The Riverman Part 58

Orde folded the knot over without reply. Up stream the jam creaked, groaned, settled deliberately forward, cutting a clump of piles like straw.

"She's coming!" cried the Rough Red.

"Give me every second you can," said Orde, without looking up. He was just making the last turns.

The ma.s.s toppled slowly, fell into the swift current, and leaped with a roar. The Rough Red watched with cat-like attention.

"Jump!" he cried at last, and his right arm descended.

With the shout and the motion several things happened simultaneously.

Orde leaped blindly for the rail, where he was seized and dragged aboard by the Rough Red; the axes fell, Marsh whirled over the wheel, Harvey threw open his throttle. The tug sprang from its leash like a hound.

And behind the barrier the logs, tossing and tumbling, the white spray flying before their onslaught, beat in vain against the barrier, like raging wild beasts whose prey has escaped.

"Close call," said Orde briefly.

"Bet you," replied Marsh.

Neither referred to the tug's escape; but to the fortunate closing of the opening.

XLI

Orde now took steps to deflect into the channel recently dredged to Stearn's Bayou the ma.s.s of the logs racing down stream from Redding. He estimated that he had still two hours or so in which to do the work. In this time he succeeded by the severest efforts in establis.h.i.+ng a rough shunt into the new channel. The logs would come down running free. Only the shock of their impact against the tail of the jam already formed was to be feared. Orde hoped to be able to turn the bulk of them aside.

This at first he succeeded in doing; and very successfully as affecting the pressure on the jam below. The first logs came scattering. Then in a little while the surface of the river was covered with them; they shouldered each other aside in their eagerness to outstrip the rus.h.i.+ng water; finally they crowded down more slowly, hardly able to make their way against the choking of the river banks, but putting forth in the very effort to proceed a tremendous power. To the crew working in the channel dredged through to Steam's Bayou the affair was that of driving a rather narrow and swift stream, only exaggerated. By quick and skilful work they succeeded in keeping the logs in motion. A large proportion of the timbers found their way into the bayou. Those that continued on down the river could hardly have much effect on the jam.

The work was breathless in its speed. From one to another sweat-bathed, panting man the logs were handed on. As yet only the advance of the big jam had arrived at the dredged channel.

Orde looked about him and realised this.

"We can't keep this up when the main body hits us," he panted to his neighbour, Jim Denning. "We'll have to do some more pile-driver work."

He made a rapid excursion to the boom camp, whence he returned with thirty or forty of the men who had given up work on the jam below.

"Here, boys," said he, "you can at least keep these logs moving in this channel for a couple of hours. This isn't dangerous."

He spoke quite without sarcastic intent; but the rivermen, already over their first panic, looked at each other a trifle shamefacedly.

"I'll tie into her wherever you say," said one big fellow. "If you fellows are going back to the jam, I'm with you."

Two or three more volunteered. The remainder said nothing, but in silence took charge of the dredged channel.

Orde and his men now returned to the jam where, on the pile-driver, the tugs, and the booms, they set methodically to strengthening the defences as well as they were able.

"She's holding strong and dandy," said Orde to Tom North, examining critically the clumps of piles. "That channel helps a lot in more ways than one. It takes an awful lot of water out of the river. As long as those fellows keep the logs moving, I really believe we're all right."

But shortly the water began to rise again, this time fairly by leaps.

In immediate response the jam increased its pressure. For the hundredth time the frail wooden defences opposed to millions of pounds were tested to the very extreme of their endurance. The clumps of piles sagged outward; the network of chains and cables tightened and tightened again, drawing ever nearer the snapping point. Suddenly, almost without warning, the situation had become desperate.

And for the first time Orde completely lost his poise and became fluently profane. He shook his fist against the menacing logs; he apostrophised the river, the high water, the jam, the deserters, Newmark and his illness, ending finally in a general anathema against any and all streams, logs, and floods. Then he stormed away to see if anything had gone wrong at the dredged channel.

"Well," said Tom North, "they've got the old man real good and mad this time."

The crew went on driving piles, stringing cables, binding chains, although, now that the inspiration of Orde's combative spirit was withdrawn the labours seemed useless, futile, a mere filling in of the time before the supreme moment when they would be called upon to pay the sacrifice their persistence and loyalty had proffered for the altar of self-respect and the invincibility of the human Soul.

At the dredged channel Orde saw the rivermen standing idle, and, half-blind with anger he burst upon them demanding by this, that and the other what they meant. Then he stopped short and stared.

Square across the dredged channel and completely blocking it lay a single span of an iron bridge. Although twisted and misshapen, it was still intact, the framework of its overhead truss-work retaining its cage-like shape. Behind it the logs had of course piled up in a jam, which, sinking rapidly to the bed of the channel, had dammed back the water.

"Where in h.e.l.l did that drop from?" cried Orde.

"Come down on top the jam," explained a riverman. "Must have come way from Redding. We just couldn't SCARE her out of here."

Orde, suddenly fallen into a cold rage, stared at the obstruction, both fists clenched at his side.

"Too bad, boy," said Welton at his elbow. "But don't take it too hard.

You've done more than any of the rest of us could. And we're all losers together."

Orde looked at him strangely.

"That about settles it," repeated Welton.

"Settle!" cried Orde. "I should think not."

Welton smiled quaintly.

"Don't you know when you're licked?"

"Licked, h.e.l.l!" said Orde. "We've just begun to fight."

"What can you do?"

"Get that bridge span out of there, of course."

"How?"

"Can't we blow her up with powder?"

"Ever try to blow up iron?"

"There must be some way."

"Oh, there is," replied Welton. "Of course--take her apart bolt by bolt and nut by nut."

"Send for the wrenches, then," snapped Orde.