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Updated: June 24, 2025
Of how Jack Boyd has been known to float twenty miles without shifting his feet, on a log so small that he carried it to the water on his shoulder; of how a dozen rivermen, one after the other, would often go through the chute of a dam standing upright on single logs; of O'Donnell, who could turn a somersault on a floating pine log; of the birling matches, wherein two men on a single log try to throw each other into the river by treading, squirrel fashion, in faster and faster rotation; of how a riverman and spiked boots and a saw-log can do more work than an ordinary man with a rowboat.
And this he had been for years while working among the Canadian rivermen, among the lumbermen of Maine, sharing their lives, their toil, their joys and sorrows, the common inheritance of the Human.
Shoal and eddy, swirl and silent pool, yielded good sport and harvest, as haunts of bass and salmon were entered and passed, until the inviting mouth of Little Sandy Creek suggested rest for the boatmen and a stroll for the fishers. A neat hotel, clean and well kept for so wild a region, harbors lumbermen, rivermen, and those who love the rod and gun.
And so, out of sight around the lower bend swept the front of the jam in a swirl of glory, the rivermen riding the great boom back of the creature they subdued, until at last, with the slackening current, the logs floated by free, cannoning with hollow sound one against the other. A half-dozen watchers, leaning statuesquely on the shafts of their peavies, watched the ordered ranks pass by.
And when Hell's Half-Mile was thus in full eruption, the citizens of Redding stayed away from Water Street after dark. "Drive's in," said they, and had business elsewhere. And the next group of rivermen, hurrying toward the fun, broke into an eager dog-trot. "Taking the old town apart to-night," they told each other. "Let's get in the game." To-night, however, the street was comparatively quiet.
"What do you suppose had become of him?" said Ham to Carl, in considerable alarm. "I am sure I don't know, and Bamling says he doesn't know either," was the answer. Ham Spink made numerous inquiries and soon learned from some rivermen that Kiddy Leech had yielded to his weakness for strong liquor and gone off on a spree. "We are out our money," he said to Carl Rudder, in disgust.
A murmur of voices rose over the water, and then the murmur was broken by howls and shouts as the rivermen ran to their places at the command of St. Pierre's voice, and as the sweeps began to flash in the setting sun, it gave way entirely to the evening chant of the Paddling Song.
This matter was not so serious, however, as later, when the woods camps should break up, he would be able to pick up more workmen. "They won't be rivermen like my old crew, though," said Orde regretfully to Tom North, the walking boss. "I'd like to steal a few from some of those Muskegon outfits." Until the logs should be well adrift, Orde had resolved to boss the rear crew himself.
When the logs began to cave under them so rapidly that even the expert rivermen found difficulty in "staying on top," the foreman set the example of hunting safety. "She 'pulls, boys," he yelled.
"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.
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