Near noon of the following day a man came upstream to report a jam beyond the powers of the outlying rivermen. Roaring Dick, after a short absence for examination, returned to call off the rear. All repaired to the scene of obstruction.
Bob noticed the slack water a mile or so above the jam. The river was quite covered with logs pressed tight against each other by the force of the interrupted current, but still floating. A little farther along the increasing pressure had lifted some of them clear of the water. They upended slightly, or lay in hollows between the others. Still farther downstream the salient features of a jam multiplied. More timbers stuck out at angles from the surface; some were even lifted bodily. An abattis formed, menacing and formidable, against which even the mighty dynamics of the river pushed in vain. Then at last the little group arrived at the "breast" itself—a sullen and fearful tangle like a gigantic pile of jackstraws. Beneath it the diminished river boiled out angrily. By the very fact of its lessened volume Bob could guess at the pressure above. Immediately the rivermen ran out on this tangle, and, after a moment devoted to inspection, set to work with their peavies. Bob started to follow, but Welton held him back.
"It's dangerous for a man not used to it. The jam may go out at any time, and when she goes, she goes sky-hooting."
But in the event his precaution turned out useless. All day the men rolled logs into the current below the dam. Theclick!clank! clank! of their peavies sounded like the valves of some great engine, so regular was the periodicity of their metallic recurrence. They made quite a hole in the breast; and several times the jam shrugged, creaked and settled, but always to a more solid look. Billy, the teamster, brought down his horses. By means of long blocks and tackle they set to yanking out logs from certain places specified by Roaring Dick. Still the jam proved obstinate.
"I hate to do it," said Roaring Dick to Welton; "but it's a case of powder."
"Tie into it," agreed Welton. "What's a few smashed logs compared to hanging the drive?"
Dick nodded. He picked up a little canvas lunch bag from a stump where, earlier in the day, he had hung it, and from it extracted several sticks of giant powder, a length of fuse and several caps. These he prepared. Then he and Welton walked out over the jam, examining it carefully, and consulting together at length. Finally Roaring Dick placed his charge far down in the interstices, lit the fuse and walked calmly ashore. The men leisurely placed themselves out of harm's way. Welton joined Bob behind a big burned stub.
"Will that start her sure?" asked Bob.
"Depends on whether we guessed right on the key log," said Welton.
A great roar shook the atmosphere. Straight up into the air spurted the cloud of the explosion. Through the white smoke Bob could see the flame and four or five big logs, like upleaping, dim giants. Then he dodged back from the rain of bark and splinters.
The immediate effect on the jam was not apparent. It fell forward into the opening made by the explosion, and a light but perceptible movement ran through the waiting timbers up the river. But the men, running out immediately, soon made it evident that the desired result had been attained. Their efforts now seemed to gain definite effects. An uneasiness ran through the hitherto solid structure of the jam. Timbers changed position. Sometimes the whole river seemed to start forward a foot or so, but before the eye could catch the motion, it had again frozen to immobility.
"That fetched the key logs, all right," said Welton, watching.
Then all at once about half the breast of the jam fell forward into the stream. Bob uttered an involuntary cry. But the practised rivermen must have foreseen this, for none were caught. At once the other logs at the breast began to topple of their own accord into the stream. The splashes threw the water high like the explosions of shells, and the thundering of the falling and grinding timbers resembled the roar of artillery. The pattern of the river changed, at first almost imperceptibly, then more and more rapidly. The logs in the centre thrust forward, those on the wings hung back. Near the head of the jam the men worked like demons. Wherever the timbers caught or hesitated for a moment in their slow crushing forward, there a dozen men leaped savagely, to jerk, heave and pry with their heavy peavies. Continually under them the footing shifted; sullen logs menaced them with crushing or complete engulfment in their grinding mill. Seemingly they paid no attention to this, but gave all their energies to the work. In reality, whether from calculation or merely from the instinct that grows out of long experience, they must have pre-estimated every chance.
"What bully team work!" cried Bob, stirred to enthusiasm.
