Part 12

This was the real thing at last. He knew that thenceforth no pleasure would be perfect which she did not share, no sorrow too great to be borne with her help. He looked at the logs, acres and acres of them herded in the booms and drifting by in the current, at the steel-shod rivermen who ran here and there pushing and guiding, at his camp set back beneath the budding trees; and he realized that the mainspring of his life and his endeavour had changed. It was no longer the business--his father's business--personal pride, nor the desire to succeed that held him to effort; but it was Jack--straight, slim little Jack, with the crown of dark hair and the frank, fearless eyes. From such realizations spring success.

The next letter he opened was from Locke, and the news it contained was not only unexpected but very good indeed.

You will be surprised to hear the action against Garwood _et al._ has been discontinued, Crooks agreeing with me that we should accept the terms of settlement offered, which, however, did not proceed from Garwood directly. As a matter of fact, the action was getting out of the realm of law into that of politics. The newspapers were beginning to sit up and take notice, and it looked as if our innocent little lawsuit might blossom into a general investigation which, in turn, might involve a number of prominent people. At this stage I received an intimation that if we dropped the action we could have what we wanted, and after consultation with Crooks we decided to do so.

Having the whip hand we were by no means modest in our demands. You will hear no more of the proceedings in contempt against you for your disregard of the Court's order re-trespass upon Clancys' limits, and destruction of their property. So, too, Clancys' action against you for the said destruction will be withdrawn. In future you will both receive a fair share of orders from the contractors who have been boycotting you; you will get a fair deal in buying timber berths; the railway will give you all the cars you want; and there will be no discrimination against you in haulage rates. This means that your businesses will be henceforth on a fair competitive basis in the above respects, which is all you can expect. It also means that the riot act has been read to Garwood by some people who are in a position to read it. Just how he was persuaded to crawl down I don't know, though I rather think a threat of legislation affecting his railways was the means used. You see he might very easily be forced to spend anywhere from half a million up on useless frills and equipment merely as a beginning. Anyway, you may depend upon these terms of settlement being carried out.

But all the same you are by no means out of the woods, and a great deal depends upon your ability to deliver your logs to Wismer & Holden by July 1st. I am satisfied in my own mind that their offer and the "little joker" in the contract were both inspired by Garwood; also that they will not give you an hour's grace. McDowell, of the Farmers' National, tells me that his bank cannot carry you after that date--indeed, only the practical certainty of your filling the contract induced them to finance you to the extent which they did. If you don't make good they will shut down on you, and proceed to realize on what securities they hold. Then, a payment will be due on your mortgage to the Northern Loan Company. You need not expect any leniency from them. So, if I were you, I'd hustle the logs down day and night.

Joe was delighted with the first part of the letter. With fair competition in the future he saw plain sailing ahead. But the latter part gave him some uneasiness.

It was then well along in May, and the drive was at least three weeks later than it should have been, due to the backward season and to the unforeseen delays. That night Joe held council with his foremen. The probabilities were carefully canvassed, and at the end of the discussion old Dennis McKenna voiced the general opinion.

"We can make her with a week or two to spare--if we don't strike a snag somewheres," said he. "That's allowin' for usual hard luck, too. The river's risin' now. The snows up north are meltin' and she'll boom soon. That'll help us a lot."

Day after day the brown logs of Kent's big drive slipped down the current. He had experienced foremen and a strong driving crew. A log no sooner touched the shore than it was thrust back into deep water. The drive was strung for miles, and all along the banks prowled husky rivermen, peavey or pike pole in hand, keeping the sticks hustling.

MacNutt and the Wind River crew, reinforced by most of Deever's, had the rear, which usually means hard work, for none of the logs must be left behind. McKenna travelled daily up and down the banks overseeing the whole, and Joe tramped with him. Tobin, ahead, kept a sharp lookout for obstructions and possible jams. But so far not a jam worth mentioning had formed.

"She's too good to last," said McKenna one night. "Tobin will hit the Silver Chain to-morrow, and then look out. I figured on higher water than this."

