had attended. The wanigan for the rear
crew was built. The foremen and walking boss had been picked out.
Everything was in readiness. Orde was satisfied with the situation
except that he found himself rather short-handed. He had counted on
three hundred men for his crews, but scrape and scratch as he would, he
was unable to gather over two hundred and fifty. This matter was not
so serious, however, as later, when the woods camps should break up, he
would be able to pick up more workmen.
“They won't be rivermen like my old crew, though,” said Orde regretfully
to Tom North, the walking boss. “I'd like to steal a few from some of
those Muskegon outfits.”
Until the logs should be well adrift, Orde had resolved to boss the rear
crew himself.
As the rear was naturally the farthest up stream, Orde had taken also
the contract to break the rollways belonging to Carlin, which in the
season's work would be piled up on the bank. Thus he could get to work
immediately at the break-up, and without waiting for some one else. The
seven or eight million feet of lumber comprised in Carlin's drive would
keep the men below busy until the other owners, farther down and up the
tributaries, should also have put their season's cut afloat.
The ice went out early, to Orde's satisfaction. As soon as the river
ran clear in its lower reaches he took his rear crew in to Carlin's
rollways.
This crew was forty in number, and had been picked from the best--a
hard-bitten, tough band of veterans, weather beaten, scarred in numerous
fights or by the backwoods scourge of small-pox, compact, muscular,
fearless, loyal, cynically aloof from those not of their cult,
out-spoken and free to criticise--in short, men to do great things under
the strong leader, and to mutiny at the end of three days under the
weak. They piled off the train at Sawyer's, stamped their feet on the
board platform of the station, shouldered their “turkeys,” and straggled
off down the tote-road. It was an eighteen-mile walk in. The ground had
loosened its frost. The footing was ankle-deep in mud and snow-water.
Next morning, bright and early, the breaking of the rollways began.
During the winter the logs had been hauled down ice roads to the river,
where they were “banked” in piles twenty, and even thirty, feet in
height. The bed of the stream itself was filled with them for a mile,
save in a narrow channel left down through the middle to allow for some
flow of water; the banks were piled with them, side on, ready to roll
down at the urging of the men.
First of all, the entire crew set itself, by means of its peavies, to
rolling the lower logs into the current, where they were rapidly borne
away. As the waters were now at flood, this was a quick and easy labour.
Occasionally some tiers would be stuck together by ice, in which case
considerable prying and heaving was necessary in order to crack them
apart. But forty men, all busily at work, soon had the river full. Orde
detailed some six or eight to drop below in order that the river might
run clear to the next section, where the next crew would take up the
task. These men, quite simply, walked to the edges of the rollway,
rolled a log apiece into the water, stepped aboard, leaned against their
peavies, and were swept away by the swift current. The logs on which
they stood whirled in the eddies, caromed against other timbers,
slackened speed, shot away; never did the riders alter their poses of
easy equilibrium. From time to time one propelled his craft ashore
by hooking to and pushing against other logs. There he stood on some
prominent point, leaning his chin contemplatively against the thick
shaft of his peavy, watching the endless procession of the logs drifting
by. Apparently he was idle, but in reality his eyes missed no shift of
the ordered ranks. When a slight hitch or pause, a subtle change in the
pattern of the brown carpet caught his attention, he sprang into life.
Balancing his peavy across his body, he made his way by short dashes
to the point of threatened congestion. There, working vigorously, swept
down stream with the mass, he pulled, hauled, and heaved, forcing the
heavy, reluctant timbers from the cohesion that threatened trouble
later. Oblivious to his surroundings, he wrenched and pried desperately.
The banks of the river drifted by. Point succeeded point, as though
withdrawn up stream by some invisible manipulator. The river appeared
stationary, the banks in motion. Finally he heard at his elbow the voice
of the man stationed below him, who had run out from his own point.
“Hullo, Bill,” he replied to this man, “you old slough hog! Tie into
this this!”
“All the time!” agreed Bill cheerfully.
In a few moments the danger was averted, the logs ran free. The rivermen
thereupon made their uncertain way back to shore, where they took the
river trail up stream again to their respective posts.
At noon they ate lunches they had brought with them in little canvas
bags, snatched before they left the rollways from a supply handy by the
cook. In the meantime the main crew were squatting in the lea of the
brush, devouring a hot meal which had been carried to them in wooden
boxes strapped to the backs of the chore boys. Down the river and up its
tributaries other crews, both in the employ of Newmark and Orde and of
others, were also pausing from their cold and dangerous toil. The river,
refreshed after its long winter, bent its mighty back to the great
annual burden laid upon it.