Now the motion quickened. The centre of the river rushed forward; the wings sucked in after from either side. A roar and battling of timbers, jets of spray, the smoke of waters filled the air. Quite coolly the rivermen made their way ashore, their peavies held like balancing poles across their bodies. Under their feet the logs heaved, sank, ground together, tossed above the hurrying under-mass, tumultuous as a close-packed drove of wild horses. The rivermen rode them easily. For an appreciable time one man perched on a stable timber watching keenly ahead. Then quite coolly he leaped, made a dozen rapid zigzag steps forward, and stopped. The log he had quitted dropped sullenly from sight, and two closed, grinding, where it had been. In twenty seconds every man was safely ashore.
The river caught its speed. Hurried on by the pressure of water long dammed back, the logs tumbled forward. Rank after rank they swept past, while the rivermen, leaning on the shafts of their peavies, passed them in review.
"That was luck," Welton's voice broke in on Bob's contemplation. "It's just getting dark. Couldn't have done it without the dynamite. It splinters up a little timber, but we save money, even at that."
"Billy doesn't carry that with the other supplies, does he?" asked Bob.
"Sure," said Welton; "rolls it up in the bedding, or something. Well, John Harvey, Junior," said he to that youth, "what do you think of it? A little different driving this white water than pushing logs with a pike pole down a slack-water river like the Green, hey?"
"Yes, sir," the boy nodded out of his Indian stolidity.
"You see now why a man has to start young to be a riverman," Welton told Bob, as they bent their steps toward camp. "Poor little John Harvey out on that jam when she broke would have stood about as much chance as a beetle at a woodpecker prayer meeting."
Two days later Welton returned to the mill. At his suggestion Bob stayed with the drive. He took his place quietly as a visitor, had the good sense to be unobtrusive, and so was tolerated by the men. That is to say, he sat at the camp fires practically unnoticed, and the rivermen talked as though he were not there. When he addressed any of them they answered him with entire good humour, but ordinarily they paid no more attention to him than they did to the trees and bushes that chanced to surround the camp.
The drive moved forward slowly. Sometimes Billy packed up every day to set forth on one of his highly adventurous drives; again camp stayed for some time in the same place. Bob amused himself tramping up and down the river, reviewing the operations. Occasionally Roaring Dick, in his capacity of river boss, accompanied the young fellow. Why, Bob could not imagine, for the alert, self-contained little riverman trudged along in almost entire silence, his keen chipmunk eyes spying restlessly on all there was to be seen. When Bob ventured a remark or comment, he answered by a grunt or a monosyllable. The grunt or the monosyllable was never sullen or hostile or contemptuous; merely indifferent. Bob learned to economize speech, and so got along well with his strange companion.
By the end of the week the drive entered a cleared farm country. The cultivation was crude and the clearing partial. Low-wooded hills dotted with stumps of the old forest alternated with willow-grown bottom-lands and dense swamps. The farmers lived for the most part in slab or log houses earthed against the winter cold. Fences were of split rails laid "snake fashion." Ploughing had to be in and out between the blackened stumps on the tops of which were piled the loose rocks picked from the soil as the share turned them up. Long, unimproved roads wandered over the hills, following roughly the section lines, but perfectly willing to turn aside through some man's field in order to avoid a steep grade or soft going. These things the rivermen saw from their stream exactly as a trainman would see them from his right-of-way. The river was the highway, and rarely was it considered worth while to climb the low bluffs out of the bottom-land through which it flowed.
In the long run it landed them in a town named Twin Falls. Here were a water-power dam and some small manufactories. Here, too, were saloons and other temptations for rivermen. Camp was made above town. In the evening the men, with but few exceptions, turned in to the sleeping tent at the usual hour. Bob was much surprised at this; but later he came to recognize it as part of a riverman's peculiar code. Until the drive should be down, he did not feel himself privileged to "blow off steam." Even the exceptions did not get so drunk they could not show up the following morning to take a share in sluicing the drive through the dam.
All but Roaring Dick. The latter did not appear at all, and was reported "drunk a-plenty" by some one who had seen him early that morning. Evidently the river boss did not "take this drive serious." His absence seemed to make no difference. The sluicing went forward methodically.
"He'll show up in a day or two," said the cook with entire indifference, when Bob inquired of him.
That evening, however, four or five of the men disappeared, and did not return. Such was the effect of an evil example on the part of the foreman. Larsen took charge. In almost unbroken series the logs shot through the sluiceways into the river below, where they were received by the jam crew and started on the next stage of their long journey to the mills. In a day the dam was passed. One of the younger men rode the last log through the sluiceway, standing upright as it darted down the chute into the eddy below. The crowd of townspeople cheered. The boy waved his hat and birled the log until the spray flew.
