All that day and the next night the fight was hand to hand, without the
opportunity of a breathing space. Then Orde, bareheaded and dishevelled,
strung to a high excitement, but cool as a veteran under fire, began to
be harassed by annoyances. The piles provided for the drivers gave out.
Newmark left, ostensibly to purchase more. He did not return. Tom North
and Jim Denning, their eyes burning deep in their heads for lack of
sleep, came to Orde holding to him symbolically their empty hands.
“No more piles,” they said briefly.
“Get 'em,” said Orde with equal brevity. “Newmark will have enough here
shortly. In the meantime, get them.”
North and his friend disappeared, taking with them the crews of the
drivers and the two tugs. After an interval they returned towing small
rafts of the long timbers. Orde did not make any inquiries; nor until
days later did he see a copy of the newspaper telling how a lawless gang
of rivermen had driven away the railroad men and stolen the railroad's
property. These piles lasted five or six hours. Tom North placed and
drove them accurately and deliberately, quite unmindful of the constant
danger. A cold fire seemed to consume the man, inflaming his courage and
his dogged obstinacy. Once a wing of the jam broke suddenly just as his
crew had placed a pile in the carrier. The scow was picked up, whirled
around, carried bodily a hundred feet, and deposited finally with a
crash. The instant the craft steadied and even before any one could tell
whether or no the danger was past, Tom cut loose the hammer and drove
that pile!
“I put you in that carrier to be DROVE!” he shouted viciously, “and
drove you'll be, if we ARE goin' to hell!”
When the SPRAY shouldered the scow back to position that one pile
was left standing upright in the channel, a monument to the blind
determination of the man.
Fortunately the wing break carried with it but a few logs; but it
sufficed to show, if demonstration were needed, what would happen if any
more serious break should occur.
Orde was everywhere. Long since he had lost his hat; and over his
forehead and into his eyes the strands of his hair whipped tousled and
unkempt. Miles and miles he travelled; running along the tops of the
booms, over the surface of the jam, spying the weakening places, and
hurrying to them a rescue. He seemed tireless, omnipresent, alive to
every need. It was as though his personality alone held in correlation
these struggling forces; as though were he to relax for an instant his
effort they would burst forth with the explosion of long-pent energies.
Toward noon the piles gave out again.
“Where in HELL is Newmark!” exploded Orde, and immediately was himself
again, controlled and resourceful. He sent North and a crew of men to
cut piles from standing timber in farm wood lots near the river.
“Haul them out with your winch,” said he. “If the owners object, stand
them off with your peavies. Get them anyway.”
About three of the afternoon the LUCY BELLE splattered up stream from
the village, carrying an excursion to see the jam. Captain Simpson
brought her as close in as possible. The waves raised by her awkward
paddle-wheel and her clumsy lines surged among the logs and piles. Orde
looked on this with distrust.
“Go tell him to pull out of that,” he instructed Jimmy Powers “The
confounded old fool ought to know better than that. Tell him it's
dangerous. If the jam goes out, it'll carry him to Kingdom Come.”
Jimmy Powers returned red-faced from his interview.
“He told me to go to hell,” he said shortly.
“Oh, he did,” snapped Orde. “I should think we had enough without that
old idiot!”
With the short nervous leaps of a suppressed anger he ran down to where
the SPRITE had just towed the Number One driver into a new position.
“Lay me alongside the LUCY BELLE,” he told Marsh.
But Simpson, in a position of importance at last, was disinclined to
listen. He had worn his blue clothes and brass buttons for a good many
years in charge only of boxes and barrels. Now at a stroke he found
himself commander over tenscore people. Likewise, at fifty cents a head,
he foresaw a good thing as long as high water should last. He had risen
nobly to the occasion; for he had even hoisted his bunting and brought
with him the local brass band. Orde, brusque in his desire to hurry
through an affair of minor importance, rubbed the man the wrong way.
“I reckon I've some rights on this river,” Captain Simpson concluded the
argument, “and I ain't agoin' to be bulldozed out of them.”
The excursionists, typical “trippers” from Redding, Holland, Monrovia
and Muskegon, cheered this sentiment and jeered at Orde.
Orde nodded briefly.
“Marsh,” said he to his captain in a low voice, “get a crew and take
them in charge. Run 'em off.”
As soon as the tug touched the piling, he was off and away, paying no
further attention to a matter already settled. Captain Marsh called a
dozen rivermen to him; laid the SPRITE alongside the LUCY BELLE, and in
spite of Simpson's scandalised protests and an incipient panic among
the passengers, thrust aside the regular crew of the steamship and
took charge. Quite calmly he surveyed the scene. From the height of the
steamer's bridge he could see abroad over the country. A warm June sun
flooded the landscape which was filled with the peace of early summer.
The river seemed to flow smoothly and quietly enough, in spite of the
swiftness of its current and the swollen volume of its waters. Only up
stream where the big jam shrugged and groaned did any element jar on
the peace of the scene; and even that, in contrast to the rest of the
landscape, afforded small hint to the inexperienced eye of the imminence
of a mighty destruction.
Captain Marsh paid little attention to all this. His eye swept rapidly
up and down where the banks used to be until he saw a cross current
deeper than the rest sweeping in athwart the inundated fields. He swung
over the wheel and rang to the engine-room for half speed ahead. Slowly
the LUCY BELLE answered. Quite calmly Captain Marsh rammed her through
the opening and out over the cornfields. The LUCY BELLE was a typical
river steamboat, built light in the draught in order to slide over the
numerous shifting bars to be encountered in her customary business. When
Captain Marsh saw that he had hit the opening, he rang for full speed,
and rammed the poor old LUCY BELLE hard aground in about a foot of water
through which a few mournful dried cornstalks were showing their heads.
