The Rules of the Game Part 12

"They probably had about eight apiece; and if they hadn't they can bunk together."

Bob walked to the edge of the stream. It was not very wide, yet at this point it carried from three to six or eight feet of water, according to the bottom. A few logs were stranded along sh.o.r.e. Two or three more floated by, the forerunners of the drive. Bob could see where the highest water had flung debris among the bushes, and by that he knew that the stream must be already dropping from its freshet.

It was now late in the afternoon. The sun dipped behind a cold and austere hill-line. Against the sky showed a fringe of delicate popples, like spray frozen in the rise. The heavens near the horizon were a cold, pale yellow of unguessed lucent depths, that shaded above into an equally cold, pale green. Bob thrust his hands in his pockets and turned back to where the drying fire, its fuel replenished, was leaping across the gathering dusk.

Immediately after, the driving crews came tramping in from upstream.

They paid no attention to the newcomers, but dove first for the tent, then for the fire. There they began to pull off their lower garments, and Bob saw that most of them were drenched from the waist down. The drying racks were soon steaming with wet clothes.

Welton fell into low conversation with an old man, straight and slender as a Norway pine, with blue eyes, flaxen hair, eyebrows and moustache.

This was La.r.s.en, in charge of the jam, honest, capable in his way, slow of speech, almost childlike of glance. After a few minutes Welton rejoined Bob.

"He's a square peg, all right," he muttered, more to himself than to his companion. "He's a good riverman, but he's no river boss. Too easy-going. Well, all he has to do is to direct the work, luckily. If anything really goes wrong, Darrell would be down in two jumps."

"Grub pile!" remarked the cook conversationally.

The men seized the utensils from a heap of them, and began to fill their plates from the kettles on the table.

"Come on, bub," said Welton, "dig in! It's a long time till breakfast!"

XIII

The cook was early a foot next morning. Bob, restless with the uneasiness of the first night out of doors, saw the flicker of the fire against the tent canvas long before the first signs of daylight. In fact, the gray had but faintly lightened the velvet black of the night when the cook thrust his head inside the big sleeping tents to utter a wild yell of reveille.

The men stirred sleepily, stretched, yawned, finally kicked aside their blankets. Bob stumbled into the outer air. The chill of early morning struck into his bones. Teeth chattering, he hurried to the river bank where he stripped and splashed his body with the bracing water. Then he rubbed down with the little towel Tommy Gould had allowed him. The reaction in this chill air was slow in coming--Bob soon learned that the early cold bath out of doors is a superst.i.tion--and he s.h.i.+vered from time to time as he propped up his little mirror against a stump. Then he shaved, anointing his face after the careful manner of college boys.

This satisfactorily completed, he fished in his duffle bag to find his tooth brush and soap. His hair he arranged painstakingly with a pair of military brushes. He further manipulated a nail-brush vigorously, and ended with manicuring his nails. Then, clean, vigorous, fresh, but somewhat chilly, he packed away his toilet things and started for camp.

Whereupon, for the first time, he became aware of one of the rivermen, pipe clenched between his teeth, watching him sardonically.

Bob nodded, and made as though to pa.s.s.

"Oh, bub!" said the older man.

Bob stopped.

"Say," drawled the riverman, "air you as much trouble to yourself _every_ day as this?"

Bob laughed, and dove for camp. He found it practically deserted. The men had eaten breakfast and departed for work. Welton greeted him.

"Well, bub," said he, "didn't know but we'd lost you. Feed your face, and we'll go upstream."

Bob ate rapidly. After breakfast Welton struck into a well-trodden foot trail that led by a circuitous route up the river bottom, over points of land, around swamps. Occasionally it forked. Then, Welton explained, one fork was always a short cut across a bend, while the other followed accurately the extreme bank of the river. They took this latter and longest trail, always, in order more closely to examine the state of the drive. As they proceeded upstream they came upon more and more logs, some floating free, more stranded gently along the banks. After a time they encountered the first of the driving crew. This man was standing on an extreme point, leaning on his peavy, watching the timbers float past.

Pretty soon several logs, held together by natural cohesion, floated to the bend, hesitated, swung slowly and stopped. Other logs, following, carromed gently against them and also came to rest.

Immediately the riverman made a flying leap to the nearest. He hit it with a splash that threw the water high to either side, immediately caught his equilibrium, and set to work with his peavy. He seemed to know just where to bend his efforts. Two, then three, logs, disentangled from the ma.s.s, floated away. Finally, all moved slowly forward. The riverman intent on his work, was swept from view.

"After he gets them to running free, he'll come ash.o.r.e," said Welton, in answer to Bob's query. "Oh, just paddle ash.o.r.e with his peavy. Then he'll come back up the trail. This bend is liable to jam, and so we have to keep a man here."