But hardly was camp pitched two miles below town when one of the jam crew came upstream to report a difficulty. Larsen at once made ready to accompany him down the river trail, and Bob, out of curiosity, went along, too.
"It's mossbacks," the messenger explained, "and them deadheads we been carrying along. They've rigged up a little sawmill down there, where they're cutting what the farmers haul in to 'em. And then, besides, they've planted a bunch of piles right out in the middle of the stream and boomed in their side, and they're out there with pike-poles, nailin' onto every stick of deadhead that comes along."
"Well, that's all right," said Larsen. "I guess they got a right to them as long as we ain't marked them."
"They can have their deadheads," agreed the riverman, "but their piles have jammed our drive and hung her."
"We'll break the jam," said Larsen.
Arrived at the scene of difficulty, Bob looked about him with great interest. The jam was apparently locked hard and fast against a clump of piles driven about in the centre of the stream. These had evidently been planted as the extreme outwork of a long shunting boom. Men working there could shunt into the sawmill enclosure that portion of the drive to which they could lay claim. The remainder could proceed down the open channel to the left. That was the theory. Unfortunately, this division of the river's width so congested matters that the whole drive had hung.
The jam crew were at work, but even Bob's unpractised eye saw that their task was stupendous. Even should they succeed in loosening the breast, there could be no reason to suppose the performance would not have to be repeated over and over again as the close-ranked drive came against the obstacle.
Larsen 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-fashioned tools.
"Who's boss?" yelled Larsen 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 Larsen.
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 Larsen. "Nobody 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.
Larsen 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 hell 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 ashore. Larsen 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 Larsen 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 Larsen consulted happened to be attorneys for the little sawmill men. Larsen tried in his blundering way to express his feeling that "nobody 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 Larsen 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 Larsen.
"But they haven't got no right to stop our drivedeadthat 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 Larsen.
He did so. The two returned to camp. The rivermen were loafing in camp awaiting Larsen's reappearance. The jam was as before. Larsen 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 Larsen 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 Larsen.
"Aren't you going to do anything in the meantime?" asked Bob.
"What can I do?" countered Larsen.'
The crew had nothing to say one way or the other, but watched with a cynical amusement 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 unobtrusive silence, content to be ignored if only the men would act in their accustomed way, and not as before a stranger.
"Wait; hell!" 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 pricked up his ears at this mention of his father's name.
"What's that?" he asked.
The riverman rolled over and examined him dispassionately 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 God! 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' realgood, 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?"
"I don't know," replied the riverman, "but I wouldn't lay around and wait."
"Why don't some of you fellows go out there and storm the fort, if you feel that way?" asked Bob.
"Why?" demanded the riverman, "I won't let any boss stump me; but why in hell should I go out and get my hide full of birdshot? If this outfit don't know enough to get its drive down, that ain't my fault."
Bob had seen enough of the breed to recognize this as an eminently characteristic attitude.
"Well," he remarked comfortably, "somebody'll be down from the mill soon."
The riverman turned on him almost savagely.
"Down soon!" he snorted. "So'll the water be 'down soon.' It's dropping every minute. That telegraft of yours won't even start out before to-morrow morning. Don't you fool yourself. That Twin Falls outfit is just too tickled to do us up. It'll be two days before anybody shows up, and then where are you at? Hell!" and the old riverman relapsed into a disgusted silence.
Considerably perturbed, Bob hunted up Larsen.
"Look here, Larsen," said he, "they tell me a delay here is likely to hang up this drive. Is that right?"
The old man looked at his interlocutor, his brow wrinkled.
"I wish Darrell was in charge," said he.
"What would Darrell do that you can't do?" demanded Bob bluntly.
"That's just it; I don't know," confessed Larsen.
"Well, I'd get some weapons up town and drive that gang off," said Bob heatedly.
"They'd have a posse down and jug the lot of us," Larsen pointed out, "before we could clear the river." He suddenly flared up. "I ain't no river boss, and I ain't paid as a river boss, and I never claimed to be one. Why in hell don't they keep their men in charge?"
"You're working for the company, and you ought to do your best for them," said Bob.
