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From several doorways Orde's little compact group was accosted by the burly saloonkeepers. "Hullo, boys!" said they invariably, "glad to see you back. Come in and have a drink on me." Well these men knew that one free drink would mean a dozen paid for. But the rivermen merely shook their heads. "Huh!" sneered one of the girls. "Them's no river-jacks! Them's just off the hay trail, I bet!"
Only at the very last, when it would seem that some of them must surely he caught, did the river-jacks, using their peavy-shafts as balancing poles, zigzag calmly to shore across the plunging logs. Newmark seemed impressed. "That was a close shave," said he to the last man ashore. "What?" inquired the riverman. "Didn't see it. Somebody fall down?"
For one thing, he had come up to see if the smith had tempered some boring tools; and then he must send the Metis river-jacks to float a raft of props down to the mine. Pulling himself together, he set about the work with characteristic energy, but as he walked through the murmuring woods he unconsciously began to sing a romantic ballad he had learned when a boy.
All round, in marked contrast to the utilitarian ugliness below, dark pines ran up to the glittering snowfields on the shoulders of the peaks. Foster went to a big new hotel, which he found dirty and too hot. Its bare walls were cracked and exuded resin; black drops from the central heater pipes stained the rotunda floor, which was torn by the spikes on the river-Jacks' boots.
Most of them had followed rough and dangerous occupations in the bush; but they were not professional river-Jacks trained to high proficiency in log-driving, and one of them, turning, shouted to the watchers on the bank. "This jam's not solid!" he explained above the roar of the water. "She's working open and shutting; and you can't tell where the breaks are." Vane swung round toward Carroll.
"I think I'd have done better if I'd stuck to my rags, or else bought a pair of what that fellow called river-Jacks' boots," he commented ruefully. Lisle was similarly attired, but he was too busy with his meal to sympathize with him, and some time after it was over Nasmyth, strolling into the private room which they had obtained as a signal concession, found him writing at a littered table.
"I'd like to see any sheriff take us to jail, unless he had an army with him," growled one of the river-jacks. "Has he a posse?" inquired Orde of Newmark. "I didn't see any; but I understood in the village that the governor had been advised to hold State troops in readiness for trouble." Orde fell into a brown study, eating mechanically.
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