The Riverman
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Stewart Edward White >> The Riverman
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"It just went out!" he answered the eager exclamations of the men
who crowded around him. "That's all I know. It went out! And the
other bridges! Sure! All but the Lake Shore! Don't know why that
didn't go out. No; the logs didn't jam there; just slid right
under!"
"That settles it," said Welton, turning away.
"You aren't going to quit!" cried Orde.
"Certainly. You're crazy!" said Welton with some asperity. "If
they can't stop a little jam with iron, what are your wooden
defences going to amount to against the whole accumulation? When
those logs hit the tail of this jam, she'll go out before you can
wink."
He refused to listen to argument.
"It's sure death," said he, "and I'm not going to sacrifice my men
for nothing, even if they'd stay."
Other owners among the bystanders said the same thing. An air of
profound discouragement had fallen on them all. The strain of the
fight was now telling. The utmost that human flesh and blood was
capable of had been accomplished; a hard-won victory had been gained
by the narrowest of narrow margins. In this new struggle the old
odds were still against them, and in addition the strength that had
pushed aside Redding's best effort, augmented by the momentum of a
powerful current. It was small wonder they gave up.
Already the news was spreading among the workers on the jams. As
man shouted to man, each shouldered his peavy and came running
ashore, eager question on his lips. Orde saw the Government driver
below casting loose from her moorings. A moment later her tug towed
her away to some side bayou of safety out of the expected rush to
the Lake.
"But we can hold her!" cried Orde in desperation. "Have a little
nerve with you. You aren't going to quit like that!"
He swept them with his eye; then turned away from them with a
gesture of despair. They watched him gravely and silently.
"It's no use, boy," said old Carlin; "it's sure death."
"Sure death!" Orde laughed bitterly. "All right; sure death, then.
Isn't there a man in this crowd that will tackle this sort of sure
death with me?"
"I'm with you."
"And me," said North and the Rough Red in a breath.
"Good!" cried Orde. "You, too, Johnny Sims? and Purdy? and Jimmy
Powers? Bully boys!"
"I reckon you'll need the tug," said Marsh.
A dozen more of Orde's personal following volunteered. At once his
good humour returned; and his easy leisurely confidence in himself.
"We've got to close that opening, first thing," said he. "Marsh,
tow the pile-driver up there."
He caused a heavy line to be run from a tree, situated around the
bend down stream, to the stern of the driver.
"Now if you have to," he told North, who had charge, "let go all
holds, and the line will probably swing you around out of danger.
We on the tug will get out as best we can."
The opening was to be closed by piles driven in groups of sixteen
bound together by chains. The clumps were connected one to the
other by a system of boom logs and ropes to interpose a continuous
barrier. The pile-driver placed the clumps; while the tug attended
to the connecting defences.
"Now, boys," said Orde as his last word, "if she starts to go, save
yourselves the best way you can. Never mind the driver. STAY ON
TOP!"
Slowly the tug and her consort nosed up through the boiling water.
"She's rising already," said Orde to Marsh, watching the water
around the piles.
"Yes, and that jam's going out before many minutes," supplemented
the tugboat captain grimly.
Both these statements were only too true. Although not fifteen
minutes before, the jam had lain locked in perfect safety, now the
slight rise of the waters had lifted and loosened the mass until it
rose fairly on the quiver.
"Work fast!" Orde called to the men on the pile-driver. "If we can
close the opening before those Redding logs hit us, we may be able
to turn them into our new channel."
He did not add that if the opening were not closed before the jam
broke, as break it would in a very few moments, the probabilities
were that both pile-driver and tug would be destroyed. Every man
knew that already.
Tom North ordered a pile placed in the carriage; the hammer
descended. At once, like battering rams logs began to shoot up from
the depths of the river end foremost all about them. These timbers
were projected with tremendous force, leaping sometimes half their
length above the surface of the water. If any of them had hit
either the tug or the pile-driver squarely, it would have stove and
sunk the craft. Fortunately this did not happen; but Marsh hastily
towed the scow back to a better position. The pile had evidently
been driven into the foot of the jam itself, thus loosening timbers
lying at the bottom of the river.
