The Riverman

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But before the horses had
"Don't know. But he sticks by his story, and tells it pretty
straight."

"Bring him over, and let's hear it," said Orde.

"Hullo, Charlie!" he greeted the cook when the latter stood before
him. "What's this yarn Jim's telling me?"

"It's straight, Mr. Orde," said the cook. "There's a big crew
brought in from the Saginaw Waters to do you up. They're supposed
to be over here to run his drive, but really they're goin' to fight
and raise hell. For why would he want sixty men to break out them
little rollways of his'n up at the headwaters?"

"Is that where they've gone?" asked Orde like a flash.

"Yes, sir. And he only owns a 'forty' up there, and it ain't more'n
half cut, anyway."

"I didn't know he owned any."

"Yes, sir. He bought that little Johnson piece last winter. I been
workin' up there with a little two-horse crew since January. We
didn't put up more'n a couple hundred thousand."

"Is he breaking out his rollways below?" Orde asked Denning.

"No, sir," struck in Charlie, "he ain't."

"How do you happen to be so wise?" inquired Orde, "Seems to me you
know about as much as old man Solomon."

"Well," explained Charlie, "you see it's like this. When I got back
from the woods last week, I just sort of happened into McNeill's
place. I wasn't drinkin' a drop!" he cried virtuously, in answer to
Orde's smile.

"Of course not," said Orde. "I was just thinking of the last time
we were in there together."

"That's just it!" cried Charlie. "They was always sore at you about
that. Well, I was lyin' on one of those there benches back of the
'Merican flags in the dance hall 'cause I was very sleepy, when in
blew old man Heinzman and McNeill himself. I just lay low for black
ducks and heard their talk. They took a look around, but didn't see
no one, so they opened her up wide."

"What did you hear?" asked Orde.

Well, McNeill he agreed to get a gang of bad ones from the Saginaw
to run in on the river, and I heard Heinzman tell him to send 'em in
to headwaters. And McNeill said, 'That's all right about the cash,
Mr. Heinzman, but I been figgerin' on gettin' even with Orde for
some myself.'"

"Is that all?" inquired Orde.

"That's about all," confessed Charlie.

"How do you know he didn't hire them to carry down his drive for
him? He'd need sixty men for his lower rollways, and maybe they
weren't all to go to headwaters?" asked Orde by way of testing
Charlie's beliefs.

"He's payin' them four dollars a day," replied Charlie simply.
"Now, who'd pay that fer just river work?"

Orde nodded at Jim Denning.

"Hold on, Charlie," said he. "Why are you giving all this away if
you were working for Heinzman?"

"I'm working for you now," replied Charlie with dignity. "And,
besides, you helped me out once yourself."

I guess it's a straight tip all right," said Orde to Denning, when
the cook had resumed his place by the fire.

"Thattaken three steps, a huge riverman had
planted himself squarely in the way. The others rising, slowly
surrounded the rig.

"I don't know what you're up here for," growled the man's what I thought. That's
why I brought him up."

"If that crew's been sent in there, it means only one thing at that
end of the line," said Orde.

"Sure. They're sent up to waste out the water in the reservoir and
hang this end of the drive," replied Denning.

"Correct," said Orde. "The old skunk knows his own rollways are so
far down stream that he's safe, flood water or no flood water."

A pause ensued, during which the two smoked vigorously.

"What are you going to do about it?" asked Denning at last.

"What would you do?" countered Orde.

"Well," said Denning slowly, and with a certain grim joy, "I don't
bet those Saginaw river-pigs are any more two-fisted than the boys
on this river. I'd go up and clean 'em out."

"Won't do," negatived Orde briefly. "In the first place, as you
know very well, we're short-handed now, and we can't spare the men
from the work. In the second place, we'd hang up sure, then; to go
up in that wilderness, fifty miles from civilisation, would mean a
first-class row of too big a size to handle. Won't do!"

"Suppose you get a lawyer," suggested Denning sarcastically.

Orde laughed with great good-humour

"Where'd our water be by the time he got an injunction for us?"

He fell into a brown study, during which his pipe went out.

"Jim," he said finally, "it isn't a fair game. I don't know what to
do. Delay will hang us; taking men off the work will hang us. I've
just got to go tip there myself and see what can be done by talking
to them."

"Talking to them!" Denning snorted. "You might as well whistle down
the draught-pipe of hell! If they're just up there for a row,
there'll be whisky in camp; and you can bet McNeill's got some of
'em instructed on YOUR account. They'll kill you, sure!"

