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"If that crew's been sent in there, it means only one thing at that end of the line," said Orde. "Sure. They're sent up to waste out the water in the reservoir and hang this end of the drive," replied Denning. "Correct," said Orde. "The old skunk knows his own rollways are so far down stream that he's safe, flood water or no flood water." A pause ensued, during which the two smoked vigorously.
"How do you know he didn't hire them to carry down his drive for him? He'd need sixty men for his lower rollways, and maybe they weren't all to go to headwaters?" asked Orde by way of testing Charlie's beliefs. "He's payin' them four dollars a day," replied Charlie simply. "Now, who'd pay that fer just river work?" Orde nodded at Jim Denning. "Hold on, Charlie," said he.
Each had clung to his peavey, as is the habit of rivermen. Down the current past their feet swept the debris of flood. Soon logs began to swirl by, at first few, then many from the remaining rollways which the river had automatically broken. In a little time the eddy caught up some of these logs, and immediately the inception of another jam threatened.
The Rough Red had charge of the banking, where his aggressive, brutal personality kept the rollways free from congestion. For congestion there means delay in unloading the sleighs; and that in turn means a drag in the woods work near the skidways at the other end of the line. Tom North and Tim Nolan and Johnny Sims and Jim Denning were foremen back in the forest.
Then they broke the jam, standing surely on the edge of the great darkness, while the ice water sucked in and out of their shoes. Behind the rear Big Junko poled his bateau backwards and forwards exploding dynamite. Many of the bottom tiers of logs in the rollways had been frozen down, and Big Junko had to loosen them from the bed of the stream.
In a few moments the danger was averted, the logs ran free. The rivermen thereupon made their uncertain way back to shore, where they took the river trail up stream again to their respective posts. At noon they ate lunches they had brought with them in little canvas bags, snatched before they left the rollways from a supply handy by the cook.
You know it's impossible. We've got millions of feet on our rollways. It'll doze and spoil if we don't get it out." "That's your lookout." "What do you want?" "Nothing." "It's some kind of a hold-up. What'll you take for that farm?" "Not for sale." "What will it cost us to haul across you?" "You can't haul across. Not for money, marbles, or chalk. Use the road."
On the night of the 8th of April the cut was complete, and on the morning of the 9th ten million feet of logs towered on the rollways along the river, ready for the breaking up of the ice.
He had ridden logs down the rapids where a loss of balance meant in one instant a ducking and in the next a blow on the back from some following battering-ram; he had tugged and strained and jerked with his peavey under a sheer wall of tangled timber twenty feet high, behind which pressed the full power of the freshet, only to jump with the agility of a cat from one bit of unstable footing to another when the first sharp CRACK warned him that he had done his work, and that the whole mass was about to break down on him like a wave on the shore; he had worked fourteen hours a day in ice-water, and had slept damp; he had pried at the key log in the rollways on the bank until the whole pile had begun to rattle down into the river like a cascade, and had jumped, or ridden, or even dived out of danger at the last second.
Already the ice cementing the logs together had begun to weaken. The ice had wrenched and tugged savagely at the locked timbers until they had, with a mighty effort, snapped asunder the bonds of their hibernation. Now a narrow lane of black rushing water pierced the rollways, to boil and eddy in the consequent jam three miles below.
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