The work went forward as rapidly as possible. Four times the jam
shrugged and settled; but four times it paused on the brink of
discharge. Three of the clumps had been placed and bound; and
fifteen piles of the last clump had been driven.
"One more pile!" breathed Orde, his breath quickening a trifle as he
glanced up stream.
The hammer in the high derrick ran smoothly to the top, paused, and
fell. A half dozen times more it ripped. Then without delay the
heavy chains were thrown around the winch, and the steam power began
to draw the clumps together.
"Done!" cried Tom North, straightening his back.
"And a job in time, too," said Johnny Sims, indicating the creaking
and tottering jam.
North unmoored, and the driver dropped back with the current and
around the bend where she was snubbed by the safety line already
mentioned.
Immediately the tug churned forward to accomplish the last duty,
that of binding the defences together by means of chains and cables.
Two men leaped to the floating booms and moved her fore and aft.
Orde and the Rough Red set about the task. Methodically they worked
from either end toward the middle. When they met finally, Orde
directed his assistant to get aboard the tug.
"I'll tie this one, Jimmy," said he.
Aboard the tug all was tense preparation. Marsh grasped alertly the
spokes of the wheel. In the engine-room Harvey, his hand on the
throttle, stood ready to throw her wide open at the signal. Armed
with sharp axes two men prepared to cut the mooring lines on a sign
from the Rough Red. They watched his upraised hand. When it should
descend, their axes must fall.
"Look out," the Rough Red warned Orde, who was methodically tying
the last cumbersome knot, "she's getting ready!"
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 mass toppled slowly, fell into the swift current, and leaped
with a roar. The Rough Red watched with cat-like attention.rew worked as though
mad. Excepting them, no one ventured on the
river, for to be caught in the imminent break meant to die. Old
spars, refuse timbers of all sorts--anything and everything was
requisitioned that might help form an obstruction above or below
water. Piles were taken where they could be found. Farmer's trees
were cut down. Pines belonging to divers and protesting owners were
felled and sharpened. Some were brought in by rail. Even the
inviolate Government supply was commandeered. The Railroad Company
had a fine lot which, with remarkable shortsightedness and lack of
public spirit, they refused to sell at any price. The crew took
them by force. Once Captain Marsh was found up to his waist in
water, himself felling the trees of a wood, and dragging them to the
river by a cable attached to the winch of his tug. Night followed
day; and da
"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 mass 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
establishing 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 rushing 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, stringiy night again. None of the crews realised
the fact. The
men were caught in the toils of a labour ceaseless and eternal.
Never would it end, just as never had it begun. Always were they to
handle piles, steam hammeng 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 be 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 hell 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, hell!" 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.
"But it would take two or three days, even working night and day."
"What of it?"
"But it would be too late--it would do no good--"
"Perhaps not," interrupted Orde; "but it will be doing something,
anyway. Look here, Welton, are you game? If you'll get that bridge
out in two days I'll hold the jam."
"You can't hold that jam two hours, let alone two days," said Welton
decidedly.
"That's my business. You're wasting time. Will you send for
lanterns and wrenches and keep this crew working?"
"I will," said Welton.
"Then do it."
During the next two days the old scenes were all relived, with back
of them the weight of the struggle that had gone before. The little
crs and the implements of their trade,
menaced by a jam on the point of breaking, wet by a swollen and
angry flood, over-arched by a clear calm sky or by the twinkling
peaceful stars. Long since had they ceased to reckon with the
results of what they did, the consequences either to themselves or
to the jam. Mechanically they performed their labour. Perhaps the
logs would kill them. Perhaps these long, black, dripping piles
they drove were having some effect on the situation. Neither
possibility mattered.
Then all at once, as though a faucet had been turned off, the floods
slackened.
