United States or Bolivia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Of course he had nerve, and could do anything with a log and a peavy, and would fight at the drop of a hat any "bully boy" would qualify there but also he had judgment. He knew how to use the water, how to recognise the key log of jams, where to place his men in short, he could get out the logs.
There he stood on some prominent point, leaning his chin contemplatively against the thick shaft of his peavy, watching the endless procession of the logs drifting by. Apparently he was idle, but in reality his eyes missed no shift of the ordered ranks. When a slight hitch or pause, a subtle change in the pattern of the brown carpet caught his attention, he sprang into life.
"Colonel Peavy," acknowledged the chairman. "Mr. Chairman," shouted young Mason, "I have the floor. I deny the right of your recognition of another member while I'm speaking." "Mr. Chairman, I rise to a point of information," said the Colonel. "State your point, Colonel." "I would like to ask this young gentleman who holds the floor how many votes he has cast in his whole life."
Every once in a while he stopped to utter a few low-voiced words to one or another of the men. The person addressed first looked extremely astonished; then shouldered his peavy and started for camp, leaving the diminished rear a prey to curiosity. Soon the word went about.
He was usually at work at something and only half listened while the Judge wandered on, his heels in the air, his cheek full of tobacco. Old Colonel Peavy dropped in occasionally, and Dr. Carver, and then the air was full of good, old-time Democratic phrases. At such times the Judge even went so far as to quote Calhoun. "As a matter of fact, Calhoun was on the right track.
But Orde had seized a peavy, and stood over against his antagonist, the murderous weapon upraised. "Lie down, you hound, or I'll brain you!" he roared at the top strength of his great voice. "Want fight, do you? Well, you won't have to wait till the sheriff gets here! You make a move!"
Following this intimation, Colonel Peavy presented a slate, wherein all the leading places on the ticket had been given "to the men who stood so long for the principles of Jackson and Jefferson. It was fitting that these men should be honored for their heroic waiting outside the gates of emolument." Young Mason was on his feet in an instant. "Mr. Chairman," he said, penetratingly. "Mr. Mason."
They took this latter and longest trail, always, in order more closely to examine the state of the drive. As they proceeded upstream they came upon more and more logs, some floating free, more stranded gently along the banks. After a time they encountered the first of the driving crew. This man was standing on an extreme point, leaning on his peavy, watching the timbers float past.
Although the thing consumed smoke surprisingly well, it likewise unharnessed such an amazing army of heat-units that it melted the crown-sheet of the boiler; whereupon the sawmill men, being singularly coarse and unimaginative fellows, set upon the patentee and his partner with ash-rakes, draw-bars, and other ordinary, unpatented implements; a lumberjack beat hollowly upon their ribs with a peavy, and that night young Anderson sickened of smoke-consumers, harked anew to the call of journalism, and hiked, arriving in Buffalo with seven dollars and fifty cents to the good.
Balancing his peavy across his body, he made his way by short dashes to the point of threatened congestion. There, working vigorously, swept down stream with the mass, he pulled, hauled, and heaved, forcing the heavy, reluctant timbers from the cohesion that threatened trouble later. Oblivious to his surroundings, he wrenched and pried desperately. The banks of the river drifted by.
Word Of The Day