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The mob moved again towards the bar. The big river-driver turned on the grizzled old man beside the bar- counter with bent shoulders and lazy, drawling speech. "What've you got to say about it, son?" he asked threateningly. "Well, to ask a few questions first that's all," the old man replied. "You don't belong here, old cock," the other said roughly.
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.
What was in his mind was also passing through that of the river-driver and a few of his friends, and they carefully watched the route he was taking. Jean Jacques prepared to depart. He had ever loved to be the centre of a picture, but here was a time when to be in the centre was torture.
"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.
Work means money, money means bread, bread means life so." The big river-driver, seeing the effect of the old man's words upon the crowd, turned to them with an angry gesture and a sneer. "I s'pose Ingolby has paid this old skeesicks for talking this swash. We know all right what Ingolby is, and what he's done.
And there, wedged in the narrow channel, hurled together into fantastic shapes and augmented each moment by the oncoming logs which struck the heap with a resounding boom, was piled a wild jumbled mass of timber! Like most of the early settlers of Glenoro, Duncan was an experienced river-driver, and instantly realised the gravity of the situation.
"He's a friend of the Monseigneur," ventured a factory-hand, who had a wife and children to support, and however partisan, was little ready for that which would stop his supplies. "Sacre bapteme! That's part of his game," roared the big river-driver in reply. "I'll take the word of Felix Marchand about that. Look at him! That Felix Marchand doesn't try to take the bread out of people's mouths.
Osterhaut and Jowett became silent, too, and, like the Indians, ran as fast as they could, over fences, through the trees, stumbling and occasionally cursing, but watching with fascinated eyes this adventuress of the North, taking chances which not one coureur-de-bois or river-driver in a thousand would take, with a five thousand-dollar prize as the lure. Why should she do it?
"And give hell to Ingolby," shouted some one in the crowd. "Suppose Ingolby isn't there?" questioned the old man. "Oh, that's one of your questions, is it?" sneered the big river-driver. "Well, if you knew him as we do, you'd know that it's at night-time he sits studyin' how he'll cut Lebanon's throat. He's home, all right. He's in Lebanon anyhow, and we'll find him."
"A good many of us don't belong here," the old man replied quietly. "It always is so. This isn't the first time I've been to Manitou. You're a river-driver, and you don't live here either," he continued. "What've you got to say about it? I've been coming and going here for ten years. I belong bagosh, what do you want to ask? Hurry up. We've got work to do. We're going to raise hell in Lebanon."
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