"They've opened the channel," said Orde dully. His voice sounded to
himself very far away. Suddenly the external world, too, seemed
removed to a distance, far from his centre of consciousness. He
felt himself moving in strange and distorted surroundings; he heard
himself repeating to each of a number of wavering, gigantic figures
the talismanic words that had accomplished the dissolution of the
earth for himself: "They've opened the channel." At last he felt
hard planks beneath his feet, and, shaking his head with an effort,
he made out the pilot-house of the SPRITE and a hollow-eyed man
leaning against it. "They've opened the channel, Marsh," he
repeated. "I guess that'll be all." Then quite slowly he sank to
the deck, sound asleep.
Welton, returning from his labours with the iron bridge and the jam,
found them thus. Men slept on the deck of the tug, aboard the pile-
driver. Two or three had even curled up in the crevices of the jam,
resting in the arms of the monster they had subdued.
XLII
When Newmark left, in the eathe booms, unless curiosity should take
her.
As the team left the marsh road for the county turnpike past the
mills you are.rly stages of the jam, he gave scant
thought to the errand on which he had ostensibly departed. Whether
or nor Orde got a supply of piles was to him a matter of
indifference. His hope, or rather preference was that the jam
should go out; but he saw clearly what Orde, blinded by the swift
action of the struggle, was as yet unable to perceive. Even should
the riverman succeed in stopping the jam, the extraordinary expenses
incidental to the defence and to the subsequent salvaging,
untangling and sorting would more than eat up the profits of the
drive. Orde would then be forced to ask for an extension of time on
his notes.
On arriving in Monrovia, he drove to his own house. To Mallock he
issued orders.
"Go to the office and tell them I am ill," said he, "and then hunt
up Mr. Heinzman, wherever he is, and tell him I want to see him
immediately."
He did not trouble to send word directly to Orde, up river; but left
him to be informed by the slow process of filtration through the
bookkeepers. The interim of several hours before Heinzman appeared
he spent very comfortably in his easy chair, dipping into a small
volume of Montaigne.
At length the German was announced. He entered rather red and
breathless, obviously surprised to find Newmark at home.
"Dot was a terrible jam," said he, mopping his brow and sinking into
a chair. "I got lots of logs in it."
Newmark dismissed the subject with an abrupt flip of his unlighted
cigar.
"Heinzman," said he, "in three weeks at the latest Orde will come to
you asking for a renewal of the notes you hold against our firm.
You must refuse to make such a renewal."
"All righdt," agreed Heinzman.
"He'll probably offer you higher interest. You must refuse that.
Then when the notes are overdue you must begin suit in foreclosure."
"All righdt," repeated Heinzman a little restlessly. "Do you think
he vill hold that jam?"
Newmark shrugged his shoulders swiftly.
"I got lots of logs in that jam. If that jam goes out I vill lose a
heap of money."
"Well, you'll make quite a heap on this deal," said Newmark
carelessly.
"Suppose he holds it," said Heinzman, pausing. "I hate like the
mischief to joomp on him."
"Rot!" said Newmark decisively. "That's what he's there for." He
looked at the German sharply. "I suppose you know just how deep
you're in this?"
"Oh, I ain't backing oudt," negatived Heinzman. "Not a bit."
"Well, then, you know what to do," said Newmark, terminating the
interview.
XLIII
Little by little the water went down. The pressure, already
considerably relieved by the channel into Stearn's Bayou, slackened
every hour. Orde, still half dazed with his long-delayed sleep,
drove back along the marsh road to town.
His faculties were still in the torpor that follows rest after
exhaustion. The warm July sun, the breeze from the Lake, the flash
of light from the roadside water, these were all he had room for
among his perceptions. He was content to enjoy them, and to
anticipate drowsily the keen pleasure of seeing Carroll again. In
the rush of the jam he had heard nothing from her. For all he knew
she and Bobby might have been among the spectators on the bank; he
had hardly once left the river. It did not seem to him strange that
Carroll should not have been there to welcome him after the struggle
was over. Rarely did she get to the booms in ordinary
circumstances. This episode of the big jam was, after all, nothing
but part of the day's work to Orde ; a crisis, exaggerated it is
true, but like many other crises a man must meet and cope with on
the river. There was no reason why Carroll should drive the twelve
miles between Monrovia and s and lumberyards, Orde shook himself fully awake.