The Silver Chain was a succession of rapids greatly disliked by river drivers. It extended for a couple of miles, white, torn patches of water with some clear current between. The banks were steep, sheer rock fringed with dwarf pines, frowning ceaselessly at the foam and turmoil below. Jams had a habit of forming there, and nearly always some sort of trouble occurred. The crew had calculated upon this and they got it, for early the next day Tobin sent them word of a jam which he had not been able to break, and demanded more men.

"And she's a bad one, sure enough," said McKenna, when he and Joe arrived.

The jam had occurred in a rapid familiarly known as "Hell's Bumps," about midway in the Chain. Just how it had formed nobody knew. The logs were running free when suddenly half a dozen plugged and held for an instant only, but it was sufficient for others to pile on top of them. Every moment brought down fresh sticks, and the fast water flung them at the growing mass to make a part of it. Some shoved, up-ended, and forced others aloft. The face of the jam rose high, abrupt, and dangerous. The tail grew swiftly upstream. By the time McKenna arrived it had become a genuine, old-time "teaser." The foremen went over it carefully, with glum faces, for this meant more delay; no one could tell how long it would take to break it. They pondered the current and the depth of water as they knew it by experience, and were not encouraged.

"Sooner or later we'll have to use powder on her," said McKenna; "we might as well use it sooner."

He set the crew to work picking out logs so that the dynamite might be exploded in the bowels of the monster. The men worked with a will but gingerly, for the task was dangerous. The dynamite was placed deep in the jam. When it exploded the mass heaved, shook, buckled, and moved a few yards downstream, where it plugged again. Nothing had been gained.

"It'd take a carload of powder to root her out," said Tobin in disgust. "We'll just have to dig into her with the peavies, Dinny, and trust to luck."

So they dug with the peavies for three days, and nothing happened. Occasionally there would be a quiver and a long, shuddering groan as if a monster were awaking from sleep; and once a series of startling, premonitory cracks and a sharp movement set the jam crew zig-zagging for shore. But this proved a false alarm, for the tremendous pack of timber merely settled down and squatted immutably upon its brown haunches, the bristling top of it seeming to grin defiance at the puny efforts of man.

"If it takes a trainload of powder we've got to break it," said Joe desperately, and telegraphed Wright from the nearest station to send on a supply of high-explosive.

As the keystone supports an arch so key-logs hold a jam. If they can be found and dislodged, the jam collapses and disentangles. Finding them is difficult, laborious, and very dangerous. If there are dams above, a head of water is sometimes let loose suddenly and the jam swept away. But there were no dams, so that Kent had his choice between manual labour, which is slow and costly, and dynamite, which is sudden but uncertain. By way of compromise he used both, and still the logs did not move.

He began to feel a strange personal enmity toward them. They were his, bought by his money, cut by his crew, inanimate, senseless things. And yet in the mass they seemed to possess a personality, a living spirit of pure, balky cussedness; they lay in bulk, a brown shaggy monster that obstinately refused to heed the voice of its master.

XVIII

Joe stood on the jam, watching the crew dry-picking out the logs and throwing them into the water, burrowing down for a place to use more powder, when his name was shouted. He looked up, and his heart gave a decided thump. Above him stood William Crooks and Jack.

Joe leaped the logs and ran up the bank. "How did you get here?" he cried. "Why didn't you let me know you were coming?"

"We thought we'd surprise you," said Jack sedately. "I persuaded dad. I wanted to see how _our_ drive was coming down."

"It isn't coming down just now," Joe observed. "We can't stir it. Here, come over to my tent and make yourselves at home. Oh, Jimmy," he called to the cook, "rustle a good meal, will you? Spread yourself on something fancy, now."

The cook grinned amiably, and became suddenly shamefaced as Jack smiled at him. "I ain't got much fixin's," he apologized. "If th' lady, there'd tell me what she'd like----"

"Why, you're Jimmy Bowes!" cried Jack. "I remember you, twelve years ago on dad's camp on the Little Canoe. You used to give me lumps from the brown sugar barrel. Jimmy, I'll always love you for that."

