Etext of The Riverman 
by Stewart Edward White




The Riverman 

by Stewart Edward White




I


The time was the year 1872, and the place a bend in the river above 
a long pond terminating in a dam.  Beyond this dam, and on a flat 
lower than it, stood a two-story mill structure.  Save for a small, 
stump-dotted clearing, and the road that led from it, all else was 
forest.  Here in the bottom-lands, following the course of the 
stream, the hardwoods grew dense, their uppermost branches just 
beginning to spray out in the first green of spring.  Farther back, 
where the higher lands arose from the swamp, could be discerned the 
graceful frond of white pines and hemlock, and the sturdy tops of 
Norways and spruce.

A strong wind blew up the length of the pond.  It ruffled the 
surface of the water, swooping down in fan-shaped, scurrying cat's-
paws, turning the dark-blue surface as one turns the nap of velvet.  
At the upper end of the pond it even succeeded in raising quite 
respectable wavelets, which LAP LAP LAPPED eagerly against a barrier 
of floating logs that filled completely the mouth of the inlet 
river.  And behind this barrier were other logs, and yet others, as 
far as the eye could see, so that the entire surface of the stream 
was carpeted by the brown timbers.  A man could have walked down the 
middle of that river as down a highway.

On the bank, and in a small woods-opening, burned two fires, their 
smoke ducking and twisting under the buffeting of the wind.  The 
first of these fires occupied a shallow trench dug for its 
accommodation, and was overarched by a rustic framework from which 
hung several pails, kettles, and pots.  An injured-looking, chubby 
man in a battered brown derby hat moved here and there.  He divided 
his time between the utensils and an indifferent youth--his 
"cookee."  The other, and larger, fire centred a rectangle composed 
of tall racks, built of saplings and intended for the drying of 
clothes.  Two large tents gleamed white among the trees.

About the drying-fire were gathered thirty-odd men.  Some were half-
reclining before the blaze; others sat in rows on logs drawn close 
for the purpose; still others squatted like Indians on their heels, 
their hands thrown forward to keep the balance.  Nearly all were 
smoking pipes.

Every age was represented in this group, but young men predominated.  
All wore woollen trousers stuffed into leather boots reaching just 
to the knee.  These boots were armed on the soles with rows of 
formidable sharp spikes or caulks, a half and sometimes even three 
quarters of an inch in length.  The tight driver's shoe and 
"stagged" trousers had not then come into use.  From the waist down 
these men wore all alike, as though in a uniform, the outward symbol 
of their calling.  From the waist up was more latitude of personal 
taste.  One young fellow sported a bright-coloured Mackinaw blanket 
jacket; another wore a red knit sash, with tasselled ends; a third's 
fancy ran to a bright bandana about his neck.  Head-gear, too, 
covered wide variations of broader or narrower brim, of higher or 
lower crown; and the faces beneath those hats differed as everywhere 
the human countenance differs.  Only when the inspection, passing 
the gradations of broad or narrow, thick or thin, bony or rounded, 
rested finally on the eyes, would the observer have caught again the 
caste-mark which stamped these men as belonging to a distinct order, 
and separated them essentially from other men in other occupations.  
Blue and brown and black and gray these eyes were, but all steady 
and clear with the steadiness and clarity that comes to those whose 
daily work compels them under penalty to pay close and undeviating 
attention to their surroundings.  This is true of sailors, hunters, 
plainsmen, cowboys, and tugboat captains.  It was especially true of 
the old-fashioned river-driver, for a misstep, a miscalculation, a 
moment's forgetfulness of the sullen forces shifting and changing 
about him could mean for him maiming or destruction.  So, finally, 
to one of an imaginative bent, these eyes, like the "cork boots," 
grew to seem part of the uniform, one of the marks of their caste, 
the outward symbol of their calling.

"Blow, you son of a gun!" cried disgustedly one young fellow with a 
red bandana, apostrophising the wind.  "I wonder if there's ANY side 
of this fire that ain't smoky!"

"Keep your hair on, bub," advised a calm and grizzled old-timer.  
"There's never no smoke on the OTHER side of the fire--whichever 
that happens to be.  And as for wind--she just makes holiday for the 
river-hogs."

"Holiday, hell!" snorted the younger man.  "We ought to be down to 
Bull's Dam before now--"

"And Bull's Dam is half-way to Redding," mocked a reptilian and red-
headed giant on the log, "and Redding is the happy childhood home 
of--"

The young man leaped to his feet and seized from a pile of tools a 
peavy--a dangerous weapon, like a heavy cant-hook, but armed at the 
end with a sharp steel shoe.

"That's about enough!" he warned, raising his weapon, his face 
suffused and angry.  The red-headed man, quite unafraid, rose slowly 
from the log and advanced, bare-handed, his small eyes narrowed and 
watchful.

But immediately a dozen men interfered.

"Dry up!" advised the grizzled old-timer--Tom North by name.  "You, 
Purdy, set down; and you, young squirt, subside!  If you're going to 
have ructions, why, have 'em, but not on drive.  If you don't look 
out, I'll set you both to rustling wood for the doctor."

At this threat the belligerents dropped muttering to their places.  
The wind continued to blow, the fire continued to flare up and down, 
the men continued to smoke, exchanging from time to time desultory 
and aimless remarks.  Only Tom North carried on a consecutive, low-
voiced conversation with another of about his own age.

" Just the same, Jim," he was saying, " it is a little tough on the 
boys--this new sluice-gate business.  They've been sort of expectin' 
a chance for a day or two at Redding, and now, if this son of a gun 
of a wind hangs out, I don't know when we'll make her.  The shallows 
at Bull's was always bad enough, but this is worse."

"Yes, I expected to pick you up 'way below," admitted Jim, whose 
"turkey," or clothes-bag, at his side proclaimed him a newcomer.  
"Had quite a tramp to find you."

"This stretch of slack water was always a terror," went on North, 
"and we had fairly to pike-pole every stick through when the wind 
blew; but now that dam's backed the water up until there reely ain't 
no current at all.  And this breeze has just stopped the drive dead 
as a smelt."

"Don't opening the sluice-gates give her a draw?" inquired the 
newcomer.

"Not against this wind--and not much of a draw, anyway, I should 
guess."

"How long you been hung?"

"Just to-day.  I expect Jack will be down from the rear shortly.  
Ought to see something's wrong when he runs against the tail of this 
jam of ours."

At this moment the lugubrious, round-faced man in the derby hat 
stepped aside from the row of steaming utensils he had been 
arranging.

"Grub pile," he remarked in a conversational tone of voice.

The group arose as one man and moved upon the heap of cutlery and of 
tin plates and cups.  From the open fifty-pound lard pails and 
kettles they helped themselves liberally; then retired to squat in 
little groups here and there near the sources of supply.  Mere 
conversation yielded to an industrious silence.  Sadly the cook 
surveyed the scene, his arms folded across the dirty white apron, an 
immense mental reservation accenting the melancholy of his 
countenance.  After some moments of contemplation he mixed a 
fizzling concoction of vinegar and soda, which he drank.  His 
rotundity to the contrary notwithstanding, he was ravaged by a 
gnawing dyspepsia, and the sight of six eggs eaten as a side dish to 
substantials carried consternation to his interior.

So busily engaged was each after his own fashion that nobody 
observed the approach of a solitary figure down the highway of the 
river.  The man appeared tiny around the upper bend, momently 
growing larger as he approached.  His progress was jerky and on an 
uneven zigzag, according as the logs lay, by leaps, short runs, 
brief pauses, as a riverman goes.  Finally he stepped ashore just 
below the camp, stamped his feet vigorously free of water, and 
approached the group around the cooking-fire.

No one saw him save the cook, who vouchsafed him a stately and 
lugubrious inclination of the head.

The newcomer was a man somewhere about thirty years of age, squarely 
built, big of bone, compact in bulk.  His face was burly, jolly, and 
reddened rather than tanned by long exposure.  A pair of twinkling 
blue eyes and a humorously quirked mouth redeemed his countenance 
from commonplaceness.

He spread his feet apart and surveyed the scene.

"Well, boys," he remarked at last in a rollicking big voice, "I'm 
glad to see the situation hasn't spoiled your appetites."

At this they looked up with a spontaneous answering grin.  Tom North 
laid aside his plate and started to arise.

"Sit still, Tom," interposed the newcomer.  "Eat hearty.  I'm going 
to feed yet myself.  Then we'll see what's to be done.  I think 
first thing you'd better see to having this wind turned off."

After the meal was finished, North and his principal sauntered to 
the water's edge, where they stood for a minute looking at the logs 
and the ruffled expanse of water below.

"Might as well have sails on them and be done with it," remarked 
Jack Orde reflectively.  "Couldn't hold 'em any tighter.  It's a 
pity that old mossback had to put in a mill.  The water was slack 
enough before, but now there seems to be no current at all."

"Case of wait for the wind," agreed Tom North.  "Old Daly will be 
red-headed.  He must be about out of logs at the mill.  The flood-
water's going down every minute, and it'll make the riffles above 
Redding a holy fright.  And I expect Johnson's drive will be down on 
our rear most any time."

"It's there already.  Let's go take a look," suggested Orde.

They picked their way around the edge of the pond to the site of the 
new mill.

"Sluice open all right," commented Orde.  "Thought she might be 
closed."

"I saw to that," rejoined North in an injured tone.

"'Course," agreed Orde, "but he might have dropped her shut on you 
between times, when you weren't looking."

He walked out on the structure and looked down on the smooth water 
rushing through.

"Ought to make a draw," he reflected.  Then he laughed.  "Tom, look 
here," he called.  "Climb down and take a squint at this."