He began to
review the situation. As Newmark had accurately foreseen, he came
almost immediately to a realisation that the firm would not be able
to meet the notes given to Heinzman. Orde had depended on the
profits from the season's drive to enable him to make up the
necessary amount. Those profits would be greatly diminished, if not
wiped out entirely, by the expenses, both regular and irregular,
incurred in holding the jam; by the damage suits surely to be
brought by the owners of the piles, trees, pile-drivers and other
supplies and materials requisitioned in the heat of the campaign;
and by the extra labour necessary to break out the jam and to sort
the logs according to their various destinations.
"I'll have to get an extension of time," said Orde to himself. "Of
course Joe will let me have more time on my own personal note to the
firm. And Heinzman surely ought to--I saved a lot of his logs in
that jam. And if he doesn't want to, I guess an offer of a little
higher interest will fetch him."
Ordinarily the state of affairs would have worried him, for it was
exactl"
"Where was she exposed?"
"Down at Heinzman's. You know--or perhaps you don't--that old
Heinzman is the worst sort of anti-vaccination crank. Well, he's
reaped the reward."
"Has he smallpox?" asked Ordethat you would take them up
personally. Our resources are all tied up."
"Can't we raise anything more on the Northern Peninsula timber?"
asked Orde.
"You ought to know we can't," cried Newmark, with an appearance of
growing excitement. "The last seventy-five thousand we borrowed for
me finishes that."
"Can't you take up part of your note?"
"My note comes due in 1885," rejoined Newmark with cold disgust. "I
expect to take it up then. But I can't until then. I hadn't
expected anything like this."
"Well, don't get hot," said Orde vaguely. "I only thought that
Northern Peninsuy the situation he had fought against so hard. But now he was
too wearied in soul and body. He dismissed the subject from his
mind. The horses, left almost to themselves, lapsed into a sleepy
jog. After a little they passed the bridge and entered the town.
Warm spicy odours of pine disengaged themselves from the broken
shingles and sawdust of the roadway, and floated upward through the
hot sunshine. The beautiful maples with their dense shadows threw
the sidewalks into coolness. Up one street and down another the
horses took their accustomed way. Finally they pulled up opposite
the Orde house. Orde hitched the horses, and, his step quickening
in anticipation, sprang up the walk and into the front door.
"Hullo, sweetheart!" he called cheerily.
The echoes alone answered him. He cried again, and yet again, with
a growing feeling of disappointment that Carroll should happen to be
from home. Finally a door opened and shut in the back part of the
house. A moment later Mary, the Irish servant girl, came through
the dining-room, caught sight of Orde, threw her apron over her
head, and burst into one of those extravagant demonstrations of
grief peculiar to the warm-hearted of her class.
Orde stopped short, a sinking at his heart.
"What is it, Mary?" he asked very quietly.
But the girl only wept the louder, rocking back and forth in a fresh
paroxysm of grief. Beside himself with anxiety Orde sprang forward
to shake her by the arm, to shower her with questions. These
elicited nothing but broken and incoherent fragments concerning "the
missus," "oh, the sad day!" "and me lift all alone with Bobby, me
heart that heavy," and the like, which served merely to increase
Orde's bewilderment and anxiety. At this moment Bobby himself
appeared from the direction of the kitchen. Orde, frantic with
alarm, fell upon his son. Bobby, much bewildered by all this
pother, could only mumble something about "smallpox," and "took
mamma away with doctor."
"Where? where, Bobby?" cried Orde, fairly shaking the small boy by
the shoulder. He felt like a man in a bad dream, trying to reach a
goal that constantly eluded him.
At this moment a calm, dry voice broke through the turmoil of
questions and exclamations. Orde looked up to see the tall, angular
form of Doctor McMullen standing in the doorway.
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