Chapter 24

THE LOG JAM

The feel of spring filled the air; the sun swung higher and higher; and the snow turned dark and lay soggy with water. With the increasing warmth of the longer days, men's thoughts turned to the drive.

They talked of water-front streets, with their calk-riddled plank sidewalks and low-fronted bars; of squalid back wine-rooms, where for a week they would be allowed to bask, sodden, in the smiles of the painted women--then, drugged, beaten, and robbed, would wake up in a filthy alley and hunt up a job in the mills.

It was all in a lifetime, this annual spring debauch. The men accepted it as part of the ordered routine of their lives; accepted it without shame or regret, boasting and laughing unblushingly over past episodes--facing the future gladly and without disgust.

"You mind Jake Sonto's place, where big Myrtle hangs out? They frisked Joe Manning fer sixty bucks last year. I seen 'em do it. What! Me? I was too sleepy to give a cuss--they got mine, too."

And so the talk drifted among them. Revolting details of abysmal man-failings, brutal reminiscences of knock-out drops, robbery, and even murder, furnished the themes for jest and gibe which drew forth roars of laughter.

And none sought to avoid the inevitable; rather, they looked forward to it in brutish anticipation, accepting it as a matter of course.

For so had lumber-jacks been drugged, beaten, and robbed since the first pine fell--and so will they continue to be drugged, beaten, and robbed until the last log is jerked, dripping, from the river and the last white board is sawed.

On the night of the 8th of April the cut was complete, and on the morning of the 9th ten million feet of logs towered on the rollways along the river, ready for the breaking up of the ice.

Stromberg had banked the bird's-eye to his own satisfaction, and Moncrossen selected his crew for the drive--white-water men, whose boast it was that they never had walked a foot from the timber to the mills; bateau men, who laughed in the face of death as they swarmed over a jam; key-log men, who scorned dynamite; bend watchers, whose duty it is to stay awake through the long, warm days and prevent the formation of jams as the drive shoots by--each selected with an eye to previous experience and physical fitness.

For, among all occupations of men, log driving stands unique for its hardships of peril, discomfort, and bone-racking toil.

From the breaking out of the rollways until the last log slips smoothly into its place in the boom-raft, no man's life is safe.

Yet men fight for a place on the drive--for the privilege of being soaked to the bone for days at a time in ice-cold water; of being crushed to a pulp between grinding logs; of being drowned in white-water rapids, where a man must stand, his log moving at the speed of an express train, time and again shooting half out of water to meet the spray of the next rock-tossed wave; of making hair-trigger decisions, when an instant's hesitation means death, as his log rushes under the low-hanging branches of a "sweeper."

For pure love of adventure they fight--and that a few more dollars may find their way into the tills of the Jake Sontos of the water-front dives. For among these men the baiting of death is the excitement of life, and their pleasures are the savage pleasures of firstlings.

Those who were not of the drive were handed their vouchers and hauled to Hilarity, while those who remained busied themselves in the packing and storing of gear; for, in the fall, the crew would return to renew the attack on the timber.

Followed, then, days of waiting.

The two bateaux--the cook's bateau, with its camp stove and store of supplies; and the big bateau, with its thousand feet of inch and a half manila line coiled for instant use, whose thick, flaring sides and floor of selected timber were built to override the shock and battering of a thousand pitching logs--were carried to the bank ready for launching.

The sodden snow settled heavily, and around the base of stumps and the trunks of standing trees appeared rings of bare ground, while the course of the skidways and cross-hauls stood out sharp and black, like great veins in the clearing.

Each sag and depression became a pond, and countless rills and rivulets gurgled riverward, bank-full with sparkling snow-water.

Over the frozen surface of the river it flowed and wore at the shore-bound ice-floor. And then, one night, the ice went out.

Titanically it went, and noisily, with the crash and grind of broken cakes; and in the morning the river rushed black, and deep, and swollen, its roiled waters tearing sullenly at crumbling banks, while upon its muddy surface heaved belated ice-cakes and uprooted trees.

At daylight men crowded the bank, the bend watchers strung out and took up their positions, and white-water men stood by with sharp axes to break out the rollways.

The first rollway broke badly.

A thick-butted log slanted and met the others head-on as they thundered down the bank, tossing them high in the air whence they fell splashing into the river, or crashed backward among the tumbling logs, upending, and hurling them about like jack-straws.

The air was filled with the heavy rumble of rolling logs as other rollways tore loose at the swift blows of the axes, where, at the crack of toggle-pins, men leaped from in front of the rolling, crushing death; and the surface of the river became black with bucking, pitching logs which shot to the opposite bank.

Coincident with the snapping of the first toggle-pin, the branches of a gigantic, storm-blasted pine, whose earth-laded butt dragged heavily along the bottom of the river, became firmly entangled in the low-hanging limbs of a sweeper, and swung sluggishly across the current.