They walked on and on, up the trail. Every once in a while they came upon other members of the jam crew, either watching, as was the first man, at some critical point, or working in twos and threes to keep the reluctant timbers always moving. At one place six or eight were picking away busily at a jam that had formed bristling quite across the river.

Bob would have liked to stop to watch; but Welton's practised eye saw nothing to it.

"They're down to the key log, now," he p.r.o.nounced. "They'll have it out in a jiffy."

Inside of two miles or so farther they left behind them the last member of the jam crew and came upon an outlying scout of the "rear." Then Welton began to take the shorter trails. At the end of another half-hour the two plumped into the full activity of the rear itself.

Bob saw two crews of men, one on either bank, busily engaged in restoring to the current the logs stranded along the sh.o.r.e. In some cases this merely meant pus.h.i.+ng them afloat by means of the peavies.

Again, when the timbers had gone hard aground, they had to be rolled over and over until the deeper water caught them. In extreme cases, when evidently the freshet water had dropped away from them, leaving them high and dry, a number of men would clamp on the jaws of their peavies and carry the logs bodily to the water. In this active work the men were everywhere across the surface of the river. They pushed and heaved from the instability of the floating logs as easily as though they had possessed beneath their feet the advantages of solid land. When they wanted to go from one place to another across the clear water they had various methods of propelling themselves--either broad on, by rolling the log treadwise, or endways by paddling, or by jumping strongly on one end. The logs dipped and bobbed and rolled beneath them; the water flowed over their feet; but always they seemed to maintain their balance unconsciously, and to give their whole attention to the work in hand.

They worked as far as possible from the decks of logs, but did not hesitate, when necessary, to plunge even waist-deep into the icy current. Behind them they left a clear river.

Like most exhibitions of superlative skill, all this would have seemed to an uninitiated observer like Bob an easy task, were it not for the misfortunes of one youth. That boy was about half the time in the water.

He could stand upright on a log very well as long as he tried to do nothing else. This partial skill undoubtedly had lured him to the drive.

But as soon as he tried to work, he was in trouble. The log commenced to roll; he to struggle for his balance. It always ended with a mighty splash and a shout of joy from every one in sight, as the unfortunate youth soused in all over. Then, after many efforts, he dragged himself out, his garments heavy and dripping, and cautiously tried to gain the perpendicular. This ordinarily required several attempts, each of which meant another ducking as the treacherous log rolled at just the wrong instant. The boy was game, though, and kept at it earnestly in spite of repeated failure.

Welton watched two repet.i.tions of this performance.

"d.i.c.k!" he roared across the tumult of sound.

Roaring d.i.c.k, whose light, active figure had been seen everywhere across the logs, looked up, recognized Welton, and zigzagged skilfully ash.o.r.e.

He stamped the water from his shoes.

"Why don't you fire that kid ash.o.r.e?" demanded Welton. "Do you want to drown him? He's so cold now he don't know where's his feet?"

Roaring d.i.c.k glanced carelessly at the boy. The latter had succeeded in gaining the shallows, where he was trying to roll over a stranded log.

His hands were purple and swollen; his face puffed and blue; violent s.h.i.+vers shook him from head to foot; his teeth actually chattered when, for a moment, he relaxed his evident intention to stick it through without making a sign. All his movements were slow and awkward, and his dripping clothes clung tight to his body.

"Oh, him!" said Roaring d.i.c.k in reply. "I didn't pay no more attention to him than to one of these yere h.e.l.l divers. He ain't no _good_, so I clean overlooked him. Here, you!" he cried suddenly.

The boy looked up, Bob saw him start convulsively, and knew that he had met the impact of that peculiar dynamic energy in Roaring d.i.c.k's nervous face. He clambered laboriously from the shallows, the water draining from the bottom of his "stagged" trousers.

"Get to camp," snapped d.i.c.k. "You're laid off."

"Why did you ever take such a man on in the first place?" asked Welton.

"He was here when I come," replied Roaring d.i.c.k, indifferently, "and, anyway, he's bound he's goin to be a river-hog. You couldn't keep him out with a fly-screen."

"How're things going?" inquired Welton.

"All right," said Roaring d.i.c.k. "This ain't no drive to have things goin' wrong. A man could run a hand-organ, a quiltin' party and this drive all to once and never drop a st.i.tch."

"How about old Murdock's dam? Looks like he might make trouble."

"Ain't got to old Murdock yet," said Roaring d.i.c.k. "When we do, we'll trim his whiskers to pattern. Don't you worry none about Murdock."

"I don't," laughed Welton. "But, d.i.c.k, what are all these deadheads I see in the river? Our logs are all marked, aren't they?"

"They's been some jobbing done way below our rollways," said Roaring d.i.c.k, "and the mossbacks have been taking 'em out long before our drive got this far. Them few deadheads we've picked up along the line; mossbacks left 'em stranded. They ain't very many."