"I agree with you it's risky," replied Orde. "I'm scared; I'm
willing to admit it. But I don't see what else to do. Of course
he's got no rights, but what the hell good does that do us after our
water is gone? And Jim, my son, if we hang this drive, I'll be
buried so deep I never will dig out. No; I've got to go. You can
stay up here in charge of the rear until I get back. Send word by
Charlie who's to boss your division while you're gone."

XXIII

Orde tramped back to Sawyer's early next morning, hitched into the
light buckboard the excellent team with which later, when the drive
should spread out, he would make his longest jumps, and drove to
head-waters. He arrived in sight of the dam about three o'clock.
At the edge of the clearing he pulled up to survey the scene.

A group of three small log-cabins marked the Johnson, and later the
Heinzman, camp. From the chimneys a smoke arose. Twenty or thirty
rivermen lounged about the sunny side of the largest structure.
They had evidently just arrived, for some of their "turkeys" were
still piled outside the door. Orde clucked to his horses, and the
spidery wheels of the buckboard swung lightly over the wet hummocks
of the clearing, to come to a stop opposite the men. Orde leaned
forward against his knees.

"Hullo, boys!" said he cheerfully.

No one replied, though two or three nodded surlily. Orde looked
them over with some interest.

They were a dirty, unkempt, unshaven, hard-looking lot, with
bloodshot eyes, a flicker of the dare-devil in expression, beyond
the first youth, hardened into an enduring toughness of fibre--bad
men from the Saginaw, in truth, and, unless Orde was mistaken, men
just off a drunk, and therefore especially dangerous; men eager to
fight at the drop of the hat, or sooner, to be accommodating, and
ready to employ in their assaults all the formidable and terrifying
weapons of the rough-and-tumble; reckless, hard, irreverrent,
blasphemous, to be gained over by no words, fair or foul; absolutely
scornful of any and all institutions imposed on them by any other
but the few men whom they acknowledged as their leaders. And to
master these men's respect there needed either superlative strength,
superlative recklessness, or superlative skill.

"Who's your boss?" asked Orde.

"The Rough Red," growled one of the men without moving.

Orde had heard of this man, of his personality and his deed at the
horses' heads, "but you wanted to see the boss, and I guess you'd
better see him."

"I intend to see him," said Orde sharply. "Get out of the way and
let me hitch my team."

He drove deliberately ahead, forcing the man to step aside, and
stopped his horses by a stub. He tied them there and descended, to
lean his back also against the log walls of the little house.

After a few moments a huge form appeared above the river bank at
some forty rods' distance.

"Yonder he comes now," vouchsafed the man nearest Orde.

Orde made out the great square figure of the boss, his soft hat, his
flaming red beard, his dingy mackinaw coat, his dingy black-and-
white checked flannel shirt, his dingy blue trousers tucked into
high socks, and, instead of driving boots, his ordinary lumberman's
rubbers. As a spot of colour, he wore a flaming red knit sash, with
tassels. Before he had approached near enough to be plainly
distinguishable, he began to bellow at the men, commanding them,
with a mighty array of oaths, to wake up and get the sluice-gate
open. In a moment or so he had disappeared behind some bushes that
intervened in his approach to the house. His course through them
could be traced by the top of his cap, which just showed above them.
In a moment he thrust through the brush and stood before Orde.

For a moment he stared at the young man, and then, with a wild Irish
yell, leaped upon him. Orde, caught unawares and in an awkward
position, was hardly able even to struggle against the gigantic
riverman. Indeed, before he had recovered his faculties to the
point of offering determined resistance, he was pinned back against
the wall by his shoulders, and the Rough Red's face was within two
feet of his own.

"And how are ye, ye ould darlint?" shouted the latter, with a roll
of oaths.

"Why, Jimmy Bourke!" cried Orde, and burst into a laugh.

The Rough Red jerked him to his feet, delivered a bear hug that
nearly crushed his ribs, and pounded him mightily on the back.

"You ould snoozer!" he bellowed. "Where the blankety blank in blank
did you come from? Byes," he shouted to the men, "it's me ould boss
on th' Au Sable six year back--that time, ye mind, whin we had th'
ice jam! Glory be! but I'm glad to see ye!"

Orde was still laughing.

"I didn't know you'd turned into the Rough Red, Jimmy," said he. "I
don't believe we were either of us old enough for whiskers then,
were we?"