But Larsen had abruptly fallen into Scandinavian sulks. He muttered something under his breath, and quite deliberately arose and walked around to the other side of the fire.
Twice during the night Bob arose from his blankets and walked down to the riverside. In the clear moonlight he could see one or the other of the millmen always on watch, his shotgun across his knees. Evidently they did not intend to be surprised by any night work. The young fellow returned very thoughtful to his blankets, where he lay staring up against the canvas of the tent.
Next morning he was up early, and in close consultation with Billy the teamster. The latter listened attentively to what Bob had to say, nodding his head from time to time. Then the two disappeared in the direction of the wagon, where for a long interval they busied themselves at some mysterious operation.
When they finally emerged from the bushes, Bob was carrying over his shoulder a ten-foot poplar sapling around the end of which was fastened a cylindrical bundle of considerable size. Bob paid no attention to the men about the fire, but bent his steps toward the river. Billy, however, said a few delighted words to the sprawling group. It arose with alacrity and followed the young man's lead.
Arrived at the bank of the river, Bob swung his burden to the ground, knelt by it, and lit a match. The rivermen, gathering close, saw that the bundle around the end of the sapling consisted of a dozen rolls of giant powder from which dangled a short fuse. Bob touched his match to the split outer end of the fuse. It spluttered viciously. He arose with great deliberation, picked up his strange weapon, and advanced out over the logs.
In the meantime the opposing army had gathered about the disputed clump of piles, to the full strength of its three shotguns and the single rifle. Bob paid absolutely no attention to them. When within a short distance he stopped and, quite oblivious to warnings and threats from the army, set himself to watching painstakingly the sputtering progress of the fire up the fuse, exactly as a small boy watches his giant cracker which he hopes to explode in mid-air. At what he considered the proper moment he straightened his powerful young body, and cast the sapling from him, javelin-wise.
"Scat!" he shouted, and scrambled madly for cover.
The army decamped in haste. Of its armament it lost near fifty per cent., for one shotgun and the rifle remained where they had fallen. Like Abou Ben Adam, Murdock led all the rest.
Now Bob had hurled his weapon as hard as he knew how, and had scampered for safety without looking to see where it had fallen. As a matter of fact, by one of those very lucky accidents, that often attend a star in the ascendent, the sapling dove head on into a cavern in the jam above the clump of piles. The detonation of the twelve full sticks of giant powder was terrific. Half the river leaped into the air in a beautiful column of water and spray that seemed to hang motionless for appreciable moments. Dark fragments of timbers were hurled in all directions. When the row had died the clump of piles was seen to have disappeared. Bob's chance shot had actually cleared the river!
The rivermen glanced at each other amazedly.
"Did youmeanto place that charge, bub?" one asked.
Bob was too good a field general not to welcome the gifts of chance.
"Certainly," he snapped. "Now get out on that river, every mother's son of you. Get that drive going and keep it going. I've cleared the river for you; and if you'd any one of you had the nerve of my poor old fat sub-centre, you'd have done it for yourselves. Get busy! Hop!"
The men jumped for their peavies. Bob raged up and down the bank. For the moment he had forgotten the husk of the situation, and saw it only in essential. Here was a squad to lick into shape, to fashion into a team. It mattered little that they wore spikes in their boots instead of cleats; that they sported little felt hats instead of head guards. The principle was the same. The team had gone to pieces in the face of a crisis; discipline was relaxed; grumblers were getting noisy. Bob plunged joyously head over ears in his task. By now he knew every man by name, and he addressed each personally. He had no idea of what was to be done to start this riverful of logs smoothly and surely on its way; he did not need to. Afloat on the river was technical knowledge enough, and to spare. Bob threw his men at the logs as he used to throw his backs at the opposing line. And they went. Even in the whole-souled, frantic absorption of the good coach he found time to wonder at the likeness of all men. These rivermen differed in no essential from the members of the squad. They responded to the same authority; they could be hurled as a unit against opposing obstacles.
Bob felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and whirled to stare straight into the bloodshot eyes of Roaring Dick. The man was still drunk, but only with the lees of the debauch. He knew perfectly what he was about, but the bad whiskey still hummed through his head. Bob met the baleful glare from under his square brows, as the man teetered back and forth on his heels.