Jimmy Bowes blushed to the top of his bald head as he shook hands. "You've growed," said he. "Sure, I remember, but I didn't think you'd know the old bull-cook. You're--you're real purty!" Suddenly embarrassed by his own candour and Joe's laughter he retreated to his own domain where, cursing his cookee, he plunged into preparations for a magnificent meal.

McKenna and MacNutt came ashore and met Crooks.

"Well, boys," said the old lumberman, "she's a teaser, hey!"

"You bet," replied McKenna. "She's solid as a cellar--froze to the bottom all the way. Still, the water's risin' now, an' she may pull most any time." He did not believe a word of his statement, but he spoke so that Joe should not be discouraged. Crooks, who did not believe a word of it either, nodded.

"That's the way with big jams. I remember, thirty years ago on Frenchman's Creek--" He drew McKenna and MacNutt out of earshot, relating his story. Suddenly he stopped. "Look here, Dinny, if this jam don't break mighty soon young Kent goes out of business."

"Well, I wish t' God I knew how to break her," said McKenna. "The boys can't work harder than they're doing. We've put in shots 't'd rip a mountain loose, and she just lays back her ears and sits tighter."

Meanwhile Jack and Joe walked upstream along the bank. Here and there on the flanks of the wooden monster crews of men picked away with peavies. The clean smell of the millions of feet of freshly cut, wet timber struck the nostrils. The water tore and snarled at the wedged logs, and little streams shot through the mass, hissing and gurgling; the voice of the checked river was deep and angry.

"To-morrow we're going to fill it up with powder and see what that does," said Joe. "With the rising water it may start things. If it does not--" He shrugged his shoulders. If the jam did not "pull" soon he was broken, and he knew it.

Jack slid her arm in his. "Dad says the big jams go when you least expect it. This will. You have time yet, Joey-boy."

He patted her hand. "It's good of you, Jack. Anyway, I've done my best, and if I'm downed this time I can make a fresh start. I know something about the business now."

Jack looked at him and nodded. He was quite unlike the neatly tailored Joe Kent of a year before. He wore a battered felt hat, a gray shirt, trousers cut off below the knees, and heavy woollen stockings. On his feet were the "cork boots" of the riverman. Already he had mastered the rudiments of "birling," and could run across floating logs, if not gracefully at least with slight chance of a ducking. He was bronzed and hard, and his hands were rough and calloused. But the difference went deeper than outward appearance. He was stronger, graver, more self-reliant, and the girl recognized and approved of the change.

The day faded into dusk. Big fires were lighted at the camp. Crooks and his daughter remained for supper; afterward they were to drive back to the little town, coming back the next morning to see the big shots let off.

Crooks lit a cigar and joined the foremen, to discuss the jam and the probability of breaking it, and yarn of his own experiences with mighty rivermen whose names were now but traditions. The men lay about the fires, smoking and talking. They were tired, and the popular vocalists, shy because there was a girl in the camp, hung back and muttered profane refusals when asked to sing. Jack was disappointed. "I haven't heard a shanty song sung by a crew in ages. I wish they would wake up. Am I the wet-blanket?"

"I'll go over and tell them to sing anything you like," Joe offered promptly.

"No, that wouldn't do. Some of them are going to their blankets already. To-morrow night--when the jam is broken--we'll have a celebration. I'll sing to them myself."

"If it _is_ broken!"

"Now, Joe," she reproved him severely, "you brace up. We're going to break that jam to-morrow; and we're going to deliver our logs on time, and don't you dare to even _think_ we're not. I tell you we are! Don't get discouraged, for we're going to win out."

"You're a good booster, Jack" he said, smothering a sigh. "Of course we are. And once we get through here we'll have plain sailing."

He pressed her hand gratefully. It was something to receive encouragement, even if it was plainly labelled, and he would not be so ungracious as to tell her so. Crooks loomed out of the darkness and called for his team. Half an hour afterward Joe was the only man awake in camp, and he drifted into slumber with the memory of the soft touch of Jack's lips as they lay for a moment on his.