The Rough Red grinned.

"Thrue for ye!" said he. "And what have ye been doing all these
years?"

"That's just it, Jimmy," said Orde, drawing the giant one side, out
of ear-shot. "All my eggs are in one basket, and it's a mean trick
of you to hire out for filthy lucre to kick that basket."

"What do ye mane?" asked the Rough Red, fixing his twinkling little
eyes on Orde.

"You don't mean to tell me," countered Orde, glancing down at the
other's rubber-shod feet, "that this crew has been sent up here just
to break out those measly little rollways?"

"Thim?" said the Rough Red. "Thim? Hell, NO! Thim's my bodyguard.
They can lick their weight in wild cats, and I'd loike well to see
the gang of highbankers that infists this river thry to pry thim
out. We weren't sint here to wurrk; we were sint here to foight."

"Fight? Why?" asked Orde.

"Oh, I dunno," replied the Rough Red easily. "Me boss and the blank
of a blank blanked blank that's attimptin' to droive this river has
some sort of a row."

"Jimmy," said Orde, "didn't you know that I am the gentleman last
mentioned?"

"What!"

"I'm driving this river, and that's my dam-keeper you've got hid
away somewhere here, and that's my water you're planning to waste!"

"What?" repeated the Rough Red, but in a different tone of voice.

"That's right," said Orde.

In a tone of vast astonishment, the Rough Red mentioned his probable
deserts in the future life.

"Luk here, Jack," said he after a moment, "here's a crew of white-
water birlers that ye can't beat nowheres. What do you want us to
do? We're now gettin' four dollars a day AN' board from that
murderin' ould villain, Heinzman, SO WE CAN AFFORD TO WURRK FOR YOU
CHEAP."

Orde hesitated.

"Oh, please do now, darlint!" wheedled the Rough Red, his little
eyes agleam with mischief. "Sind us some oakum and pitch and we'll
caulk yure wanigan for ye. Or maybe some more peavies, and we'll
hilp ye on yure rollways. And till us, afore ye go, how ye want
this dam, and that's the way she'll be. Come, now, dear! and ain't
ye short-handed now?"

Orde slapped his knee and laughed.

"This is sure one hell of a joke!" he cried.

"And ain't it now?" said the Rough Red, smiling with as much
ingratiation as he was able.

"I'll take you boys on," said Orde at last, "at the usual wages--
dollar and a half for the jam, three for the rear. I doubt if
you'll see much of Heinzman's money when this leaks out."

XXIV

Thus Orde, by the sheer good luck that sometimes favours men engaged
in large enterprises, not only frustrated a plan likely to bring
failure to his interests, but filled up his crews. It may be
remarked here, as well as later, that the "terrors of the Saginaw"
stayed with the drive to its finish, and proved reliable and
tractable in every particular. Orde scattered them judiciously, so
there was no friction with the local men. The Rough Red he retained
on the rear.

Here the breaking of the rollways had reached a stage more exciting
both to onlooker and participant than the mere opening of the river
channel. Huge stacks of logs piled sidewise to the bank lined the
stream for miles. When the lowermost log on the river side was
teased and pried out, the upper tiers were apt to cascade down with
a roar, a crash, and a splash. The man who had done the prying had
to be very quick-eyed, very cool, and very agile to avoid being
buried under the tons of timber that rushed down on him. Only the
most reliable men were permitted at this initial breaking down.
Afterwards the crew rolled in what logs remained.

The Rough Red's enormous strength, dare-devil spirit, and nimbleness
of body made him invaluable at this dangerous work. Orde, too,
often took a hand in some of the more ticklish situations. In old
days, before he had attained the position of responsibility that
raised the value of his time beyond manual work, he had been one of
the best men on the river at breaking bank rollways. A slim,
graceful, handsome boy of twenty, known as "Rollway Charlie," also
distinguished himself by the quickness and certainty of his work.
Often the men standing near lost sight of him entirely in the spray,
the confusion, the blur of the breaking rollways, until it seemed
certain he must have perished. Nevertheless, always he appeared at
right or left, sometimes even on a log astream, nonchalant, smiling,
escaped easily from the destructive power he had loosed. Once in
the stream the logs ran their appointed course, watched by the men
who herded them on their way. And below, from the tributaries, from
the other rollways a never-ending procession of recruits joined this
great brown army on its way to the lake, until for miles and miles
the river was almost a solid mass of logs.