North clambered to a position below.

"The son of a gun!" he exclaimed.

The sluice, instead of bedding at the natural channel of the river, 
had been built a good six feet above that level; so that, even with 
the gates wide open, a "head" of six feet was retained in the slack 
water of the pond.

"No wonder we couldn't get a draw," said Orde.  "Let's hunt up old 
What's-his-name and have a pow-wow."

"His name is plain Reed," explained North.  "There he comes now."

"Sainted cats!" cried Orde, with one of his big, rollicking 
chuckles.  "Where did you catch it?"

The owner of the dam flapped into view as a lank and lengthy 
individual dressed in loose, long clothes and wearing a-top a 
battered old "plug" hat, the nap of which seemed all to have been 
rubbed off the wrong way.

As he bore down on the intruders with tremendous, nervous strides, 
they perceived him to be an old man, white of hair, cadaverous of 
countenance, with thin, straight lips, and burning, fanatic eyes 
beneath stiff and bushy brows.

"Good-morning, Mr. Reed," shouted Orde above the noise of the water.

"Good-morning, gentlemen," replied the apparition.

"Nice dam you got here," went on Orde.

Reed nodded, his fiery eyes fixed unblinking on the riverman.

"But you haven't been quite square to us," said Orde.  You aren't 
giving us much show to get our logs out."

"How so?" snapped the owner, his thin lips tightening.

"Oh, I guess you know, all right," laughed Orde, clambering 
leisurely back to the top of the dam.  "That sluice is a good six 
foot too high."

"Is that so!" cried the old man, plunging suddenly into a craze of 
excitement.  "Well, let me tell you this, Mr. Man, I'm giving you 
all the law gives you, and that's the natural flow of the river, and 
not a thing more will you get!  You that comes to waste and destroy, 
to arrogate unto yourselves the kingdoms of the yearth and all the 
fruits thereof, let me tell you you can't override Simeon Reed!  I'm 
engaged here in a peaceful and fittin' operation, which is to feed 
the hungry by means of this grist-mill, not to rampage and bring 
destruction to the noble forests God has planted!  I've give you 
what the law gives you, and nothin' more!"

Somewhat astonished at this outbreak, the two rivermen stood for a 
moment staring at the old man.  Then a steely glint crept into 
Orde's frank blue eye and the corners of his mouth tightened.

"We want no trouble with you, Mr. Reed," said he, "and I'm no lawyer 
to know what the law requires you to do and what it requires you not 
to do.  But I do know that this is the only dam on the river with 
sluices built up that way, and I do know that we'll never get those 
logs out if we don't get more draw on the water.  Good-day."

Followed by the reluctant North he walked away, leaving the gaunt 
figure of the dam owner gazing after them, his black garments 
flapping about him, his hands clasped behind his back, his ruffled 
plug hat thrust from his forehead.

"Well!" burst out North, when they were out of hearing.

"Well!" mimicked Orde with a laugh.

"Are you going to let that old high-banker walk all over you?"

"What are you going to do about it, Tom?  It's his dam."

"I don't know.  But you ain't going to let him bang us up here all 
summer--"

"Sure not.  But the wind's shifting.  Let's see what the weather's 
like to-morrow.  To-day's pretty late."



II


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.  lie 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.



III


At this moment the cook stepped into view, and, making a trumpet of 
his two hands, sent across the water a long, weird, and not 
unmusical cry.  The men at once began slowly to drift in the 
direction of the camp.  There, when the tin plates had all been 
filled, and each had found a place to his liking, Orde addressed 
them.  His manner was casual and conversational.

"Boys," said he, "the old mossback who owns that dam has come up 
here loaded to scatter.  He's built up the sill of that gate until 
we can't get a draw on the water, and he refuses to give, lend, or 
sell us the right to cut her out.  I've made him every reasonable 
proposition, but all I get back is quotations from the prophets.  
Now, we've got to get those logs out--that's what we're here for.  A 
fine bunch of whitewater birlers we'd look if we got hung up by an 
old mossback in a plug hat.  Johnny Sims, what's the answer?"

"Cut her out," grinned Johnny Sims briefly.

"Correct!" replied Orde with a chuckle.  "Cut her out.  But, my son, 
it's against the law to interfere with another man's property."

This was so obviously humourous in intent that its only reception 
consisted of more grins from everybody.

"But," went on Orde more seriously, "it's quite a job.  We can't 
work more than six or eight men at it at a time.  We got to work as 
fast as we can before the old man can interfere."

"The nearest sheriff's at Spruce Rapids," commented some one 
philosophically.

"We have sixty men, all told," said Orde.  "We ought to be able to 
carry it through."

He filled his plate and walked across to a vacant place.  Here he 
found himself next to Newmark.

"Hello!" he greeted that young man, "fixed it with the doctor all 
right?"

"Yes," replied Newmark, in his brief, dry manner, "thanks!  I think 
I ought to tell you that the sheriff is not at Spruce Rapids, but at 
the village--expecting trouble."

Orde whistled, then broke into a roar of delight.

"Boys," he called, "old Plug Hat's got the sheriff right handy.  I 
guess he sort of expected we'd be thinking of cutting through that 
dam.  How'd you like to go to jail?"

"I'd like to see any sheriff take us to jail, unless he had an army 
with him," growled one of the river-jacks.

"Has he a posse?" inquired Orde of Newmark.

"I didn't see any; but I understood in the village that the governor 
had been advised to hold State troops in readiness for trouble."

Orde fell into a brown study, eating mechanically.  The men began an 
eager and somewhat truculent discussion full of lawless and 
bloodthirsty suggestion.  Some suggested the kidnapping and 
sequestration of Reed until the affair should be finished.

"How'd he get hold of his old sheriff, then?" they inquired with 
some pertinence.

Orde, however, paid no attention to all this talk, but continued to 
frown into space.  At last his face cleared, and he slapped down his 
tin plate so violently that the knife and fork jumped off into the 
dirt.

"I have it!" he cried aloud.

But he would not tell what he had.  After the noon hour he 
instructed a half-dozen men to provide themselves with saws, axes, 
picks, and shovels, and all marched in the direction of the mill.

When within a hundred yards or so of that structure the advancing 
riverman saw the lank, black figure of the mill owner flap into 
sight, astride a bony old horse, and clatter away, coat-tails 
flying, up the road and into the waiting forest.

"Now, boys!" cried Orde crisply.  "He'll be back in an hour with the 
sheriff.  Lively!"  He rapidly designated ten men of his crew.  "You 
boys get to work and make things hum.  Get as much done as you can 
before the sheriff comes."

"He'll have to bring all of Spruce County to get me," commented one 
of those chosen, spitting on his hands.

"Me, too!" said others.

"Now, listen," said Orde, holding them with an impressive gesture.  
"When that sheriff comes, with or without a posse, I want you to go 
peaceably.  Understand?"

"Cave in?  Not much!" cried Purdy.

"See here," and Orde drew them aside to an earnest, low-voiced 
conversation that lasted several minutes.  When he had finished he 
clapped each of them on the back, and all moved off, laughing, to 
the dam.

"Now, boys," he commanded the others, "no row without orders.  
Understand?  If there's going to be a fight, I'll give you the word 
when."

The chopping crew descended to the bottom of the sluice, the gate of 
which had been shut, and began immediately to chop away at the 
apron.  As the water in the pond above had been drawn low by the 
morning's work, none overflowed the gate, so the men were enabled to 
work dry.  Below the apron, of course, had been filled in with earth 
and stones.  As soon as the axe-men had effected an entry to this 
deposit, other men with shovels and picks began to remove the 
filling.

The work had continued nearly an hour when Orde commanded the fifty 
or more idlers back to camp.

"Get out, boys," he ordered.  "The sheriff will be here pretty quick 
now, and I don't want any row.  Get out of sight."

"And leave them to fight her out alone?  Guess not!" grumbled a 
tall, burly individual with a red face.

Orde immediately walked directly to this man.

"Am I bossing this drive, or am I not?" he demanded.

The riverman growled something.

SMACK! SMACK! sounded Orde's fists.  The man, taken by surprise, 
went down in a heap, but immediately rebounded to his feet as though 
made of rubber.  But Orde had seized a peavy, and stood over against 
his antagonist, the murderous weapon upraised.

"Lie down, you hound, or I'll brain you!" he roared at the top 
strength of his great voice.  "Want fight, do you?  Well, you won't 
have to wait till the sheriff gets here!  You make a move!"

For a full half minute the man crouched breathless, and Orde, his 
ruddy face congested, held his threatening attitude.  Then he 
dropped his peavy and stepped aside.

"March!" he commanded.  "Get your turkey and hit the hay trail.  
You'll get your time at Redding."

The man sullenly arose and slouched away, grumbling under his 
breath.  Orde watched him from sight, then turned to the silent 
group, a new crispness in his manner.

"Well?" he demanded.

Hesitating, they turned to the river trail, leaving the ten still 
working at the sluice.  When well within the fringe of the brush, 
Orde called a halt.  His customary good-humour seemed quite 
restored.

"Now, boys," he commanded, "squat down and lay low.  You give me an 
ache!  Don't you suppose I got this thing all figured out?  If fight 
would do any good, you know mighty well I'd fight.  And the boys 
won't be in jail any longer than it takes to get a wire to Daly to 
bail them out.  Smoke up, and don't bother."