By the end of the second day the logs actually in the bed of the stream
had been shaken loose, and a large proportion of them had floated
entirely from sight. It now became necessary to break down the rollways
piled along the tops of the banks.
The evening of this day, however, Orde received a visit from Jim
Denning, the foreman of the next section below, bringing with him
Charlie, the cook of Daly's last year's drive. Leaving him by the larger
fire, Jim Denning drew his principal one side.
“This fellow drifted in to-night two days late after a drunk, and he
tells an almighty queer story,” said he. “He says a crew of bad men
from the Saginaw, sixty strong, have been sent in by Heinzman. He says
Heinzman hired them to come over not to work, but just to fight and
annoy us.”
“That so?” said Orde. “Well, where are they?”
“Don't know. But he sticks by his story, and tells it pretty straight.”
“Bring him over, and let's hear it,” said Orde.
“Hullo, Charlie!” he greeted the cook when the latter stood before him.
“What's this yarn Jim's telling me?”
“It's straight, Mr. Orde,” said the cook. “There's a big crew brought in
from the Saginaw Waters to do you up. They're supposed to be over here
to run his drive, but really they're goin' to fight and raise hell. For
why would he want sixty men to break out them little rollways of his'n
up at the headwaters?”
“Is that where they've gone?” asked Orde like a flash.
“Yes, sir. And he only owns a 'forty' up there, and it ain't more'n half
cut, anyway.”
“I didn't know he owned any.”
“Yes, sir. He bought that little Johnson piece last winter. I been
workin' up there with a little two-horse crew since January. We didn't
put up more'n a couple hundred thousand.”
“Is he breaking out his rollways below?” Orde asked Denning.
“No, sir,” struck in Charlie, “he ain't.”
“How do you happen to be so wise?” inquired Orde, “Seems to me you know
about as much as old man Solomon.”
“Well,” explained Charlie, “you see it's like this. When I got back from
the woods last week, I just sort of happened into McNeill's place. I
wasn't drinkin' a drop!” he cried virtuously, in answer to Orde's smile.
“Of course not,” said Orde. “I was just thinking of the last time we
were in there together.”
“That's just it!” cried Charlie. “They was always sore at you about
that. Well, I was lyin' on one of those there benches back of the
'Merican flags in the dance hall 'cause I was very sleepy, when in blew
old man Heinzman and McNeill himself. I just lay low for black ducks
and heard their talk. They took a look around, but didn't see no one, so
they opened her up wide.”
“What did you hear?” asked Orde.
“Well, McNeill he agreed to get a gang of bad ones from the Saginaw to
run in on the river, and I heard Heinzman tell him to send 'em in to
headwaters. And McNeill said, 'That's all right about the cash, Mr.
Heinzman, but I been figgerin' on gettin' even with Orde for some
myself.'”
“Is that all?” inquired Orde.
“That's about all,” confessed Charlie.
“How do you know he didn't hire them to carry down his drive for him?
He'd need sixty men for his lower rollways, and maybe they weren't all
to go to headwaters?” asked Orde by way of testing Charlie's beliefs.
“He's payin' them four dollars a day,” replied Charlie simply. “Now,
who'd pay that fer just river work?”
Orde nodded at Jim Denning.
“Hold on, Charlie,” said he. “Why are you giving all this away if you
were working for Heinzman?”
“I'm working for you now,” replied Charlie with dignity. “And, besides,
you helped me out once yourself.”
“I guess it's a straight tip all right,” said Orde to Denning, when the
cook had resumed his place by the fire.
“That's what I thought. That's why I brought him up.”
“If that crew's been sent in there, it means only one thing at that end
of the line,” said Orde.
“Sure. They're sent up to waste out the water in the reservoir and hang
this end of the drive,” replied Denning.
“Correct,” said Orde. “The old skunk knows his own rollways are so far
down stream that he's safe, flood water or no flood water.”
A pause ensued, during which the two smoked vigorously.
“What are you going to do about it?” asked Denning at last.
“What would you do?” countered Orde.
“Well,” said Denning slowly, and with a certain grim joy, “I don't bet
those Saginaw river-pigs are any more two-fisted than the boys on this
river. I'd go up and clean 'em out.”
“Won't do,” negatived Orde briefly. “In the first place, as you know
very well, we're short-handed now, and we can't spare the men from the
work. In the second place, we'd hang up sure, then; to go up in that
wilderness, fifty miles from civilisation, would mean a first-class row
of too big a size to handle. Won't do!”
“Suppose you get a lawyer,” suggested Denning sarcastically.