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It'd look sociable, wouldn't it?" "There'll be a volley and the whistle, Phil if you have to go," said Mr. Devlin. There was a silence, then the reply came musingly: "I guess I hev to go. . . . I'd hev liked to see the corporation runnin' longer, but maybe I can trust the boys." A river-driver at the door said in a deep voice: "By the holy! yes, you can trust us."
The blow that had brought down the Master Man had also struck the town between the eyes, and there was no one friend or foe of Ingolby who did not regard it as an insult and a challenge. It was now known that the roughs of Manitou, led by the big river-driver, were about to start on a raid upon Lebanon and upon Ingolby at the very moment the horseshoe did its work.
The blow that had brought down the Master Man had also struck the town between the eyes, and there was no one friend or foe of Ingolby who did not regard it as an insult and a challenge. It was now known that the roughs of Manitou, led by the big river-driver, were about to start on a raid upon Lebanon and upon Ingolby at the very moment the horseshoe did its work.
"How mysterious!" said Mrs. Falchion. "What does it mean? I never saw anything like that before. What a wonderful thing!" Roscoe explained. "Up there in that hut," he said, "there lives a man called Phil Boldrick. He is a unique fellow, with a strange history. He has been miner, sailor, woodsman, river-driver, trapper, salmon-fisher; expert at the duties of each of these, persistent at none.
They were low-browed, sturdy men, dressed in red or blue serge shirts, some with sashes around their waists, some with ear-rings in their ears, some in knee-boots, and some with the heavy spiked boots of the river-driver. None appeared to carry any weapon that would shoot, yet in their belts was the sheath- knife, the invariable equipment of their class.
The other stroked his beard with hands which, somehow, gave little indication of age, and then, with a sudden jerk forward of his head, he said: "Oh, it's like that, eh? Is that what M'sieu' Marchand told you? That's what he said, is it?" The big river-driver, eager to maintain his supreme place as leader, lunged forward a step, and growled a challenge. "Who said it?
"Why do I drink, do you say?" he added, as Suzon placed the bottle and glass before him. She was silent for an instant, then she said gravely: "Perhaps because you like it; perhaps because something was left out of you when you were made, and " She paused and went no further, for a red-shirted river-driver with brass rings in his ears came close to them, and called gruffly for whiskey.
The red-shirted river-driver from Manitou and the lawyer's clerk from Lebanon; the Presbyterian minister and a Christian brother of the Catholic school; a Salvation Army captain and a black-headed Catholic shantyman; the President of the Order of Good Templars and a switchman member of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament slaved together on the hand-engine, to supplement the work of the two splendid engines of the Lebanon fire-brigade; or else they climbed the roofs of houses, side by side, to throw on the burning shingles the buckets of water handed up to them.
He can run reckless on the logs like a river-driver; he can break a jam like an expert. He's not afraid of man, or log, or devil. That's his training. He got that training from John Grier's firm under another name. I used to know him by reputation long before he took my place in the business my place and yours.
The river-driver chose to spend his idle hours in crude, rough sprightliness; the salmon-fisher loved to lie upon the shore and listen to the village story-teller, almost official when successful, who played upon the credulity and imagination of his listeners. The river- driver loved excitement for its own sake, and behind his boisterousness there was little evil.
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