They filled their pipes and settled down to an enjoyment of the 
situation.  Ordinarily from very early in the morning until very 
late at night the riverman is busy every instant at his dangerous 
and absorbing work.  Those affairs which do not immediately concern 
his task--as the swiftness of rapids, the state of flood, the curves 
of streams, the height of water, the obstructions of channels, the 
quantities of logs--pass by the outer fringe of his consciousness, 
if indeed they reach him at all.  Thus, often he works all day up to 
his waist in a current bearing the rotten ice of the first break-up, 
or endures the drenching of an early spring rain, or battles the 
rigours of a belated snow with apparent indifference.  You or I 
would be exceedingly uncomfortable; would require an effort of 
fortitude to make the plunge.  Yet these men, absorbed in the mighty 
problems of their task, have little attention to spare to such 
things.  The cold, the wet, the discomfort, the hunger, the 
weariness, all pass as shadows on the background.  In like manner 
the softer moods of the spring rarely penetrate through the 
concentration of faculties on the work.  The warm sun shines; the 
birds by thousands flutter and twitter and sing their way north; the 
delicate green of spring, showered from the hand of the passing 
Sower, sprinkles the tops of the trees, and gradually sifts down 
through the branches; the great, beautiful silver clouds sail down 
the horizon like ships of a statelier age, as totally without actual 
existence to these men.  The logs, the river--those are enough to 
strain all the faculties a man possesses, and more.

So when, as now, a chance combination of circumstances brings them 
leisure to look about them, the forest and the world of out-of-doors 
comes to them with a freshness impossible for the city dweller to 
realise.  The surroundings are accustomed, but they bring new 
messages.  To most of them, these impressions never reach the point 
of coherency.  They brood, and muse, and expand in the actual and 
figurative warmth, and proffer the general opinion that it is a damn 
fine day!

Another full half hour elapsed before the situation developed 
further.  Then Tom North's friend Jim, who had gathered his long 
figure on the top of a stump, unclasped his knees and remarked that 
old Plug Hat was back.

The men arose to their feet and peered cautiously through the brush.  
They saw Reed, accompanied by a thick-set man whom some recognised 
as the sheriff of the county, approach the edge of the dam.  A 
moment later the working crew mounted to the top, stacked their 
tools neatly, resumed their coats and jackets, and departed up the 
road in convoy of the sheriff.

A gasp of astonishment broke from the concealed rivermen.

"Well, I'll be damned!" ejaculated one.  "What are we comin' to?  
That's the first time I ever see one lonesome sheriff gather in ten 
river-hogs without the aid of a gatlin' or an ambulance!  What's the 
matter with that chicken-livered bunch, anyway?"

Orde watched them, his eyes expressionless, until they had 
disappeared in the fringe of the forest Then he turned to the 
astonished group.

"Jim," said he, "and you, Ellis, and you, and you, and you, and you, 
get to work on that dam.  And remember this, if you are arrested, go 
peaceably.  Any resistance will spoil the whole game."

The men broke into mingled cheers and laughter as the full 
significance of Orde's plan reached them.  They streamed back to the 
dam, where they perched proffering advice and encouragement to those 
about to descend.

Immediately, however, Reed was out, his eyes blazing either side his 
hawk nose.

"Here!" he cried, "quit that!  I'll have ye arrested!"

"Arrest ahead," replied Orde coldly.

Reed stormed back and forth for a moment, then departed at full 
speed up the road.

"Now, boys, get as much done as possible," urged Orde.  "We better 
get back in the brush, or he may try to take in the whole b'iling of 
us on some sort of a blanket warrant."

"How about the other boys?" inquired North.

"I gave one of them a telegram to send to Daly," replied Orde.  
"Daly will be up to bail them out."

Once more they hid in the woods; and again, after a longer interval, 
the mill owner and the sheriff reappeared.  Reed appeared to be 
expostulating violently, and a number of times pointed up river; but 
the sheriff went ahead stolidly to the dam, summoned those working 
below, and departed up the road as before.  Reed stood uncertain 
until he saw the rivermen beginning to re-emerge from the brush, 
then followed the officer at top speed.

Without the necessity of command, a half-dozen men leaped down on 
the apron.  The previous crews had made considerable progress in 
weakening the heavy supports.  As soon as these should be cut out 
and the backing removed, the mere sawing through of the massive sill 
should carry away the whole obstruction.

"Next time will decide it," remarked Orde.  "If the sheriff brings a 
posse and sits down to lay for us, of course we won't be able to get 
near to finish the job."

"I didn't think that of George Morris," commented Sims in an 
aggrieved way.  "He was a riverman himself once before he was 
sheriff."

"He's got to obey orders, and serve a warrant when it's issued, of 
course," replied Orde to this.  "What did you expect?"

At the end of another hour, which brought the time to four o'clock, 
the sheriff made his third appearance--this time in a side-bar 
buggy.

"I wish I dared join that confab," said Orde, "and hear what's going 
on, but I'm afraid he'd jug me sure."

"He wouldn't jug me," spoke up Newmark.  "I'll go down."

"Bully for you!" agreed Orde.

The young man departed in his precise, methodical manner, picking 
his way rather mincingly among the inequalities of the trail.  In 
spite of the worn and wrinkled condition of his garments, they 
retained something of a city hang and smartness that sharply 
differentiated their wearer from even the well-dressed citizens of a 
smaller town.  They seemed to match the refined, shrewd, but cold 
intelligence of his lean and nervous face.

About sunset he returned from a scene which the distant spectators 
had watched with breathless interest.  It was in essence only a 
repetition of the two that had preceded it, but Reed had evidently 
gone almost to the point of violence in his insistence, and the 
sheriff had shaken him off rudely.  Finally, Morris and his six 
prisoners had trailed away.  The sheriff and North's friend occupied 
the seat of the buggy, while the other five trudged peaceably 
alongside.  Once again Reed clattered away on his bony steed, but 
this time ahead of the official party.

With a whoop the river crew, now reduced to a scant dozen, rushed 
down to meet the too deliberate Newmark.

"Well?" they demanded, crowding about him.

"Reed wanted the sheriff to stay and protect the dam," reported 
Newmark in his brief, dry manner.  "Sheriff refused.  Said his duty 
was simply to arrest on warrant, and as often as Reed got out 
warrants, he'd serve them.  Reed said, then, he should get a posse 
and hunt up Orde and the rest of them.  Sheriff replied that as far 
as he could see, the terms of his warrant were covered by the men he 
found working on the dam, Reed demanded protection, Sheriff said for 
him to get an injunction, and it would be enforced."

"Well, that's all right," interjected Orde with satisfaction.  
"We'll have her cut through before he gets that injunction, and I 
guess I've got men enough here and down river to get through before 
we're ALL arrested."

"Yes," said Newmark, "that's all very well.  But now he's gone to 
telegraph the governor to send the troops."

Orde whistled a jig tune.

"Kind of expected that, boys," said he.  "Let's see.  The next train 
out from Redding--They'll be here by five in the morning at soonest.  
Hope it'll be later."

"What will you do?" asked Newmark.

"Take chances," replied Orde.  "All you boys get to work.  Zeke," he 
commanded one of the cookees, "go up road, and report if Morris 
comes back.  I reckon this time we'll have to scatter if he comes 
after us.  I hope we won't have to, though.  Like to keep everything 
square on account of this State troop business."

The sun had dropped below the fringe of trees, which immediately 
etched their delicate outlines against a pale, translucent green 
sky.  Two straight, thin columns of smoke rose from the neglected 
camp-fires.  Orde, glancing around him, noticed these.

"Doctor," he commanded sharply, "get at your grub!  Make some coffee 
right off, and bring it down.  Get the lanterns from the wanigan, 
and bring them to the dam.  Come on, boys!"

Over a score of men attacked the sluice-way, for by now part of the 
rear crew had come down river.  The pond above had recovered its 
volume.  Water was beginning to trickle over the top of the gate.  
In a short time progress became difficult, almost impossible, The 
men worked up to their knees in swift water.  They could not see, 
and the strokes of axe or pick lost much of their force against the 
liquid.  Dusk fell.  The fringe of the forest became mysterious in 
its velvet dark.  Silver streaks, of a supernal calm, suggested the 
reaches of the pond.  Above, the sky's day surface unfolded and 
receded and dissolved and melted away until, through the pale 
afterglow, one saw beyond into the infinities.  Down by the sluice a 
dozen lanterns flickered and blinked yellow against the blue-
blackness of the night.

After some time Orde called his crew off and opened the sluice-
gates.  The water had become too deep for effective work, and a half 
hour's flow would reduce the pressure.  The time was occupied in 
eating and in drying off about the huge fire the second cookee had 
built close at hand.

"Water cold, boys?" asked Orde.

"Some," was his reply.

"Want to quit?" he inquired, with mock solicitude.

"Nary quit."

Orde's shout of laughter broke the night silence of the whispering 
breeze and the rushing water.

"We'll stick to 'em like death to a dead nigger," was his comment.

Newmark, having extracted a kind of cardigan jacket from the bag he 
had brought with him as far as the mill, looked at the smooth, iron-
black water and shivered.

When the meal was finished, the men lit their pipes and went back to 
work philosophically.  With entire absorption in the task, they dug, 
chopped, and picked.  The dull sound of blows, the gurgle and 
trickle of the water, the occasional grunt or brief comment of a 
riverman alone broke the calm of evening.  Now that the sluice-gate 
was down and the water had ceased temporarily to flow over it, the 
work went faster.  Orde, watching with the eye of an expert, 
vouchsafed to the taciturn Newmark that he thought they'd make it.

Near midnight, however, a swaying lantern was seen approaching.  
Orde, leaping to his feet with a curse at the boy on watch, heard 
the sound of wheels.  A moment later, Daly's bulky form stepped into 
the illumination of the fire.

Orde wandered over to where his principal stood peering about him.

"Hullo!" said he.