"You got a hell of a nerve!" said Roaring Dick, thickly. "You talk like you was boss of this river."
Bob looked back at him steadily for a full half-minute.
"I am," said he at last.
Roaring Dick had not been brought up in the knowledge of protocols or ultimatums. Scarcely had Bob uttered the last words of his brief speech before he was hit twice in the face, good smashing blows that sent him staggering. The blows were followed by a savage rush. Roaring Dick was on his man with the quickness and ferocity of a wildcat. He hit, kicked, wrestled, even bit. Bob was whirled back by the very impetuosity of the attack. Before he could collect his wits he was badly punished and dazed. He tripped and Roaring Dick, with a bellow of satisfaction, began to kick at his body even before he reached the ground.
But strangely enough this fall served to clear Bob's head. Thousands of times he had gone down just like this on the football field, and had then been called upon to struggle on with the ball as far as he was able. A slight hint of the accustomed will sometimes steady us in the most difficult positions. The mind, bumping aimlessly, falls into its groove, and instinctively shoots forward with tremendous velocity. Bob hit the ground, half turned on his shoulder, rolled over twice with the rapid, vigorous twist second-nature to a seasoned halfback, and bounded to his feet. He met Roaring Dick half way with a straight blow. It failed to stop, or even to shake the little riverman. The next instant the men were wrestling fiercely.
Bob found himself surprisingly opposed. Beneath his loose, soft clothing the riverman seemed to be made of steel. Suddenly Bob was called upon to exert every ounce of strength in his body, and to summon all his acquired skill to prevent himself from being ignominiously overpowered. The ferocity of the rush, and the purposeful rapidity of Roaring Dick's attack, as well as the unexpected variety thereof, kept him fully occupied in defending himself. With the exception of the single blow delivered when he had regained his feet, he had been unable even to attempt aggression. It was as though he had touched a button to release an astonishing and bewildering erratic energy.
Bob had done a great deal of boxing and considerable wrestling. During his boyhood and youth he had even become involved in several fisticuffs. They had always been with the boys or young men of his own ideas. Though conducted in anger they retained still a certain remnant of convention. No matter how much you wanted to "do" the other fellow, you tried to accomplish that result by hitting cleanly, or by wrestling him to a point where you could "punch his face in." The object was to hurt your opponent until he had had enough, until he was willing to quit, until he had been thoroughly impressed with the fact that he was punished. But this result was to be accomplished with the fists. If your opponent seized a club, or a stone, or tried to kick, that very act indicated his defeat. He had had enough, and that was one way of acknowledging your superiority. So strongly ingrained had this instinct of the fight-convention become that even now Bob unconsciously was playing according to the rules of the game.
Roaring Dick, on the contrary, was out solely for results. He fought with every resource at his command. Bob was slow to realize this, slow to arouse himself beyond the point of calculated defence. His whole training on the field inclined him to keep cool and to play, whatever the game, from a reasoning standpoint. He was young, strong and practised; but he was not roused above the normal. And, as many rivermen had good reason to know, the normal man availed little against Roaring Dick's maniacal rushes.
The men were close-locked, and tugging and straining for an advantage. Bob crouched lower and lower with a well-defined notion of getting a twist on his opponent. For an instant he partially freed one side. Like lightning Roaring Dick delivered a fierce straight kick at his groin. The blow missed its aim, but Bob felt the long, sharp spikes tearing the flesh of his thigh. Sheer surprise relaxed his muscles for the fraction of an instant. Roaring Dick lowered his head, rammed it into Bob's chin, and at the same time reached for the young man's gullet with both hands. Bob tore his head out of reach in the nick of time. As they closed again Roaring Dick's right hand was free. Bob felt the riverman's thumb fumbling for his eyeball.
"Why, he wants to cripple me, to kill me!" the young man cried to himself. So vivid was the astonishment of this revelation to his sportsman's soul that he believed he had said it aloud. This was no mere fight, it was a combat. In modern civilized conditions combats are notably few and far between. It is difficult for the average man to come to a realization that he must in any circumstances depend on himself for the preservation of his life. Even to the last moment the victim of the real melodrama that occasionally breaks out in the most unlikely places is likely to be more concerned with his outraged dignity than with his peril. That thumb, feeling eagerly for his eye-socket, woke Bob to a new world. A swift anger rushed over him like a hot wave.
