The Rules of the Game Part 15

La.r.s.en took one look, then made his way across to the other side and down to the mill. Bob followed. The little sawmill was going full blast under the handling of three men and a boy. Everything was done in the most primitive manner, by main strength, awkwardness, and old-fas.h.i.+oned tools.

"Who's boss?" yelled La.r.s.en against the clang of the mill.

A slow, black-bearded man stepped forward.

"What can I do for you?" he asked.

"Our drive's hung up against your boom," yelled La.r.s.en.

The man raised his hand and the machinery was suddenly stilled.

"So I perceive," said he.

"Your boom-piles are drove too far out in the stream."

"I don't know about that," objected the mossback.

"I do," insisted La.r.s.en. "n.o.body on earth could keep from jamming, the way you got things fixed."

"That's none of my business," said the man steadily.

"Well, we'll have to take out that fur clump of piles to get our jam broke."

"I don't know about that," repeated the man.

La.r.s.en apparently paid no attention to this last remark, but tramped back to the jam. There he ordered a couple of men out with axes, and others with tackle. But at that moment the three men and the boy appeared. They carried three shotguns and a rifle.

"That's about enough of that," said the bearded man, quietly. "You let my property alone. I don't want any trouble with you men, but I'll blow h.e.l.l out of the first man that touches those piles. I've had about enough of this riverhog monkey-work."

He looked as though he meant business, as did his companions. When the rivermen drew back, he took his position atop the disputed clump of piles, his shotgun across his knees.

The driving crew retreated ash.o.r.e. La.r.s.en was plainly uncertain.

"I tell you, boys," said he, "I'll get back to town. You wait."

"Guess I'll go along," suggested Bob, determined to miss no phase of this new species of warfare.

"What you going to do?" he asked La.r.s.en when they were once on the trail.

"I don't know," confessed the older man, rubbing his cap. "I'm just goin' to see some lawyer, and then I'm goin' to telegraph the Company. I wish Darrell was in charge. I don't know what to do. You can't expect those boys to run a chance of gittin' a hole in 'em."

"Do you believe they'd shoot?" asked Bob.

"I believe so. It's a long chance, anyhow."

But in Twin Falls they received scant sympathy and encouragement. The place was distinctly bucolic, and as such opposed instinctively to larger mills, big millmen, lumber, lumbermen and all pertaining thereunto. They tolerated the drive because, in the first place they had to; and in the second place there was some slight profit to be made. But the rough rivermen antagonized them, and they were never averse to seeing these buccaneers of the streams in difficulties. Then, too, by chance the country lawyers La.r.s.en consulted happened to be attorneys for the little sawmill men. La.r.s.en tried in his blundering way to express his feeling that "n.o.body had a right to hang our drive." His explanations were so involved and futile that, without thinking, Bob struck in.

"Surely these men have no right to obstruct as they do. Isn't there some law against interfering with navigation?"

"The stream is not navigable," returned the lawyer curtly.

Bob's memory vouchsafed a confused recollection of something read sometime, somewhere.

"Hasn't a stream been declared navigable when logs can be driven in it?" he asked.

"Are you in charge of this drive?" the lawyer asked, turning on him sharply.

"Why--no," confessed Bob.

"Have you anything to do with this question?"

"I don't believe I have."

"Then I fail to see why I should answer your questions," said the lawyer, with finality. "As to your question," he went on to La.r.s.en with equal coldness, "if you have any doubts as to Mr. Murdock's rights in the stream, you have the recourse of a suit at law to settle that point, and to determine the damages, if any."

Bob found himself in the street with La.r.s.en.

"But they haven't got no right to stop our drive _dead_ that way,"

expostulated the old man.

Bob's temper was somewhat ruffled by his treatment at the hands of the lawyer.

"Well, they've done it, whether they have the right to or not," he said shortly; "what next?"

"I guess I'll telegraph Mr. Welton," said La.r.s.en.

He did so. The two returned to camp. The rivermen were loafing in camp awaiting La.r.s.en's reappearance. The jam was as before. La.r.s.en walked out on the logs. The boy, seated on the clump of piles, gave a shrill whistle. Immediately from the little mill appeared the brown-bearded man and his two companions. They picked their way across the jam to the piles, where they roosted, their weapons across their knees, until La.r.s.en had returned to the other bank.

"Well, Mr. Welton ought to be up in a couple of days, if he ain't up the main river somewheres," said La.r.s.en.

"Aren't you going to do anything in the meantime?" asked Bob.

"What can I do?" countered La.r.s.en.'

The crew had nothing to say one way or the other, but watched with a cynical amus.e.m.e.nt the progress of affairs. They smoked, and spat, and squatted on their heels in the Indian taciturnity of their kind when for some reason they withhold their approval. That evening, however, Bob happened to be lying at the campfire next two of the older men. As usual, he smoked in un.o.btrusive silence, content to be ignored if only the men would act in their accustomed way, and not as before a stranger.

"Wait; h.e.l.l!" said one of the men to the other. "Times is certainly gone wrong! If they had anything like an oldtime river boss in charge, they'd come the Jack Orde on this lay-out."

Bob p.r.i.c.ked up his ears at this mention of his father's name.

"What's that?" he asked.

The riverman rolled over and examined him dispa.s.sionately for a few moments.

"Jack Orde," he deigned to explain at last, "was a riverman. He was a good one. He used to run the drive in the Redding country. When he started to take out logs, he took 'em out, by G.o.d! I've heard him often: 'Get your logs out first, and pay the damage afterward,' says he. He was a holy terror. They got the state troops out after him once. It came to be a sort of by-word. When you generally gouge, kick and sandbag a man into bein' real _good_, why we say you come the Jack Orde on him."

"I see," said Bob, vastly amused at this sidelight on the family reputation. "What would you do here?"