"Oh, there you are!" cried Daly angrily.  "What in hell you up to 
here?"

"Running logs," replied Orde coolly.

"Running logs!" shouted Daly, tugging at his overcoat pocket, and 
finally producing a much-folded newspaper.  "How about this?"

Orde unfolded the paper and lowered it to the campfire.  It was an 
extra, screaming with wood type.  He read it deliberately over.


WAR!


the headline ran.


RIOTING AND BLOODSHED IN THE WOODS

RIVERMEN AND DAM OWNERS CLASH!


There followed a vague and highly coloured statement to the effect 
that an initial skirmish had left the field in possession of the 
rivermen, in spite of the sheriff and a large posse, but that troops 
were being rushed to the spot, and that this "high-handed defiance 
of authority" would undoubtedly soon be suppressed.  It concluded 
truthfully with the statement that the loss of life was as yet 
unknown.

Orde folded up the paper and handed it back.

"Don't you know any better than to get into that kind of a row down 
here?" Daly had been saying.  "Do you want to bring us up for good 
here?  Don't you realise that this isn't the northern peninsula?  
What are you trying to do, any way?"

"Sure I do," replied Orde placidly.  "Come along here till I show 
you the situation."

Ten minutes later, Daly, relieved in his mind, was standing by the 
fire drinking hot coffee and laughing at Orde's description of 
Reed's plug hat.

To Orde's satisfaction, the sheriff did not reappear.  Reed 
evidently now pinned his faith to the State troops.

All night the work went on, the men spelling each other at intervals 
of every few hours.  By three o'clock the main abutments had been 
removed.  The gate was then blocked to prevent its fall when its 
nether support should be withdrawn, and two men, leaning over 
cautiously, began at arm's-length to deliver their axe-strokes 
against the middle of the sill-timbers of the sluice itself, 
notching each heavy beam deeply that the force of the current might 
finally break it in two.  The night was very dark, and very still.  
Even the night creatures had fallen into the quietude that precedes 
the first morning hours.  The muffled, spaced blows of the axes, the 
low-voiced comments or directions of the workers, the crackle of the 
fire ashore were thrown by contrast into an undue importance.  Men 
in blankets, awaiting their turn, slept close to the blaze.

Suddenly the vast silence of before dawn was broken by a loud and 
exultant yell from one of the axemen.  At once the two scrambled to 
the top of the dam.  The blanketed figures about the fire sprang to 
life.  A brief instant later the snapping of wood fibres began like 
the rapid explosions of infantry fire; a crash and bang of timbers 
smote the air; and then the river, exultant, roaring with joy, 
rushed from its pent quietude into the new passage opened for it.  
At the same moment, as though at the signal, a single bird, 
premonitor of the yet distant day, lifted up his voice, clearly 
audible above the tumult.

Orde stormed into the camp up stream, his eyes bright, his big voice 
booming exultantly.

"Roll out, you river-hogs!" he shouted to those who had worked out 
their shifts earlier in the night.  "Roll out, you web-footed sons 
of guns, and hear the little birds sing praise!"

Newmark, who had sat up the night through, and now shivered sleepily 
by the fire, began to hunt around for the bed-roll he had, earlier 
in the evening, dumped down somewhere in camp.

"I suppose that's all," said he.  "Just a case of run logs now.  
I'll turn in for a little."

But Orde, a thick slice of bread half-way to his lips, had frozen in 
an attitude of attentive listening.

"Hark!" said he.

Faint, still in the depths of the forest, the wandering morning 
breeze bore to their ears a sound whose difference from the louder 
noises nearer at hand alone rendered it audible.

"The troops!" exclaimed Orde.

He seized a lantern and returned down the trail, followed eagerly by 
Newmark and every man in camp.

"Troops coming!" said Orde to Daly.

The men drew a little to one side, watching the dim line of the 
forest, dark against the paling sky.  Shadows seemed to stir in its 
blackness.  They heard quite distinctly the clink of metal against 
metal.  A man rode out of the shadow and reined up by the fire.  
"Halt!" commanded a harsh voice.  The rivermen could make out the 
troops--three or four score of them--standing rigid at attention.  
Reed, afoot now in favour of the commanding officer, pushed forward.

"Who is in charge here?" inquired the officer crisply.

"I am," replied Orde, stepping forward.

"I wish to inquire, sir, if you have gone mad to counsel your men to 
resist civil authority?"

"I have not resisted civil authority," replied Orde respectfully.

"It has been otherwise reported."

"The reports have been false.  The sheriff of this county has 
arrested about twenty of my men single-handed and without the 
slightest trouble."

"Mr. Morris," cried the officer sharply.

"Yes?" replied the sheriff.

"Is what this man says true?"

"It sure is.  Never had so little fuss arrestin' rivermen before in 
my life."

The officer's face turned a slow brick-red.  For a moment he said 
nothing, then exploded with the utmost violence.

"Then why the devil am I dragged up here with my men in the night?" 
he cried.  "Who's responsible for this insanity, anyway?  Don't you 
know," he roared at Reed, who that moment swung within his range of 
vision, "that I have no standing in the presence of civil law?  What 
do you mean getting me up here to your miserable little backwoods 
squabbles?"

Reed started to say something, but was immediately cut short by the 
irate captain.

"I've nothing to do with that; settle it in court.  And what's more, 
you'll have something yourself to settle with the State!  About, 
face!  Forward, march!"

The men faded into the gray light as though dissolved by it.

A deep and respectful silence fell upon the men, which was broken by 
Orde's solemn and dramatic declamation.


     "The King of France and twice ten thousand men
      Marched up the hill, and then marched down again,"


he recited; then burst into his deep roar of laughter.

"Now you see, boys," he said, digging his fists into his eyes, "if 
you'd put up a row, what we'd have got into.  No blue-coats in mine, 
thank you.  Well, push the grub pile, and then get at those logs.  
It's a case of flood-water now."

But Reed, having recovered from his astonishment, had still his say.

"I tell ye, I'm not done with ye yet," he threatened, shaking his 
bony forefinger in Orde's face.  "I'll sue ye for damages, and I'll 
GIT 'em, too."

"See here, you old mossback," said Orde, thrusting his bulky form to 
the fore, "you sue just as soon as you want to.  You can't get at it 
any too quick to suit us.  But just now you get out of this camp, 
and you stay out.  You're an old man, and we don't want to be rough 
with you, but you're biting off more than you can chew.  Skedaddle!"

Reed hesitated, waving his long arms about, flail-like, as though to 
begin a new oration.

"Now, do hop along," urged Orde.  "We'll pay you any legitimate 
damages, of course, but you can't expect to hang up a riverful of 
logs just on a notion.  And we're sick of you.  Oh, hell, then!  See 
here, you two; just see that this man leaves camp."

Orde turned square on his heel.  Reed, after a glance at the two 
huge rivermen approaching, beat a retreat to his mill, muttering and 
wrathful still.

"Well, good-bye, boys," said Daly, pulling on his overcoat; "I'll 
just get along and bail the boys out of that village calaboose.  I 
reckon they've had a good night's rest.  Be good!"

The fringe of trees to eastward showed clearly against the whitening 
sky.  Hundreds of birds of all kinds sang in an ecstasy.  Another 
day had begun.  Already men with pike-poles were guiding the sullen 
timbers toward the sluice-way.



IV


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 .  "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 leies.  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 streamthe 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 himselft 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,.

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  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 upp 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 hoursed 
below the gunwale.  Zeke and his companion pulled spasmodically on 
the sweeps.  Charlie, having regaineer 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 supplmisunderstanding, 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 
d 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 tthe 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.  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 basko 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."



VI


During the thirty-three days of the drive, Newmark, to the surprise 
of everybody, stayed with the work.  Some of these days were very 
disagreeable.  April rains are cold and persistent--rd cook.

"And you had fifty in your turkey, camping with this outfit of hard 
citizens!" he cried.  "You ought to lose it."

Johnny Challan was explaining to his companions exactly how the game 
was played.

"It's a case of keep your eye on the card, I should think," said big 
Tim Nolan.  "If you got a quick enough eye to see him flip the card 
around, you ought to be able to pick her."

"That's what this sport said," agreed Challan.  "'Your eye agin my 
hand,' says he."

"Well, I'd like to take a try at her," mused Tim.

But at this point Newmark broke into the discussion.  "Have you a 
pack of cards?" he asked in his dry, incisive manner.

Somebody rummaged in a turkey and produced the remains of an old 
deck.

"I don't believe this is a full deck," said he, "and I think they's 
part of two decks in it."

"I othe proverbs as 
to showers were made for another latitude.  Drenched garments are 
bad enough when a man is moving about and has daylight; but when 
night falls, and the work is over, he likes a dry place and a change 
with which to comfort himself.  Dry places there were none.  Even 
the interior of the tents became sodden by continual exits and 
entrances of dripping men, while dry garments speedily dampened in 
the shiftings of camp which, in the broader reaches of the lower 
river, took place nearly every day.  Men worked in soaked garments, 
slept in damp blankets.  Charlie cooked only by virtue of 
persistence.  The rivermen ate standing up, as close to the 
sputtering, roaring fires as they could get.  Always the work went 
forward.

But there were other times when a golden sun rose each morning a 
little earlier on a green and joyous world.  The river ran blue.  
Migratory birds fled busily northward--robins, flute-voiced blue-
birds, warblers of many species, sparrows of different kinds, shore 
birds and ducks, the sweet-songed thrushes.  Little tepid breezes 
wandered up and down, warm in contrast to the faint snow-chill that 
even yet lingered in the shadows.  Sounds carried clearly, so that 
the shouts and banter of the rivermen were plainly audible up the 
reaches of the river.  Ashore moist and aggressive green things were 
pushing up through the watery earth from which, in shade, the last 
frost had not yet departed.  At camp the fires roaed invitingly.  
Charlie's grub was hot and grateful.  The fir beds gave dreamless 
sleep.