In the morning the jam was sown with dynamite, planted deep beneath the logs at points approved by McKenna. Crooks and Jack arrived. The men came ashore and waited anxiously.

Almost simultaneously, columns of water, strips of bark and twisted, riven wood shot high in the air, and the detonations thundered back from the rocks. A rumbling growl issued from the inwards of the wooden monster. It heaved and rose. Logs toppled down the face of it, and then the whole front cascaded in wild confusion. Just when it seemed that the whole thing must go motion ceased. The shaggy, bristling brute settled back into immobility. The shots had failed.

Bosses and men swore fervently. These continued failures were blots on their records as rivermen. Their employer needed those logs badly, and it was up to them not to disappoint him. The jam was big and ugly, but it must be broken. Doggedly they climbed out on the logs again and set to work.

When the jam failed to "pull," Kent looked at Jack, reading the bitter disappointment in her face. Somehow it helped him to conceal his own.

"Better luck next time, girlie," he said. "Anyway, we made a lot of noise."

She smiled back at him, but her lips quivered, "Of course it will pull next time; it can't help it."

"Of course not," he agreed, being quite convinced to the contrary.

They fell silent, gloomily watching the crew at work. Below them a man clamped his peavey into a log at the base of the pile and swung back on it so that the tough stock bent like a whip. Failing to move it he called a comrade. They pried and boosted, their clinging shirts bulging with the swell of their back-muscles. Suddenly the log came away. Immediately a groan rose from the timbers. The men sprang to alertness. Crackings and complainings ran through the mass.

The girl caught Joe's arm.

"It's going out, Joe! It's going out! Oh, see it pull!"

There was no doubt of it. The jam "pulled" with the bellow of a maddened beast. Logs shot outward, upward, downward--every way, rolling over and over, smashing, up-ending, grinding. Through them the white, torn water boiled madly. The core of the jam seemed to leap bodily downstream and then split into fragments.

Over the turmoil the rivermen fled for shore, each man balancing himself with his peavey, held low across his body. Their flight was swift, but unhurried and calculated. In face of the deadliest peril of the riverman--the breaking jam--they were cool and wary, timing to a nicety leap from tossing log to tossing log.

Suddenly, opposite the watchers, a man lost his footing and pitched forward. Another, twenty feet away, cleared the space with two leaps, caught the first by the collar and dragged him upright, but the man sagged down, evidently badly hurt. The other dropped his peavey, heaved him up in his arms and, thus burdened, made for shore. He sprang once, twice, hampered by his load. Then a wave of smashing timber surged down and over them. They were blotted from the world, effaced without even a stain on the torn water.

Jack, deadly white, with shining eyes and parted lips, stared at the spot where they had been.

"Oh, the brave boy--the poor, brave boy!" she cried. "Who was he, Joe?"

"Ward--Ward and McClung, two of my best men--chums," Joe told her bitterly. "I wouldn't have--Jack! Jack, look there!"

Strung along the jam as the men were when it pulled, some of them had no direct route for shore. Among these were McKenna, Dave Cottrell, and Hill and Laflamme of Deever's crew. The last three were noted "white water birlers," experts upon logs under any and all conditions, and McKenna, the old walking boss, in his best days had never found a man who could put him off a stick of pine.

When the jam began to pull they were opposite a stretch of rocky bank that offered no way of escape.

"Boys," said McKenna, "it's a bad chance, but we've got to take it--we've got to ride her down."

As he spoke the log on which he stood pitched sideways beneath him. He left it as a bird leaves a bough, alighting on another, and ran the tossing mass downstream. Cottrell, active as a squirrel, kept close to him. Hill and Laflamme, too, kept together but without premeditation, for each instinctively took the course that looked best to him. They dodged over and across the up-ending, smashing timbers, avoiding death at each spring by the thickness of a hair. It was this sight which had caused Joe Kent's exclamation.