This man was trying to injure him. Either the kick or the gouge would have left him maimed for life. A sudden fierce desire to beat his opponent into the earth seized Bob. With a single effort he wrenched his arms free.
Now this fact has been noted again and again: mere size has often little to do with a man's physical prowess. The list of anecdotes wherein the little fellow "puts it all over" the big bully is exceptionally long. Nor are more than a bare majority of the anecdotes baseless. In our own lumber woods a one-hundred-and-thirty-pound man with no other weapon than his two hands once nearly killed a two-hundred-pound blacksmith for pushing him off a bench. This phenomenon arises from the fact that the little man seems capable often of releasing at will a greater flood of dynamic energy than a big man. We express this by saying that it is the spirit that counts. As a matter of truth the big man may have as much courage as the little man. It is simply that he cannot, at will, tap as quickly the vast reservoir of nervous energy that lies beneath all human effort of any kind whatsoever. He cannot arouse himself as can the little man.
It was for the foregoing reason that Roaring Dick had acquired his ascendancy. He possessed the temperament that fuses. When he fought, he fought with the ferocity and concentration of a wild beast. This concentration, this power of fusing to white heat all the powers of a man's being down to the uttermost, this instinctive ability to tap the extra-human stores of dynamics is what constitutes the temperament of genius, whether it be applied to invention, to artistic creation, to ruling, to finance, or merely to beating down personal opposition by beating in the opponent's face. Unfortunately for him, Bob Orde happened also to possess the temperament of genius. The two foul blows aroused him. All at once he became blind to everything but an unreasoning desire to hurt this man who had tried to hurt him. On the side of dynamics the combat suddenly equalized. It became a question merely of relative power, and Bob was the bigger man.
Bob threw his man from him by main strength. Roaring Dick staggered back, only to carrom against a tree. A dozen swift, straight blows in the face drove him by the sheer force of them. He was smothered, overwhelmed, by the young man's superior size. Bob fell upon him savagely. In less than a minute the fight was over as far as Roaring Dick was concerned. Blinded, utterly winded, his whiskey-driven energies drained away, he fell like a log. Bob, still blazing, found himself without an opponent.
He glared about him. The rivermen were gathered in a silent ring. Just beyond stood a side-bar buggy in which a burly, sodden red-faced man stood up the better to see. Bob recognized him as one of the saloon keepers at Twin Falls, and his white-hot brain jumped to the correct conclusion that Roaring Dick, driven by some vague conscience-stirring in regard to his work, had insisted on going down river; and that this dive-keeper, loth to lose a profitable customer in the dull season, had offered transportation in the hopeful probability that he could induce the riverman to return with him. Bob stooped, lifted his unconscious opponent, strode to the side-bar buggy and unceremoniously dumped his burden therein.
"Now," said he roughly, "get out of here! When this man comes to, you tell him he's fired! He's not to show his face on this river again!"
The saloon-keeper demurred, blustering slightly after the time-tried manner of his sort.
"Look here, young fellow, you can't talk that way to me."
"Can't I!" snapped Bob; "well, you turn around and get out of here."
The man met full the blaze of the extra-normal powers not yet fallen below the barrier in the young fellow's personality. He gathered up the reins and drove away.
Bob watched him out of sight, his chest rising and falling with the receding waves of his passion. He was a strange young figure with his torn garments, his tossed hair, the streak of blood beneath his eye, and the inner fading glow of his face. At last he drew a long, shuddering breath, and turned to the expectant and silent group of rivermen.
"Boys," said he pleasantly, "I don't know one damn thing about river-driving, but I do know when a man's doing his best work. I shall expect you fellows to get in and rustle down those logs. Any man who thinks he's going to soldier on me is going to get fooled, and he's going to get his time handed out to him on the spot. As near as I can make out, unless we get an everlasting wiggle on us—every one of us—this drive'll hang up; and I'd just as soon hang it by laying off those who try to shirk as by letting you hang it by not working your best. So get busy. If anybody wants to quit, let 'em step up right now. Any remarks?" He looked from one to another.
"Nary remark," said one man at last.
"All right. Now get your backs into this. It'steam workthat counts. You've each got your choice; either you can lie like the devil to hide the fact that you were a member of the Cedar Branch crew in 1899, or you can go away and brag about it. It's up to you. Get busy."