Newmark followed the work of the log-drive with great interest.  All 
day long he tramped back and forth--on jam one day, on rear the 
next.  He never said much, but watched keenly, and listened to the 
men's banter both on the work and about the evening's fire as though 
he enjoyed it.  Gradually the men got used to him, and ceased to 
treat him as an outsider.  His thin, eager face, his steel-blue, 
inquiring eyes behind the glasses, his gray felt hat, his lank, 
tense figure in its gray, became a familiar feature.  They threw 
remarks to him, to which he replied briefly and drily.  When 
anything interesting was going on, somebody told him about it.  Then 
he hurried to the spot, no matter how distant it might be.  He used 
always the river trail; he never attempted to ride the logs.

He seemed to depend most on observation, for he rarely asked any 
questions.  What few queries he had to proffer, he made to Orde 
himself, waiting sometimes until evening to interview that busy and 
good-natured individual.  Then his questions were direct and to the 
point.  They related generally to the advisability of something he 
had seen done; only rarely did they ask for explanation of the work 
itself.  That Newmark seemed capable of puzzling out for himself.

The drive, as has been said, went down as far as Redding in thirty-
three days.  It had its share of tribulation.  The men worked 
fourteen and sixteen hours at times.  Several bad jams relieved the 
monotony.  Three dams had to be sluiced through.  Problems of 
mechanics arose to be solved on the spot; problems that an older 
civilisation would have attacked deliberately and with due respect 
for the seriousness of the situation and the dignity of engineering.  
Orde solved them by a rough-and-ready but very effective rule of 
thumb.  He built and abandoned structures which would have furnished 
opportunity for a winter's discussion to some committees; just as, 
earlier in the work, the loggers had built through a rough country 
some hundreds of miles of road better than railroad grade, solid in 
foundation, and smooth as a turnpike, the quarter of which would 
have occupied the average county board of supervisors for five 
years.  And while he was at it, Orde kept his men busy and 
satisfied.  Your white-water birler is not an easy citizen to 
handle.  Yet never once did the boss appear hurried or flustered.  
Always he wandered about, his hands in his pockets, chewing a twig, 
his round, wind-reddened face puckered humorously, his blue eyes 
twinkling, his square, burly form lazily relaxed.  He seemed to meet 
his men almost solely on the plane of good-natured chaffing.  Yet 
the work was done, and done efficiently, and Orde was the man 
responsible.

The drive of which Orde had charge was to be delivered at the booms 
of Morrison and Daly, a mile or so above the city of Redding.  
Redding was a thriving place of about thirty thousand inhabitants, 
situated on a long rapids some forty miles from Lake Michigan.  The 
water-power developed from the rapids explained Redding's existence.  
Most of the logs floated down the river were carried through to the 
village at the lake coast, where, strung up the river for eight or 
ten miles, stood a dozen or so big saw-mills, with concomitant 
booms, yards, and wharves.  Morrison and Daly, however, had built a 
saw and planing mill at Redding, where they supplied most of the 
local trade and that of the surrounding country-side.

The drive, then, was due to break up as soon as the logs should be 
safely impounded.

The last camp was made some six or eight miles above the mill.  From 
that point a good proportion of the rivermen, eager for a taste of 
the town, tramped away down the road, to return early in the 
morning, more or less drunk, but faithful to their job.  One or two 
did not return.

Among the revellers was the cook, Charlie, commonly called The 
Doctor.  The rivermen early worked off the effects of their rather 
wild spree, and turned up at noon chipper as larks.  Not so the 
cook.  He moped about disconsolately all day; and in the evening, 
after his work had been finished, he looked so much like a chicken 
with the pip that Orde's attention was attracted.

"Got that dark-brown taste, Charlie?" he inquired with mock 
solicitude.

The cook mournfully shook his head.

"Large head?  Let's feel your pulse.  Stick out your tongue, sonny."

"I ain't been drinking, I tell you!" growled Charlie.

"Drinking!" expostulated Orde, horrified.  "Of course not!  I hope 
none of MY boys ever take a drink!  But that lemon-pop didn't agree 
with your stomach--now did it, Charlie?"

"I tell you I only had two glasses of beer!" cried Charlie, goaded, 
"and I can prove it by Johnny Challan."

Orde turned to survey the pink-cheeked, embarrassed young boy thus 
designated.

"How many glasses did Johnny Challan have?" he inquired.

"He didn't drink none to speak of," spoke up the boy.

"Then why this joyless demeanour?" begged Orde.

Charlie grumbled, fiercely inarticulate; but Johnny Challan 
interposed with a chuckle of enjoyment.

"He got 'bunked.'"

"Tell us!" cried Orde delightedly.

"It was down at McNeill's place," explained Johnny Challan; 
encouraged by the interest of his audience.  "They was a couple of 
sports there who throwed out three cards on the table and bet you 
couldn't pick the jack.  They showed you where the jack was before 
they throwed, and it surely looked like a picnic, but it wasn't."

"Three-card monte," said Newmark.

"How much?" asked Simms.

"About fifty dollars," replied the boy.

Orde turned on the disgruntlenly want three," assured Newmark, reaching his hand
for the 
pack.

The men crowded around close, those in front squatting, those behind 
looking over their shoulders.

Newmark cleared a cracker-box of drying socks and drew it to him.

"These three are the cards," he said, speaking rapidly.  "There is 
the jack of hearts.  I pass my hands--so.  Pick the jack, one of 
you," he challenged, leaning back from the cracker-box on which lay 
the three cards, back up.  "Any of you," he urged.  "You, North."

Thus directly singled out, the foreman leaned forward and rather 
hesitatingly laid a blunt forefinger on one of the bits of 
pasteboard.

Without a word, Newmark turned it over.  It was the ten of spades.

"Let me try," interposed Tim Nolan, pressing his big shoulders 
forward.  "I bet I know which it was that time; and I bet I can pick 
her next time."

"Oh, yes, you BET!" shrugged Newmark.  "And that's where the card-
sharps get you fellows every time.  Well, pick it," said he, again 
deftly flipping the cards.

Nolan, who had watched keenly, indicated one without hesitation.  
Again it proved to be the ten of spades.

"Anybody else ambitious?" inquired Newmark.  Everybody was 
ambitious; and the young man, with inexhaustible patience, threw out 
the cards, the corners of his mouth twitching sardonically at each 
wrong guess.

At length he called a halt.

"By this time I'd have had all your money," he pointed out.  "Now, 
I'll pick the jack."

For the last time he made his swift passes and distributed the 
cards.  Then quite calmly, without disturbing the three on the 
cracker-box, he held before their eyes the jack of hearts.

An exclamation broke from the interested group.  Tim Nolan, who was 
the nearest, leaned forward and turned over the three on the board.  
They were the eight of diamonds and two tens of spades.

"That's how the thing is worked nine times out of ten," announced 
Newmark.  "Once in a while you'll run against a straight game, but 
not often."

"But you showed us the jack every time before you throwed them!" 
puzzled Johnny Simms.

"Sleight of hand," explained Newmark.  "The simplest kind of 
palming."

"Well, Charlie," said big Tim, "looks to me as if you had just about 
as much chance as a snowball in hell."

"Where'd you get onto doing all that, Newmark?" inquired North.  
"You ain't a tin horn yourself?"

Newmark laughed briefly.  "Not I," said he.  "I learned a lot of 
those tricks from a travelling magician in college."

During this demonstration Orde had sat well in the background, his 
chin propped on his hand, watching intently all that was going on.  
After the comment and exclamations following the exposure of the 
method had subsided, he spoke.

"Boys," said he, "how game are you to get Charlie's money back--and 
then some?"

"Try us," returned big Tim.

"This game's at McNeill's, and McNeill's is a tough hole," warned 
Orde.  "Maybe everything will go peaceful, and maybe not.  And you 
boys that go with me have got to keep sober.  There isn't going to 
be any row unless I say so, and I'm not taking any contract to 
handle a lot of drunken river-hogs as well as go against a game."

"All right," agreed Nolan, "I'm with you."

The thirty or so men of the rear crew then in camp signified their 
intention to stay by the procession.

"You can't make those sharps disgorge," counselled Newmark.  "At the 
first look of trouble they will light out.  They have it all fixed.  
Force won't do you much good--and may get some of you shot."

"I'm not going to use force," denied Orde.  "I'm just going to play 
their game.  But I bet I can make it go.  Only I sort of want the 
moral support of the boys."

"I tell you, you CAN'T win!" cried Newmark disgustedly.  "It's a 
brace game pure and simple."

"I don't know about it's being pure," replied Orde drolly, "but it's 
simple enough, if you know how to make the wheels go 'round.  How is 
it, boys--will you back my play?"

And such was their confidence that, in face of Newmark's 
demonstration, they said they would.



VII


After the men had been paid off, perhaps a dozen of them hung around 
the yards awaiting evening and the rendezvous named by Orde.  The 
rest drifted away full of good intentions, but did not show up 
again.  Orde himself was busy up to the last moment, but finally 
stamped out of the office just as the boarding-house bell rang for 
supper.  He surveyed what remained of his old crew and grinned.

"Well, boys, ready for trouble?" he greeted them.  "Come on."

They set out up the long reach of Water Street, their steel caulks 
biting deep into the pitted board-walks.

For nearly a mile the street was flanked solely by lumber-yards, 
small mills, and factories.  Then came a strip of unimproved land, 
followed immediately by the wooden, ramshackle structures of Hell's 
Half-Mile.