Against this obstruction crashed the leaping, upending logs of the wrecked rollway. Other logs swept in and wedged, forcing the heavy butt and the riven trunk of the huge tree firmly against the rocks at the head of the rapid.

Rollway after rollway tore loose and the released logs, swept downward by the resistless push of the current, climbed one upon another and lodged. Higher and higher the jam towered, the interlocking logs piling in hopeless tangle.

Moncrossen was beside himself. Up and down the bank he rushed, bellowing orders and hurling curses at the men who, gripping their peaveys, swarmed over the heaving jam like flies.

The bateau men, forty of them, lifted the heavy boat bodily, and working it out to the very forefront of the jam, lowered it into the water, while other men made the heavy cable fast to the trunk of a tree. Close under the towering pile the bateau was snubbed with a short, light line, and the men clambered shoreward, leaving only Moncrossen, Stromberg, Fallon, and one other to search for the key-log.

It was a comparatively simple jam, the key to which was instantly apparent to the experienced rivermen, in two large logs wedged in the form of an inverted V. The quick twist of a peavey inserted at the vertex of the angle, and the drive should move.

Fallon and Stromberg, past masters both of the drive made ready while the other stood by to cast off the light line and allow the bateau to swing free on the main cable.

Moncrossen clambered to the top to shout warning to those who swarmed over the body of the jam and along the edges of the river.

At the first bellowed orders of the boss, Bill Carmody had leaped onto the heaving jam and, following in the wake of others, began picking his way to the opposite shore.

New to the game, he had no definite idea of what was expected of him, so, with an eye upon those nearest him, he determined to follow their example.

To watch from the bank and see men whose boast it is that they "c'd ride a bubble if their calks wouldn't prick it," leap lightly from log to rolling log; hesitate, run its length, and leap to another as it sinks under them, nothing looks simpler.

But the greener who confidently tries it for the first time instantly finds himself in a position uncomfortably precarious, if not actually dangerous.

Bill found, to his disgust, that the others had gained the opposite bank before he had reached the middle, where he paused, balancing uncertainly and hesitating whether to go ahead or return.

The log upon which he stood oscillated dizzily, and as he sprang for another, his foot slipped and he fell heavily, his peavey clattering downward among the promiscuously tangled logs, to come to rest some six feet beneath him, where the white-water curled foaming among the logs of the lower tier.

Bill glanced hastily about him, expecting the shouts of laughter and good-natured chaffing which is the inevitable aftermath of the clumsy misadventure of a riverman. The bateau men were just gaining the shore and the attention of the others was engaged elsewhere, so that none noticed the accident, and, with a grin of relief, Bill clambered down to recover his peavey.

And Moncrossen, peering over the top of the jam, took in the situation at a glance--the river apparently clear of men, and the greener, invisible to those on shore, crawling about among the logs in the center of the pile.

It was the moment for which he had waited. Even the most careful planning could not have created a situation more to his liking. At last the greener was "his."

"There she goes!" he roared, and turning, slid hastily from the top and leaped into the waiting bateau.

"Let 'er go!" he shouted.

Fallon and Stromberg leaped forward and simultaneously their peaveys bit into the smaller of the two key-logs.

Both big men heaved and strained, once, twice, thrice, and the log turned slowly, allowing the end of the other to pass.

The logs trembled for an instant, then, forced by the enormous weight behind them, shot sidewise, crossed each other, and pressed the tree-trunk deep under the boiling water.

A mighty quiver ran through the whole mass of the jam, it balanced for a shuddering instant, then with a mighty rush, let go.

Over the side of the bateau tumbled Fallon and Stromberg, sprawling on the bottom at the feet of the boss, while the man in the bow cast off the light line.

The next instant the heavy boat leaped clear of the water, overriding, climbing to the very summit of the pounding, plunging logs which threatened each moment to crush and batter through her sides and bottom.

The strong, new line was singing taut to the pull of the heavy bateau which was being gradually crowded shoreward by the sweep of the down-rushing logs.

Suddenly a mighty shout went up from those on the bank. The men in the bateau looked, and there, almost in the middle of the stream, was the greener leaping from log to log of the wildly pitching jam.

They stared horror-stricken, with tense, blanched faces. Each instant seemed as if it must be his last, for they knew that no man alive could hope to keep his feet in the mad rush and sweep of the tumbling, tossing drive.

Yet the greener was keeping his feet. Time and again he recovered his balance when death seemed imminent, and amid wild shouts and yells of encouragement, climbing, leaping, running, stumbling, he worked his way shoreward.

He was almost opposite the bateau now, and Stromberg, hastily coiling the light line, leaped into the bow. Then, just when it seemed possible the greener might make it, a huge log shot upward from the depths and fell with a crash squarely across the log upon which he was riding.

A cry of horror went up from half a hundred throats as the man was thrown high in the air and fell back into the foaming white-water that showed here and here through the thinning tangle of logs.

The next instant a hundred logs passed over the spot, drawn down by the suck of the rapid.