The crews on the various beats now had their hands full to keep the
logs running. The slightest check at any one point meant a jam, for
there was no way of stopping the unending procession. The logs
behind floated gently against the obstruction and came to rest. The
brown mass thickened. As far as the eye could reach the surface of
the water was concealed. And then, as the slow pressure developed
from the three or four miles of logs forced against each other by
the pushing of the current, the breast of the jam began to rise.
Timbers up-ended, crossed, interlocked, slid one over the other,
mounted higher and higher in the formidable game of jack-straws the
loss of which spelled death to the players.

Immediately, and with feverish activity, the men nearest at hand
attacked the work. Logs on top they tumbled and rolled into the
current below. Men beneath the breast tugged and pried in search of
the key logs causing all the trouble. Others "flattened out the
wings," hoping to get a "draw" around the ends. As the stoppage of
the drive indicated to the men up and down stream that a jam had
formed, they gathered at the scene--those from above over the logs,
those from below up the river trail.

Rarely, unless in case of unusual complications, did it take more
than a few hours at most to break the jam. The breast of it went
out with a rush. More slowly the wings sucked in. Reluctantly the
mass floating on the surface for miles up stream stirred, silently
moved forward. For a few minutes it was necessary to watch
carefully until the flow onward steadied itself, until the
congestion had spaced and ordered as before. Then the men moved
back to their posts; the drive was resumed. At night the river was
necessarily left to its own devices. Rivermen, with the touch of
superstition inseparably connected with such affairs, believe
implicitly that "logs run free at night." Certainly, though it
might be expected that each morning would reveal a big jam to break,
such was rarely the case. The logs had usually stopped, to be sure,
but generally in so peaceful a situation as easily to be started on
by a few minutes' work. Probably this was because they tended to
come to rest in the slow, still reaches of the river, through which,
in daytime, they would be urged by the rivermen.

Jams on the river, contrary to general belief, are of very common
occurrence. Throughout the length of the drive there were probably
three or four hang-ups a day. Each of these had to be broken, and
in the breaking was danger. The smallest misstep, the least
slowness in reading the signs of the break, the slightest lack of
promptness in acting on the hint or of agility in leaping from one
to the other of the plunging timbers, the faintest flicker from
rigid attention to the antagonist crouching on the spring, would
mean instant death to the delinquent. Thus it was literally true
that each one of these men was called upon almost daily to wager his
personal skill against his destruction.

In the meantime the rear was "sacking" its way as fast as possible,
moving camp with the wanigan whenever necessary, working very hard
and very cold and very long. In its work, however, beyond the
breaking of the rollways, was little of the spectacular.

Orde, after the rear was well started, patrolled the length of the
drive in his light buckboard. He had a first-class team of young
horses--high-spirited, somewhat fractious, but capable on a pinch of
their hundred miles in a day. He handled them well over the rough
corduroys and swamp roads. From jam to rear and back again he
travelled, pausing on the river banks to converse earnestly with one
of the foremen, surveying the situation with the bird's-eye view of
the general. At times he remained at one camp for several days
watching the trend of the work. The improvements made during the
preceding summer gave him the greatest satisfaction, especially the
apron at the falls.

"We'd have had a dozen bad jams here before now with all these logs
in the river," said he to Tim Nolan, who was in charge of that beat.

"And as it is," said Tim, "we've had but the one little wing jam."

The piers to define the channel along certain shallows also saved
the rear crew much labour in the matter of stranded logs.
Everything was very satisfactory. Even old man Reed held to his
chastened attitude, and made no trouble. In fact, he seemed glad to
turn an honest penny by boarding the small crew in charge of
sluicing the logs.

No trouble was experienced until Heinzman's rollways were reached.
Here Orde had, as he had promised his partner, boomed a free channel
to prevent Heinzman from filling up the entire river-bed with his
rollways. When the jam of the drive had descended the river as far
as this, Orde found that Heinzman had not yet begun to break out.
Hardly had Orde's first crew passed, however, when Heinzman's men
began to break down the logs into the drive. Long before the rear
had caught up, all Heinzman's drive was in the water, inextricably
mingled with the sixty or eighty million feet Orde had in charge.

The situation was plain. All Heinzman now had to do was to retain a
small crew, which should follow after the rear in order to sack what
logs the latter should leave stranded. This amounted practically to
nothing. As it was impossible in so great a mass of timbers, and in
the haste of a pressing labour, to distinguish or discriminate
against any single brand, Heinzman was in a fair way to get his logs
sent down stream with practically no expense.