Two days later Welton swung from the train at Twin Falls. His red, jolly face was as quizzical as ever, but one who knew him might have noticed that his usual leisurely movements had quickened. He walked rapidly to the livery stable where he ordered a rig.
"Where's the drive, Hank?" he asked the liveryman.
"Search me!" was his reply; "somewhere down river. Old Murdock is up talkin' wild about damage suits, and there's evidently been one hell of a row, but I just got back myself from drivin' a drummer over to Watsonville."
"Know if Darrell is in town?"
"Oh,he'sin town; there ain't no manner of doubt as to that."
"Drunk, eh?"
"Spifflicated, pie-eyed, loaded, soshed," agreed the liveryman succinctly.
Welton shook his head humorously and ruefully.
"Say, Welton," demanded the liveryman with the easy familiarity of his class, "why in blazes do you put a plain drunk like that in charge?"
"Darrell is a good man on a big job," said Welton; "you can't beat him, and you can't get him to take a drink. But it takes a big job to steady him."
"Well, I'd fire him," stated Hank positively.
"He's already fired," spoke up a hostler, "they laid him off two days ago when he went down drunk and tried to take charge."
"Well, now," chuckled Welton, as he gathered up the reins, "who'd have thought old Larsen could scare up the spunk!"
He drove down the river road. When he came to a point opposite Murdock's he drew up.
"That wire said that Murdock had the river blocked," he mused, "but she's certainly flowing free enough now. The river's sacked clean now."
His presence on the bank had attracted the attention of a man in the mill. After a long scrutiny, this individual launched a skiff and pulled across the stream.
"I thought it was you," he cried as soon as he had stepped ashore. "Well, let me tell you I'm going to sue you for damages, big damages!"
Welton looked him over quizzically, and the laughing lines deepened around the corners of his eyes.
"Lay on, MacDuff," said he, "nobody's sued me yet this year, and it didn't seem natural."
"And for assault with deadly weapons, and malicious destruction of property, and seizure and----"
"You must have been talking to a country lawyer," interrupted Welton, with one of his subterranean chuckles. "Don't do it. They got nothingbuttime, and you know what your copy book says about idle hands." He crossed one leg and leaned back as though for a comfortable chat. "No, you come and see me, Murdock, and state how much you've been damaged, and we'll see what we can do. Why, these little lawyers love to name things big. They'd call a sewing circle a riot if one of the members dropped a stitch."
But Murdock was in deadly earnest.
"Perhaps throwin' dynamite on the end of a pole, and mighty nigh killin' us, and just blowin' the whole river up in the air is your idea of somethin' little," he stormed; "well, you'll find it'll look big enough in court."
"So that's what they did to clear the river," said Welton, more than half to himself. "Well, Murdock, suit yourself; you can see me or that intellectual giant of a lawyer of yours. You'll find me cheaper. So long."
He drove on, chuckling.
"I didn't think old Larsen had the spunk," he repeated after a time. "Guess I ought to have put him in charge in the beginning."
He drove to a point where the erratic road turned inland. There he tied his horse to a tree and tramped on afoot. After a little he came in sight of the rear—and stopped.
The men were working hard; a burst of hearty laughter saluted Welton's ears. He could hardly believe them. Nobody had heard this sullen crew of nondescript rivermen from everywhere exhibit the faintest symptoms of good-humour or interest before. Another burst of laughter came up the breeze. A dozen men ran out over the logs as though skylarking, inserted their peavies in a threatened lock, and pried it loose.
"Pretty work," said the expert in Welton.
He drew nearer through the low growth until he stood well within hearing and seeing distance. Then he stopped again.
Bob Orde was walking up and down the bank talking to the men. They were laughing back at him. His manner was half fun, half earnest, part rueful, part impatient, wholly affectionate.
"You, Jim," said he, "go out and get busy. You're loafing, you know you are; I don't give a damn what you're to do. Do something! Don't give an imitation of a cast-iron hero. No, I won't either tell you what to do. I don't know. But do it, even if you have to make it up out of your own head. Consider the festive water-beetle, and the ant and other industrious doodle-bugs. Get a wiggle on you, fellows. We'll never get out at this rate. If this drive gets hung up, I'm going to murder every last one of you. Come on now, all together; if I could walk out on those logs I'd build a fire under you; but you've got me tied to the bank and you know it, you big fat loafers, you!"