Hill was the first to go. Just once he miscalculated by the fraction of an inch. He disappeared without a sound. Laflamme, just behind him, sprang across the spot where his companion had been, his eyes widening, his teeth bared and set, his gaudy voyageur's sash streaming from his waist, a bright flag fluttering in the face of destruction. Suddenly an up-ending log brushed his thigh. It was little, but it threw him from his stride. His shriek soared high above the roar of wood and water as the great logs nipped out his life.

Neither McKenna nor Cottrell looked back, though they heard the cry. Their own case was too perilous. A log thrust up suddenly beneath Cottrell's feet and threw him into the air as if he had been shot from a springboard. He alighted on his feet again by the purest of luck, and seeing an opening of water and a free log, leaped on it, whence he made his way to shore. McKenna, dead-beat, gained the outlying logs and fell as he reached solid earth.

Behind them the jam swept by in tossing, foaming grandeur, the backed-up water scouring all before it. McKenna staggered to his feet and waved a gaunt arm.

"Into her, boys, and keep her hustling!" he shouted.

But MacNutt and Deever were already on their way upstream. Tobin and his crew attacked the outlying logs and flung them into the current. Soon the channel was brown with the shooting sticks, flashing by in the racing water.

Jack, pale and shaken, sat and watched them go by. The bright sun, the dancing water, the bird songs from the woods, and the fierce activity of the rivermen were all at variance with the vision of sudden death which she had beheld. Joe, grave and silent, came up accompanied by her father.

"I guess we'd better be going, daughter," said Crooks gently.

She shook her head. "No, dad, I'd like to stay, please. Just leave me here. Joe has the work to see to, and you'd like to be there, too." The men looked at each other, and her father nodded silently. They went upstream to where the rear was working ferociously.

Jack, left alone, stared at the river, reconstructing the scene, which she was never to entirely forget. It was the first time she had seen men, rejoicing in the pride of their strength, wiped from life as dust is wiped up by a damp cloth. From her childhood she had spent days and even weeks in her father's camps, meeting the big, rough shantymen who one and all adored her; getting glimpses of their life, but only touching the outer shell of it; seeing them against a background of cheerful labour, ringing axes, song and jest, as real and yet as unreal as a stage setting--a background which in her eyes surrounded them with the elements of romance. Of their vices she knew nothing save by hearsay; of the tragedy of their lives she knew even less. Now, before her young eyes, Fate had swooped and struck instantly and without warning. Small wonder that she was shocked.

And she was shocked, also, by the apparent callousness of the dead men's comrades. They worked carelessly, as it seemed, about the very spot where the others had died. But here common sense came to her aid. The logs--Joe's logs, their logs--must be got out. No matter what toll the river claimed the drive must go down and to market.

It was the way of the world. In this as in other things, human life was the cheapest of commodities; its loss the least important hindrance, of less practical moment than the breakage of an ingenious man-made machine. She sighed as the realization came to her. It seemed heartless, yet she could not escape it. Sitting on the log, staring at the river, her lips moved in almost unconscious prayer for the men who had died like men, doing the work they were paid to do.

XIX

With the breaking of the big jam the luck of the drive seemed to change. The river was rising, the water was good, the logs travelled freely day and night without halt. Indeed, the delays seemed about to prove blessings in disguise, for other firms' drives, more fortunate, would be out of the way. Also when they reached the lower almost currentless stretches of the river, down which the logs would have to be towed in booms by steamers, there would be no delay. But these calculations were upset one day when they got news of a drive just ahead of them.

Straightway Tobin and Joe went down to see about it. Sure enough there was a drive, and as he looked at the end of a stranded log the foremen swore indignantly, for on it was stamped the "CB" of Clancy Brothers.

"It's their drive from Basket Lake," said Tobin. "They should have had it down three weeks gone." As they passed downstream he called Joe's attention to the rear crew. "Look at that. See 'em sojerin' on the job. They're loafin', every mother's son of them, and they've a stronger crew than they need, too."

They found Clancys' river-boss, Tom Archer by name, smoking a pipe and watching the indolent efforts of half a dozen men who were not even pretending to hustle.