"Vell, my boy," remarked the German quite frankly to Orde as they
met on the road one day, "looks like I got you dis time, eh?"

Orde laughed, also with entire good-humour.

"If you mean your logs are going down with ours, why I guess you
have. But you paste this in your hat: you're going to keep awful
busy, and it's going to cost you something yet to get 'em down."

To Newmark, on one of his occasional visits to the camps, Orde
detailed the situation.

"It doesn't amount to much," said he, "except that it complicates
matters. We'll make him scratch gravel, if we have to sit up nights
and work overtime to do it. We can't injure him or leave his logs,
but we can annoy him a lot."

The state of affairs was perfectly well known to the men, and the
entire river entered into the spirit of the contest. The drivers
kept a sharp lookout for "H" logs, and whenever possible thrust them
aside into eddies and backwaters. This, of course, merely made work
for the sackers Heinzman had left above the rear. Soon they were in
charge of a very fair little drive of their own. Their lot was not
enviable. Indeed, only the pressure of work prevented some of the
more aggressive of Orde's rear--among whom could be numbered the
Rough Red--from going back and "cleaning out" this impertinent band
of hangers-on. One day two of the latter, conducting the jam of the
miniature drive astern, came within reach of the Rough Red. The
latter had lingered in hopes of rescuing his peavy, which had gone
overboard. To lose one's peavy is, among rivermen, the most
mortifying disgrace. Consequently, the Rough Red was in a fit mood
for trouble. He attacked the two single-handed. A desperate battle
ensued, which lasted upward of an hour. The two rivermen punched,
kicked, and battered the Rough Red in a manner to tear his clothes,
deprive him to some extent of red whiskers, bloody his face, cut his
shoulder, and knock loose two teeth. The Rough Red, more than the
equal of either man singly, had reciprocated in kind. Orde, driving
in toward the rear from a detour to avoid a swamp, heard, and
descended from his buckboard. Tying his horses to trees, he made
his way through the brush to the scene of conflict. So winded and
wearied were the belligerents by now that he had no difficulty in
separating them. He surveyed their wrecks with a sardonic half
smile.

"I call this a draw," said he finally. His attitude became
threatening as the two up-river men, recovering somewhat, showed
ugly symptoms. "Git!" he commanded. "Scat! I guess you don't know
me. I'm Jack Orde. Jimmy and I together could do a dozen of you."
He menaced them until, muttering, they had turned away.

"Well, Jimmy," said he humorously, "you look as if you'd been run
through a thrashing machine."

"Those fellers make me sick!" growled the Rough Red.

Orde looked him over again.

"You look sick," said he.

When the buckboard drew into camp, Orde sent Bourke away to repair
damages while he called the cookee to help unpack several heavy
boxes of hardware. They proved to contain about thirty small
hatchets, well sharpened, and each with a leather guard. When the
rear crew had come in that night, Orde distributed the hatchets.

"Boys," said he, "while you're on the work, I want you all to keep a
watch-out for these "H" logs, and whenever you strike one I want you
to blaze it plainly, so there won't be any mistake about it."

"What for?" asked one of the Saginaw men as he received his hatchet.

But the riverman who squatted next nudged him with his elbow.

"The less questions you ask Jack, the more answers you'll get. Just
do what you're told to on this river and you'll see fun sure."

Three days later the rear crew ran into the head of the pond above
Reed's dam. To every one's surprise, Orde called a halt on the work
and announced a holiday.

Now, holidays are unknown on drive. Barely is time allowed for
eating and sleeping. Nevertheless, all that day the men lay about
in complete idleness, smoking, talking, sleeping in the warm sun.
The river, silenced by the closed sluice-gates, slept also. The
pond filled with logs. From above, the current, aided by a fair
wind, was driving down still other logs--the forerunners of the
little drive astern. At sight of these, some of the men grumbled.
"We're losin' what we made," said they. "We left them logs, and
sorted 'em out once already."

Orde sent a couple of axe-men to blaze the newcomers. A little
before sundown he ordered the sluice-gates of the dam opened.

"Night work," said the men to one another. They knew, of course,
that in sluicing logs, the gate must be open a couple of hours
before the sluicing begins in order to fill the river-bed below.
Logs run ahead faster than the water spreads.

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