Orde tramped back to Sawyer's early next morning, hitched into the light
buckboard the excellent team with which later, when the drive should
spread out, he would make his longest jumps, and drove to head-waters.
He arrived in sight of the dam about three o'clock. At the edge of the
clearing he pulled up to survey the scene.
A group of three small log-cabins marked the Johnson, and later the
Heinzman, camp. From the chimneys a smoke arose. Twenty or thirty
rivermen lounged about the sunny side of the largest structure. They
had evidently just arrived, for some of their “turkeys” were still piled
outside the door. Orde clucked to his horses, and the spidery wheels of
the buckboard swung lightly over the wet hummocks of the clearing, to
come to a stop opposite the men. Orde leaned forward against his knees.
“Hullo, boys!” said he cheerfully.
No one replied, though two or three nodded surlily. Orde looked them
over with some interest.
They were a dirty, unkempt, unshaven, hard-looking lot, with bloodshot
eyes, a flicker of the dare-devil in expression, beyond the first youth,
hardened into an enduring toughness of fibre--bad men from the Saginaw,
in truth, and, unless Orde was mistaken, men just off a drunk, and
therefore especially dangerous; men eager to fight at the drop of
the hat, or sooner, to be accommodating, and ready to employ in
their assaults all the formidable and terrifying weapons of the
rough-and-tumble; reckless, hard, irreverrent, blasphemous, to be gained
over by no words, fair or foul; absolutely scornful of any and all
institutions imposed on them by any other but the few men whom they
acknowledged as their leaders. And to master these men's respect
there needed either superlative strength, superlative recklessness, or
superlative skill.
“Who's your boss?” asked Orde.
“The Rough Red,” growled one of the men without moving.
Orde had heard of this man, of his personality and his deeds. Like
Silver Jack of the Muskegon, his exploits had been celebrated in song. A
big, broad-faced man, with a red beard, they had told him, with little,
flickering eyes, a huge voice that bellowed through the woods in a
torrent of commands and imprecations, strong as a bull, and savage as
a wild beast. A hint of his quality will suffice from the many stories
circulated about him. It was said that while jobbing for Morrison and
Daly, in some of that firm's Saginaw Valley holdings, the Rough Red had
discovered that a horse had gone lame. He called the driver of that team
before him, seized an iron starting bar, and with it broke the man's
leg. “Try th' lameness yourself, Barney Mallan,” said he. To appeal to
the charity of such a man would be utterly useless. Orde saw this point.
He picked up his reins and spoke to his team.
But before the horses had taken three steps, a huge riverman had planted
himself squarely in the way. The others rising, slowly surrounded the
rig.
“I don't know what you're up here for,” growled the man at the horses'
heads, “but you wanted to see the boss, and I guess you'd better see
him.”
“I intend to see him,” said Orde sharply. “Get out of the way and let me
hitch my team.”
He drove deliberately ahead, forcing the man to step aside, and stopped
his horses by a stub. He tied them there and descended, to lean his back
also against the log walls of the little house.
After a few moments a huge form appeared above the river bank at some
forty rods' distance.
“Yonder he comes now,” vouchsafed the man nearest Orde.
Orde made out the great square figure of the boss, his soft hat, his
flaming red beard, his dingy mackinaw coat, his dingy black-and-white
checked flannel shirt, his dingy blue trousers tucked into high socks,
and, instead of driving boots, his ordinary lumberman's rubbers. As a
spot of colour, he wore a flaming red knit sash, with tassels. Before
he had approached near enough to be plainly distinguishable, he began
to bellow at the men, commanding them, with a mighty array of oaths,
to wake up and get the sluice-gate open. In a moment or so he had
disappeared behind some bushes that intervened in his approach to the
house. His course through them could be traced by the top of his cap,
which just showed above them. In a moment he thrust through the brush
and stood before Orde.
For a moment he stared at the young man, and then, with a wild Irish
yell, leaped upon him. Orde, caught unawares and in an awkward position,
was hardly able even to struggle against the gigantic riverman.
Indeed, before he had recovered his faculties to the point of offering
determined resistance, he was pinned back against the wall by his
shoulders, and the Rough Red's face was within two feet of his own.
“And how are ye, ye ould darlint?” shouted the latter, with a roll of
oaths.
“Why, Jimmy Bourke!” cried Orde, and burst into a laugh.
The Rough Red jerked him to his feet, delivered a bear hug that nearly
crushed his ribs, and pounded him mightily on the back.
“You ould snoozer!” he bellowed. “Where the blankety blank in blank did
you come from? Byes,” he shouted to the men, “it's me ould boss on th'
Au Sable six year back--that time, ye mind, whin we had th' ice jam!
Glory be! but I'm glad to see ye!”
Orde was still laughing.
“I didn't know you'd turned into the Rough Red, Jimmy,” said he. “I
don't believe we were either of us old enough for whiskers then, were
we?”
The Rough Red grinned.
“Thrue for ye!” said he. “And what have ye been doing all these years?”
“That's just it, Jimmy,” said Orde, drawing the giant one side, out of
ear-shot. “All my eggs are in one basket, and it's a mean trick of you
to hire out for filthy lucre to kick that basket.”
“What do ye mane?” asked the Rough Red, fixing his twinkling little eyes
on Orde.
“You don't mean to tell me,” countered Orde, glancing down at the
other's rubber-shod feet, “that this crew has been sent up here just to
break out those measly little rollways?”
“Thim?” said the Rough Red. “Thim? Hell, NO! Thim's my bodyguard. They
can lick their weight in wild cats, and I'd loike well to see the gang
of highbankers that infists this river thry to pry thim out. We weren't
sint here to wurrk; we were sint here to foight.”
“Fight? Why?” asked Orde.
“Oh, I dunno,” replied the Rough Red easily. “Me boss and the blank of a
blank blanked blank that's attimptin' to droive this river has some sort
of a row.”
“Jimmy,” said Orde, “didn't you know that I am the gentleman last
mentioned?”
“What!”
“I'm driving this river, and that's my dam-keeper you've got hid away
somewhere here, and that's my water you're planning to waste!”
“What?” repeated the Rough Red, but in a different tone of voice.
“That's right,” said Orde.
In a tone of vast astonishment, the Rough Red mentioned his probable
deserts in the future life.
“Luk here, Jack,” said he after a moment, “here's a crew of white-water
birlers that ye can't beat nowheres. What do you want us to do? We're
now gettin' four dollars a day AN' board from that murderin' ould
villain, Heinzman, SO WE CAN AFFORD TO WURRK FOR YOU CHEAP.”
Orde hesitated.
“Oh, please do now, darlint!” wheedled the Rough Red, his little eyes
agleam with mischief. “Sind us some oakum and pitch and we'll caulk yure
wanigan for ye. Or maybe some more peavies, and we'll hilp ye on yure
rollways. And till us, afore ye go, how ye want this dam, and that's the
way she'll be. Come, now, dear! and ain't ye short-handed now?”
Orde slapped his knee and laughed.
“This is sure one hell of a joke!” he cried.
“And ain't it now?” said the Rough Red, smiling with as much
ingratiation as he was able.
“I'll take you boys on,” said Orde at last, “at the usual wages--dollar
and a half for the jam, three for the rear. I doubt if you'll see much
of Heinzman's money when this leaks out.”