Then, his hands in his pockets, he sauntered out of the pilot-house to
the deck.
“Now if you want to picnic,” he told the astonished and frightened
excursionists, “go to it!”
With entire indifference to the water, he vaulted over the low rail and
splashed away. The rivermen and the engineer who had accompanied him
lingered only long enough to start up the band.
“Now you're safe as a cow tied to a brick wall,” said the Rough Red,
whose appearance alone had gone far toward overawing the passengers. “Be
joyful. Start up the music. Start her up, I tell you!”
The band hastily began to squawk, very much out of time, and somewhat
out of tune.
“That's right,” grinned the Rough Red savagely, “keep her up. If you
quit before I get back to work, I'll come back and take you apart.”
They waded through the shallow water in the cornfield. After them wafted
the rather disorganised strains of WHOA, EMMA. Captain Simpson was
indulging in what resembled heat apoplexy. After a time the LUCY BELLE'S
crew recovered their scattered wits sufficiently to transport the
passengers in small boats to a point near the county road, whence all
trudged to town. The LUCY BELLE grew in the cornfield until several
weeks later, when time was found to pull her off on rollers.
Arrived at the booms Captain Marsh shook the loose water from his legs.
“All right, sir,” he reported to Orde. “I ran 'em ashore yonder.”
Orde looked up, brushing the hair from his eyes. He glanced in the
direction of the cornfield, and a quick grin flickered across the
absorbed expression of his face.
“I should think you did,” said he briefly. “I guess that'll end the
excursion business. Now take Number Two up below the swing; and then
run down and see if you can discover Tom. He went somewhere after piles
about an hour ago.”
Down river the various mill owners were busy with what men they had left
in stringing defences across the river in case Orde's works should go
out. When Orde heard this he swore vigourously.
“Crazy fools,” he spat out. “They'd be a lot better off helping here. If
this goes out, their little booms won't amount to a whiff of wind.”
He sent word to that effect; but, lacking the enforcement of his
personal presence his messages did not carry conviction, and the
panic-stricken owners continued to labour, each according to his ideas,
on what Orde's clearer vision saw to be a series of almost comical
futilities. However, Welton answered the summons. Orde hailed his coming
with a shout.
“I want a dredge,” he yelled, as soon as the lumberman was within
distance. “I believe we can relieve the pressure somewhat by a channel
into Steam's bayou. Get that Government dredge up and through the bayou
as soon as you can.”
“All right,” said Welton briefly. “Can you hold her?”
“I've got to hold her,” replied Orde between his clenched teeth. “Have
you seen Newmark? Where in HELL is Newmark? I need him for fifty things,
and he's disappeared off the face of the earth! Purdy! that second
cable! She's snapped a strand! Get a reinforcing line on her!” He ran in
the direction of the new danger without another thought of Welton.
By the late afternoon casual spectators from the countryside had
gathered in some number. The bolder or more curious of these added a
further touch of anxiety to the situation by clambering out over the jam
for a better view. Orde issued instructions that these should keep off
the logs; but in spite of that, with the impertinent perseverance of the
sight-seer, many persisted from time to time, when the rivermen were too
busily engaged to attend to them, in venturing out where they were not
only in danger but also in the way. Tom North would have none of this on
his pile-driver. If a man was not actually working, he had no business
on Number One.
“But,” protested a spectator mildly, “I OWN this driver. I haven't
any objections to your grabbing her in this emergency, even if you did
manhandle my captain; but surely you are not going to keep me off my own
property?”
“I don't give a tinker's damn who you are,” replied North sturdily. “If
you're not working, you get off.”
And get off he did.
The broad deck of the pile-driver scow was a tempting point from which
to survey the work, and the ugly jam, and the water boiling angrily, and
the hollow-eyed, dishevelled maniacs who worked doggedly with set teeth
as though they had not already gone without two nights' sleep. North
had often to order ashore intruders, until his temper shortened to
the vanishing point. One big hulking countryman attempted to argue
the point. North promptly knocked him overboard into the shallow water
between the driver and the bank. He did not rise; so North fished for
him in the most matter-of-fact way with a boat hook, threw him on the
bank unconscious, and went on driving piles! The incident raised a laugh
among the men.
But flesh and blood has its limit of endurance; and that limit was
almost reached. Orde heard the first premonitions of reaction in
the mild grumblings that arose. He knew these men well from his long
experience with them. Although the need for struggle against the
tireless dynamics of the river was as insistent as ever; although it
seemed certain that a moment's cessation of effort would permit the
enemy an irretrievable gain, he called a halt on the whole work.
“Boys,” said he, irrelevantly, “let's have a smoke?”
He set the example by throwing himself full length against a slanting
pile and most leisurely filling his pipe. The men stared a moment;
then followed his example. A great peace of evening filled the sky. The
horizon lay low and black against the afterglow. Beneath it the river
shone like silver. Only the groaning, the heave and shrugging of the
jam, and the low threatening gurgle of hurrying waters reminded the
toil-weary men of the enemy's continued activity. Over beyond the rise
of land that lay between the river and Stearn's Bayou could be seen
the cloud of mingled smoke and steam that marked the activities of the
dredge. For ten minutes they rested in the solace of tobacco. Orde
was apparently more at ease than any of the rest, but each instant
he expected to hear the premonitory CRACK that would sound the end of
everything. Finally he yawned, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and got
to his feet.
“Now,” said he, a new ring in his voice, “come on and let's get
something DONE!”
They responded to a man.