"Keep your hair on, bub; we'll make it, all right"
"Well, we'd just better make it," warned Bob. "Now I'm going down to the jam to see whether their alarm clock went off this morning.—Now, don't slumber!"
After he had disappeared down the trail, Welton stepped into view.
"Oh, Charley!" he called.
One of the rivermen sprang ashore.
"When did the rear leave Murdock's?" he asked without preliminary.
"Thursday."
"You've made good time."
"Bet we have," replied Charley with pride.
"Who's jam boss?"
"Larsen."
"Who's in charge of the river, then?" demanded Welton sharply.
"Why, young Orde!" replied the riverman, surprised.
"Since when?"
"Since he blew up Murdock's piles."
"Oh, he did that, did he? I suppose he fired Darrell, too?"
"Sure. It was a peach of a scrap."
"Scrap?"
"Yep. That Orde boy is a wonder. He justruinedRoaring Dick."
"He did, did he?" commented Welton. "Well, so long."
He followed Bob down the river trail. At the end of a half-mile he overtook the young fellow kneeling on a point gazing at a peeled stake planted at the edge of the river.
"Wish I knew how long this water was going to hold out," he murmured, as he heard a man pause behind him. "She's dropped two inches by my patent self-adjusting gauge."
"Young man," said Welton, "are you on the payrolls of this company?"
Bob turned around, then instantly came to his feet.
"Oh, you're here at last, Mr. Welton," he cried in tones of vast relief.
"Answer my question, please."
"What?" asked Bob with an expression of bewilderment.
"Are you on the payrolls of this company?"
"No, sir, of course not. You know that."
"Then what are you doing in charge of this river?"
"Why, don't you see—"
"I see you've destroyed property and let us in for a big damage suit. I see you've discharged our employees without authority to do so. I see you're bossing my men and running my drive without the shadow of a right."
"But something had to be done," expostulated Bob.
"What do you know about river-driving?" broke in Welton. "Not a thing."
"Men who told me did—"
"A bunch of river-hogs," broke in Welton contemptuously. "It strikes me, young man, that you have the most colossal cheek I've ever heard of."
But Bob faced him squarely.
"Look here," he said decidedly, "I'm technically wrong, and I know it. But good men told me your measly old drive would hang if it stayed there two days longer; and I believed them, and I believe them yet. I don't claim to know anything about river-driving, but here your confounded drive is well on its way. I kicked that drunk off the river because he was no good. I took hold here to help you out of a hole, and you're out."
"But," said Welton, carefully, "don't you see that you took chances on losing me a lot of property?"
Bob looked up at him a moment wearily.
"From my point of view I have nothing to regret," said he stiffly, and turned away.
The humorous lines about Welton's eyes had been deepening throughout this interview.
"That tops it off," said he. "First you get me into trouble; then you fire my head man; then you run off with my property; finally you tell me to go to hell! Son, you are a great man! Shake!"
Bob whirled in surprise to search Welton's good-natured jolly face. The latter was smiling.
"Shake," he repeated, relapsing, as was his habit when much in earnest, into his more careless speech; "you done just right. Son, remember this:—it's true—it ain'tdoingthings that makes a man so much asdecidingthings."
One of his great chuckles bubbled up.
"It took some nerve to jump in the way you did; and some sand to handle the flea-bitten bunch of river-hogs----"
"You're mistaken about them," Bob broke in earnestly. "They've been maligned. They're as good and willing a squad as I ever want to see----"
"Oh, sure," laughed Welton; "they're a nice little job lot of tin angels. However, don't worry. You sure saved the day, for I believe we would have hung if we hadn't got over the riffles before this last drop of the water."
He began to laugh, at first, gently, then more and more heartily, until Bob stared at him with considerable curiosity and inquiry. Welton caught his look.
"I was just thinking of Harvey and Collins," he remarked enigmatically as he wiped his eyes. "Oh, Bobby, my son, you sure do please me. Only I was afraid for a minute it might be a flash in the pan and you weren't going to tell me to go to hell."
They turned back toward the rear.
"By the way," Welton remarked, "you made one bad break just now."
"What was that?" asked Bob.
"You told me you were not on the payrolls of this company. You are."