In the old days every town of any size had its Hell's Half-Mile, or 
the equivalent.  Saginaw boasted of its Catacombs; Muskegon, Alpena, 
Port Huron, Ludington, had their "Pens," "White Rows," "River 
Streets," "Kilyubbin," and so forth.  They supported row upon row of 
saloons, alike stuffy and squalid; gambling hells of all sorts; 
refreshment "parlours," where drinks were served by dozens of 
"pretty waiter-girls," and huge dance-halls.

The proprietors of these places were a bold and unscrupulous lot.  
In their everyday business they had to deal with the most dangerous 
rough-and-tumble fighters this country has ever known; with men 
bubbling over with the joy of life, ready for quarrel if quarrel 
also spelled fun, drinking deep, and heavy-handed and fearless in 
their cups.  But each of these rivermen had two or three hundred 
dollars to "blow" as soon as possible.  The pickings were good.  Men 
got rich very quickly at this business.  And there existed this 
great advantage in favour of the dive-keeper: nobody cared what 
happened to a riverman.  You could pound him over the head with a 
lead pipe, or drug his drink, or choke him to insensibility, or rob 
him and throw him out into the street, or even drop him tidily 
through a trap-door into the river flowing conveniently beneath.  
Nobody bothered--unless, of course, the affair was so bungled as to 
become public.  The police knew enough to stay away when the drive 
hit town.  They would have been annihilated if they had not.  The 
only fly in the divekeeper's ointment was that the riverman would 
fight back.

And fight back he did, until from one end of his street to the other 
he had left the battered evidences of his skill as a warrior.  His 
constant heavy lifting made him as hard as nails and as strong as a 
horse; the continual demand on his agility in riding the logs kept 
him active and prevented him from becoming muscle-bound; in his wild 
heart was not the least trace of fear of anything that walked, 
crawled, or flew.  And he was as tireless as machinery, and 
apparently as indifferent to punishment as a man cast in iron.

Add to this a happy and complete disregard of consequences--to 
himself or others--of anything he did, and, in his own words, he was 
a "hard man to nick."

As yet the season was too early for much joy along Hell's Half-Mile.  
Orde's little crew, and the forty or fifty men of the drive that had 
preceded him, constituted the rank and file at that moment in town.  
A little later, when all the drives on the river should be in, and 
those of its tributaries, and the men still lingering at the woods 
camps, at least five hundred woods-weary men would be turned loose.  
Then Hell's Half-Mile would awaken in earnest from its hibernation.  
The lights would blaze from day to day.  From its opened windows 
would blare the music, the cries of men and women, the shuffle of 
feet, the noise of fighting, the shrieks of wild laughter, curses 
deep and frank and unashamed, songs broken and interrupted.  Crews 
of men, arms locked, would surge up and down the narrow sidewalks, 
their little felt hats cocked one side, their heads back, their 
fearless eyes challenging the devil and all his works--and getting 
the challenge accepted.  Girls would flit across the lit windows 
like shadows before flames, or stand in the doorways hailing the men 
jovially by name.  And every few moments, above the roar of this 
wild inferno, would sound the sudden crash and the dull blows of 
combat.  Only, never was heard the bark of the pistol.  The fighting 
was fierce, and it included kicking with the sharp steel boot-
caulks, biting and gouging; but it barred knives and firearms.  And 
when Hell's Half-Mile was thus in full eruption, the citizens of 
Redding stayed away from Water Street after dark.  "Drive's in," 
said they, and had business elsewhere.  And the next group of 
rivermen, hurrying toward the fun, broke into an eager dog-trot.  
"Taking the old town apart to-night," they told each other.  "Let's 
get in the game."

To-night, however, the street was comparatively quiet.  The saloons 
were of modified illumination.  In many of them men stood drinking, 
but in a sociable rather than a hilarious mood.  Old friends of the 
two drives were getting together for a friendly glass.  The 
barkeepers were listlessly wiping the bars.  The "pretty waiter-
girls" gossiped with each other and yawned behind their hands.  From 
several doorways Orde's little compact group was accosted by the 
burly saloonkeepers.

"Hullo, boys!" said they invariably, "glad to see you back.  Come in 
and have a drink on me."

Well these men knew that one free drink would mean a dozen paid for.  
But the rivermen merely shook their heads.

"Huh!" sneered one of the girls.  "Them's no river-jacks!  Them's 
just off the hay trail, I bet!"

But even this time-honoured and generally effective taunt was 
ignored.

In the middle of the third block Orde wheeled sharp to the left down 
a dark and dangerous-looking alley.  Another turn to the right 
brought him into a very narrow street.  Facing this street stood a 
three-story wooden structure, into which led a high-arched entrance 
up a broad half-flight of wooden steps.  This was McNeill's.

As Orde and his men turned into the narrow street, a figure detached 
itself from the shadow and approached.  Orde uttered an exclamation.

"You here, Newmark?" he cried.

"Yes," replied that young man.  "I want to see this through."

"With those clothes?" marvelled Orde.  "It's a wonder some of these 
thugs haven't held you up long ago! I'll get Johnny here to go back 
with you to the main street."

"No," argued Newmark, "I want to go in with you."

"It's dangerous," explained Orde.  "You're likely to get slugged."

"I can stand it if you can," returned Newmark.

"I doubt it," said Orde grimly.  "However, it's your funeral.  Come 
on, if you want to."

McNeill's lower story was given over entirely to drinking.  A bar 
ran down all one side of the room.  Dozens of little tables occupied 
the floor.  "Pretty waiter-girls" were prepared to serve drinks at 
these latter--and to share in them, at a commission.  The second 
floor was a theatre, and the third a dance-hall.  Beneath the 
building were still viler depths.  From this basement the riverman 
and the shanty boy generally graduated penniless, and perhaps 
unconscious, to the street.  Now, your lumber-jack did not 
customarily arrive at this stage without more or less lively doings 
en route; therefore McNeill's maintained a force of fighters.  They 
were burly, sodden men, in striking contrast to the clean-cut, 
clear-eyed rivermen, but strong in their experience and their 
discipline.  To be sure, they might not last quite as long as their 
antagonists could--a whisky training is not conducive to long wind--
but they always lasted plenty long enough.  Sand-bags and brass 
knuckles helped some, ruthless singleness of purpose counted, and 
team work finished the job.  At times the storm rose high, but up to 
now McNeill had always ridden it.

Orde and his men entered the lower hall, as though sauntering in 
without definite aim.  Perhaps a score of men were in the room.  Two 
tables of cards were under way--with a great deal of noisy card-
slapping that proclaimed the game merely friendly.  Eight or ten 
other men wandered about idly, chaffing loudly with the girls, 
pausing to overlook the card games, glancing with purposeless 
curiosity at the professional gamblers sitting quietly behind their 
various lay-outs.  It was a dull evening.

Orde wandered about with the rest, a wide, good-natured smile on his 
face.

"Start your little ball to rolling for that," he instructed the 
roulette man, tossing down a bill.  "Dropped again!" he lamented 
humorously.  "Can't seem to have any luck."

He drifted on to the crap game.

"Throw us the little bones, pardner," he said.  "I'll go you a five 
on it."

He lost here, and so found himself at the table presided over by the 
three-card monte men.  The rest of his party, who had according to 
instructions scattered about the place, now began quietly to 
gravitate in his direction.

"What kind of a lay-out is this?" inquired Orde.

The dealer held up the three cards face out.

"What kind of an eye have you got, bub?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know.  A pretty fair eye.  Why?"

"Do you think you could pick out the jack when I throw them out like 
this?" asked the dealer.

"Sure!  She's that one."

"Well," exclaimed the gambler with a pretence of disgust, "damn if 
you didn't!  I bet you five dollars you can't do it again."

"Take you!" replied Orde.  "Put up your five."

Again Orde was permitted to pick the jack.

"You've got the best eye that's been in this place since I got 
here," claimed the dealer admiringly.  "Here, Dennis," said he to 
his partner, "try if you can fool this fellow."

Dennis obligingly took the cards, threw them, and lost.  By this 
time the men, augmented by the idlers not busy with the card games, 
had drawn close.

"Sail into 'em, bub," encouraged one.

Whether it was that the gamblers, expert in the reading of a man's 
mood and intentions, sensed the fact that Orde might be led to 
plunge, or whether, more simply, they were using him as a capper to 
draw the crowd into their game, it would be difficult to say, but 
twice more they bungled the throw and permitted him to win.

Newmark plucked him at the sleeve.

"You're twenty dollars ahead," he muttered.  "Quit it!  I never saw 
anybody beat this game that much before."

Orde merely shrugged him off with an appearance of growing 
excitement, while an HABITUE of the place, probably one of the hired 
fighters, growled into Newmark's ear.

"Shut up, you damn dude!" warned this man.  "Keep out of what ain't 
none of your business."

"What limit do you put on this game, anyway?" Orde leaned forward, 
his eyes alight.

The two gamblers spoke swiftly apart.

"How much do you want to bet?" asked one.

"Would you stand for five hundred dollars?" asked Orde.

A dead silence fell on the group.  Plainly could be heard the men's 
quickened breathing.  The shouts and noise from the card parties 
blundered through the stillness.  Some one tiptoed across and 
whispered in the ear of the nearest player.  A moment later the 
chairs at the two tables scraped back.  One of them fell violently 
to the floor.  Their occupants joined the tense group about the 
monte game.  All the girls drew near.  Only behind the bar the 
white-aproned bartenders wiped their glasses with apparent 
imperturbability, their eyes, however, on their brass knuckles 
hanging just beneath the counter, their ears pricked up for the riot 
call.

The gambler pretended to deliberate, his cool, shifty eyes running 
over the group before him.  A small door immediately behind him 
swung slowly ajar an inch or so.

"Got the money?" he asked.

"Have you?" countered Orde.

Apparently satisfied, the man nodded.

"I'll go you, bub, if I lose," said he.  "Lay out your money."

Orde counted out nine fifty-dollar bills and five tens.  Probably no 
one in the group of men standing about had realised quite how much 
money five hundred dollars meant until they saw it thus tallied out 
before them.

"All right," said the gambler, taking up the cards.

"Hold on! " cried Orde.  "Where's yours?"

"Oh, that's all right," the gambler reassured him.  "I'm with the 
house.  I guess McNeill's credit is good," he laughed.

"That may all be," insisted Orde, "but I'm putting up my good money, 
and I expect to see good money put up in return."

They wrangled over this point for some time, but Orde was obstinate.  
Finally the gamblers yielded.  A canvass of the drawer, helped out 
by the bar and the other games, made up the sum.  It bulked large on 
the table beside Orde's higher denominations.

The interested audience now consisted of the dozen men comprised by 
Orde's friends; nearly twice as many strangers, evidently rivermen; 
eight hangers-on of the joint, probably fighters and "bouncers"; 
half a dozen professional gamblers, and several waitresses.  The 
four barkeepers still held their positions.  Of these, the rivermen 
were scattered loosely back of Orde, although Orde's own friends had 
by now gathered compactly enough at his shoulder.  The mercenaries 
and gamblers had divided, and flanked the table at either side.  
Newmark, a growing wonder and disgust creeping into his usually 
unexpressive face, recognised the strategic advantage of this 
arrangement.  In case of difficulty, a determined push would 
separate the rivermen from the gamblers long enough for the latter 
to disappear quietly through the small door at the back.

"Satisfied?" inquired the gambler briefly.

"Let her flicker," replied Orde with equal brevity.

A gasp of anticipation went up.  Quite coolly the gambler made his 
passes.  With equal coolness and not the slightest hesitation, Orde 
planted his great red fist on one of the cards.

"That is the jack," he announced, looking the gambler in the eye.

"Oh, is it?" sneered the dealer.  "Well, turn it over and let's 
see."

"No!" roared Orde.  "YOU TURN OVER THE OTHER TWO!"

A low oath broke from the gambler, and his face contorted in a 
spasm.  The barkeepers slid out from behind the bar.  For a moment 
the situation was tense and threatening.  The dealer with a sweeping 
glance again searched the faces of those before him.  In that 
moment, probably, he made up his mind that an open scandal must be 
avoided.  Force and broken bones, even murder, might be all right 
enough under colour of right.  If Orde had turned up for a jack the 
card on which he now held his fist, and then had attempted to prove 
cheating, a cry of robbery and a lively fight would have given 
opportunity for making way with the stakes.  But McNeill's could not 
afford to be shown up before thirty interested rivermen as running 
an open-and-shut brace-game.  However, the gambler made a desperate 
try at what he must have known was a very forlorn hope.

"That isn't the way this game is played," said he.  "Show up your 
jack."

"It's the way I play it," replied Orde sternly.  "These gentlemen 
heard the bet."  He reached over and dexterously flipped over the 
other two cards.  "You see, neither of these is the jack; this must 
be."

"You win," assented the gambler, after a pause.

Orde, his fist still on the third card, began pocketing the stakes 
with the other hand.  The gambler reached, palm up, across the 
table.

"Give me the other card," said he.

Orde picked it up, laughing.  For a moment he seemed to hesitate, 
holding the bit of pasteboard tantalisingly outstretched, as though 
he were going to turn also this one face up.  Then, quite 
deliberately he looked to right and to left where the fighters 
awaited their signal, laughed again, and handed the card to the 
gambler.

At once pandemonium broke loose.  The rivermen of Orde's party 
fairly shouted with joy over the unexpected trick; the employees of 
the resort whispered apart; the gambler explained, low-voiced and 
angry, his reasons for not putting up a fight for so rich a stake.

"All to the bar!" yelled Orde.

They made a rush, and lined up and ordered their drinks.  Orde 
poured his on the floor and took the glass belonging to the man next 
him.

"Get them to give you another, Tim," said he.  "No knock-out drops, 
if I can help it."

The men drank, and some one ordered another round.

"Tim," said Orde, low-voiced, "get the crowd together and we'll pull 
out.  I've a thousand dollars on me, and they'll sand-bag me sure if 
I go alone.  And let's get out right off."

Ten minutes later they all stood safely on the lighted thoroughfare 
of Water Street.

"Good-night, boys," said Orde.  "Go easy, and show up at the booms 
Monday."

He turned up the street toward the main part of the town.  Newmark 
joined him.

"I'll walk a little ways with you," he explained.  "And I say, Orde, 
I want to apologise to you.  'Most of the evening I've been thinking 
you the worst fool I ever saw, but you can take care of yourself at 
every stage of the game.  The trick was good, but your taking the 
other fellow's drink beat it."



VIII


Orde heard no more of Newmark--and hardly thought of him--until over 
two weeks later.

In the meantime the riverman, assuming the more conventional 
garments of civilisation, lived with his parents in the old Orde 
homestead at the edge of town.  This was a rather pretentious two-
story brick structure, in the old solid, square architecture, 
surrounded by a small orchard, some hickories, and a garden.  Orde's 
father had built it when he arrived in the pioneer country from New 
England forty years before.  At that time it was considered well out 
in the country.  Since then the town had crept to it, so that the 
row of grand old maples in front shaded a stone-guttered street.  A 
little patch of corn opposite, and many still vacant lots above, 
placed it, however, as about the present limit of growth.

Jack Orde was the youngest and most energetic of a large family that 
had long since scattered to diverse cities and industries.  He and 
Grandpa and Grandma Orde dwelt now in the big, echoing, old-
fashioned house alone, save for the one girl who called herself the 
"help" rather than the servant.  Grandpa Orde, now above sixty, was 
tall, straight, slender.  His hair was quite white, and worn a 
little long.  His features were finely chiselled and aquiline.  From 
them looked a pair of piercing, young, or, standing aside from the doorway.

Newmark entered the cool, dusky interior, and was shown to the left 
into a dim, long room.  He perched on a mahogany chair, and had time 
to notice the bookcases with the white owl atop, the old piano with 
the yellowing keys, the haircloth sofa and chairs, the steel 
engravings, and the two oil portraits, when Orde's large figure 
darkened the door.

For an instant the young man, who must just have come in from the 
outside sunshine, blinked into the dimness.  Newmark, too, blinked 
back, although he could by this time see perfectly well.

Newmark had known Orde only as a riverman.  Like most Easterners, 
then and now, he was unable to imagine a man in rough clothes as 
being anything but essentially a rough man.  The figure he saw 
before him was decently and correctly dressed in what was then the 
proper Sunday costume.  His big figure set off the cloth to 
advantage, and even his wind-reddened face seemed toned down and 
refined by the change in costume and surroundings.

"Oh, it's you, Mr. Newmark!" cried Orde in his hearty way, and 
holding out his hand.  "I'm glad to see you.  Where you been?  Come 
on out of there.  This is the 'company place.'"  Without awaiting a 
reply, he led the way into the narrow hall, whence the two entered 
another, brighter room, in which Grandma Orde sat, the canary 
singing above her head.

"Mother," said Orde, "this is Mr. Newmark, w drive the logs for these ten firms
at so much a 
thousand, do you suppose it would get the business?"

"It would depend on the driving firm," said Orde.  "You see, mill 
men have got to have their logs.  They can't afford to take chances.  
It wouldn't pay."

"Then that's all right," agreed Newmark, with a gleam of 
satisfaction across his thin face.  "Would you form a partnership 
with me having such an object in view?"

Orde threw back his head and laughed with genuine amusement.

"I guess you don't realise the situation," said he.  "We'd have to 
have a few little things like distributing booms, and tugs, and a 
lot of tools and supplies and works of various kinds."

"Well, we'd get them."

It was now Orde's turn to ask questions.

"How much are you worth?" he inquired bluntly.

"About twenty thousand dollars," replied Newmark.

"Well, if I raise very much black eyes.  In his time, 
Grandpa Orde had been a mighty breaker of the wilderness; but his 
time had passed, and with the advent of a more intensive 
civilisation he had fallen upon somewhat straitened ways.  Grandma 
Orde, on the other hand, was a very small, spry old lady, with a 
small face, a small figure, small hands and feet.  She dressed in 
the then usual cap and black silk of old ladies.  Half her time she 
spent at her housekeeping, which she loved, jingling about from 
cellar to attic store-room, seeing that Amanda, the "help," had 
everything in order.  The other half she sat in a wooden "Dutch" 
rocking-chair by a window overlooking the garden.  Her silk-shod 
feet rested neatly side by side on a carpet-covered hassock, her 
back against a gay tapestried cushion.  Near her purred big Jim, a 
maltese rumoured to weigh fifteen pounds.  Above her twittered a 
canary.

And the interior of the house itself was in keeping.  The low 
ceilings, the slight irregularities of structure peculiar to the 
rather rule-of-thumb methods of the earlier builders, the deep 
window embrasures due to the thickness of the walls, the unexpected 
passages leading to unsuspected rooms, and the fact that many of 
these apartments were approached by a step or so up or a step or so 
down--these lent to it a quaint, old-fashioned atmosphere enhanced 
further by the steel engravings, the antique furnishings, the many-
paned windows, and all the belongings of old people who have passed 
from a previous generation untouched by modern ideas.

To this house and these people Orde came direct from the greatness 
of the wilderness and the ferocity of Hell's Half-Mile.  Such 
contrasts were possible even ten or fifteen years ago.  The untamed 
country lay at the doors of the most modern civilisation.

Newmark, reappearing one Sunday afternoon at the end of the two 
weeks, was apparently bothered.  He examined the Orde place for some 
moments; walked on beyond it; finding nothing there, he returned, 
and after some hesitation turned in up the tar sidewalk and pulled 
at the old-fashioned wire bell-pull.  Grandma Orde herself answered 
the door.

At sight of her fine features, her dainty lace cap and mitts, and 
the stiffness of her rustling black silks, Newmark took off his gray 
felt hat.

"Good-afternoon," said he.  "Will you kindly tell me where Mr. Orde 
lives?"

"This is Mr. Orde's," replied the little old lady.

"Pardon me," persisted Newmark, "I am looking for Mr. Jack Orde, and 
I was directed here.  I am sorry to have troubled you."

"Mr. Jack Orde lives here," returned Grandma Orde.  "He is my son.  
Would you like to see him?"

"If you please," assented Newmark gravely, his thin, shrewd face 
masking itself with its usual expression of quizzical cynicism.

"Step this way, please, and I'll call him," requested his 
interlocutho was with us on the 
drive this spring."

Grandma Orde laid her gold-bowed glasses and her black leather Bible 
on the stand beside her.

"Mr. Newmark and I spoke at the door," said she, extending her frail 
hand with dignity.  "If you were on the drive, Mr. Newmark, you must 
have been one of the High Privates in this dreadful war we all read 
about."

Newmark laughed and made some appropriate reply.  A few moments 
later, at Orde's suggestion, the two passed out a side door and back 
into the remains of the old orchard.

"It's pretty nice here under the trees," said Orde.  "Sit down and 
light up.  Where you been for the last couple of weeks?"

"I caught Johnson's drive and went on down river with him to the 
lake," replied Newmark, thrusting the offered cigar in one corner of 
his mouth and shaking his head at Orde's proffer of a light.

"You must like camp life."

"I do not like it at all," negatived Newmark emphatically, "but the 
drive interested me.  It interested me so much that I've come back 
to talk to you about it."

"Fire ahead," acquiesced Orde.

"I'm going to ask you a few questions about yourself, and you can 
answer them or not, just as you please."

"Oh, I'm not bashful about my career," laughed Orde.

"How old are you?" inquired Newmark abruptly.

"Thirty."

"How long have you been doing that sort of thing--driving, I mean?"

"Off and on, about six years."

"Why did you go into that particular sort of thing?"

Orde selected a twig and carefully threw it at a lump in the turf.

"Because there's nothing ahead of shovelling but dirt," he replied 
with a quaint grin.

"I see," said Newmark, after a pause.  "Then you think there's more 
future to that sort of thing than the sort of thing the rest of your 
friends go in for--law, and wholesale groceries, and banking and the 
rest of it?"

"There is for me," replied Orde simply.

"Yet you're merely river-driving on a salary at thirty."

Orde flushed slowly, and shifted his position.

"Exactly so--Mr. District Attorney," he said drily.

Newmark started from his absorption in his questioning and shifted 
his unlighted cigar.

"Does sound like it," he admitted; "but I'm not asking all this out 
of idle curiosity.  I've got a scheme in my head that I think may 
work out big for us both."

"Well," assented Orde reservedly, "in that case--I'm foreman on this 
drive because my outfit went kerplunk two years ago, and I'm making 
a fresh go at it."

"Failed?" inquired Newmark.

"Partner skedaddled," replied Orde.  "Now, if you're satisfied with 
my family history, suppose you tell me what the devil you're driving 
at."

He was plainly restive under the cross-examination to which he had 
been subjected.

"Look here," said Newmark, abruptly changing the subject, "you know 
that rapids up river flanked by shallows, where the logs are always 
going aground?"

"I do," replied Orde, still grim.

"Well, why wouldn't it help to put a string of piers down both 
sides, with booms between them to hold the logs in the deeper 
water?"

"It would," said Orde.

"Why isn't it done, then?"

"Who would do it?" countered Orde, leaning back more easily in the 
interest of this new discussion.  "If Daly did it, for instance, 
then all the rest of the drivers would get the advantage of it for 
nothing."

"Get them to pay their share."

Orde grinned.  "I'd like to see you get any three men to agree to 
anything on this river."

"And a sort of dam would help at that Spruce Rapids?"

"Sure!  If you improved the river for driving, she'd be easier to 
drive.  That goes without saying."

"How many firms drive logs on this stream?"

"Ten," replied Orde, without hesitation.

"How many men do they employ?"

"Driving?" asked Orde.

"Driving."

"About five hundred; a few more or less."

"Now suppose," Newmark leaned forward impressively, "suppose a firm 
should be organised to drive ALL the logs on the river.  Suppose it 
improved the river with necessary piers, dams, and all the rest of 
it, so that the driving would be easier.  Couldn't it drive with 
less than five hundred men, and couldn't it save money on the cost 
of driving?"

"It might," agreed Orde.

"You know the conditions here.  If such a firm should be organised 
and should offer tomore than twenty thousand cents, I'm 
lucky just now."

"How much capital would we have to have?" asked Newmark.

Orde thought for several minutes, twisting the petal of an old 
apple-blossom between his strong, blunt fingers.

"Somewhere near seventy-five thousand dollars," he estimated at 
last.

"That's easy," cried Newmark.  "We'll make a stock company--say a 
hundred thousand shares.  We'll keep just enough between us to 
control the company--say fifty-one thousand.  I'll put in my pile, 
and you can pay for yours out of the earnings of the company."

"That doesn't sound fair," objected Orde.

"You pay interest," explained Newmark.  "Then we'll sell the rest of 
the stock to raise the rest of the money."

"If we can," interjected Orde.

"I think we can," asserted Newmark.

Orde fell into a brown study, occasionally throwing a twig or a 
particle of earth at the offending lump in the turf.  Overhead the 
migratory warblers balanced right-side up or up-side down, searching 
busily among the new leaves, uttering their simple calls.  The air 
was warm and soft and still, the sky bright.  Fat hens clucked among 
the grasses.  A feel of Sunday was in the air.

"I must have something to live on," said he thoughtfully at last.

"So must I," said Newmark.  "We'll have to pay ourselves salaries, 
of course, but the smaller the better at first.  You'll have to take 
charge of the men and the work and all the rest of it--I don't know 
anything about that.  I'll attend to the incorporating and the 
routine, and I'll try to place the stock.  You'll have to see, first 
of all, whether you can get contracts from the logging firms to 
drive the logs."

"How can I tell what to charge them?"

"We'll have to figure that very closely.  You know where these 
different drives would start from, and how long each of them would 
take?"

"Oh, yes; I know the river pretty well."

"Well, then we'll figure how many days' driving there is for each, 
and how many men there are, and what it costs for wages, grub, 
tools--we'll just have to figure as near as we can to the actual 
cost, and then add a margin for profit and for interest on our 
investment."

"It might work out all right," admitted Orde.

"I'm confident it would," asserted Newmark.  "And there'd be no harm 
figuring it all out, would there?"

"No," agreed Orde, "that would be fun all right."

At this moment Amanda appeared at the back door and waved an apron.

"Mr. Jack!" she called.  "Come in to dinner."

Newmark looked puzzled, and, as he arose, glanced surreptitiously at 
his watch.  Orde seemed to take the summons as one to be expected, 
however.  In fact, the strange hour was the usual Sunday custom in 
the Redding of that day, and had to do with the late-church freedom 
of Amanda and her like.

"Come in and eat with us," invited Orde.  "We'd be glad to have 
you."

But Newmark declined.

"Come up to-morrow night, then, at half-past six, for supper," Orde 
urged him.  "We can figure on these things a little.  I'm in Daly's 
all day, and hardly have time except evenings."

To this Newmark assented.  Orde walked with him down the deep-shaded 
driveway with the clipped privet hedge on one side, to the iron gate 
that swung open when one drove over a projecting lever.  There he 
said good-bye.

A moment later he entered the long dining-room, where Grandpa and 
Grandma Orde were already seated.  An old-fashioned service of 
smooth silver and ivory-handled steel knives gave distinction to the 
plain white linen.  A tea-pot smothered in a "cosey" stood at 
Grandma Orde's right.  A sirloin roast on a noble platter awaited 
Grandpa Orde's knife.

Orde dropped into his place with satisfaction.

"Shut up, Cheep!" he remarked to a frantic canary hanging in the 
sunshine.

"Your friend seems a nice-appearing young man," said Grandma Orde.  
"Wouldn't he stay to dinner?"

"I asked him," replied Orde, "but he couldn't.  He and I have a 
scheme for making our everlasting fortunes."

"Who is he?" asked grandma.

Orde dropped his napkin into his lap with a comical chuckle of 
dismay.

"Blest if I have the slightest idea, mother," he said.  "Newmark 
joined us on the drive.  Said he was a lawyer, and was out in the 
woods for his health.  He's been with us, studying and watching the 
work, ever since."



IX


I think I'll go see Jane Hubbard this evening," Orde remarked to his 
mother, as he arose from the table.  This was his method of 
announcing that he would not be home for supper.

Jane Hubbard lived in a low one-story house of blue granite, 
situated amid a grove of oaks at the top of the hill.  She was a 
kindly girl, whose parents gave her free swing, and whose house, in 
consequence, was popular with the younger people.  Every Sunday she 
offered to all who came a "Sunday-night lunch," which consisted of 
cold meats, cold salad, bread, butter, cottage c