Blazed Trail Stories, and Stories of the Wild Life

by Stewart Edward White

  IV

  THE RIVER-BOSS

  "Obey orders if you break owners" is a good rule, but a really efficientriver-boss knows a better. It runs, "Get the logs out. Get them outpeaceably if you can, but _get them out_." He does not need afield-telephone to headquarters to teach him how to live up to thespirit of this rule. That might involve headquarters.

  Jimmy was such a river-boss. Therefore when Mr. Daly, of the firm ofMorrison & Daly, unexpectedly contracted to deliver five million feet oflogs on a certain date, and the logs an impossible number of miles upriver, he called in Jimmy.

  Jimmy was a small man, changeless as the Egyptian sphinx. A number ofyears ago a French comic journal published a series of sketches supposedto represent the Shah of Persia influenced by various emotions. Undereach was an appropriate caption, such as Surprise, Grief, Anger, orAstonishment. The portraits were identically alike, and uniformlyimpassive.

  Well, that was Jimmy. He looked always the same. His hair, thick andblack, grew low on his forehead; his beard, thick and black, mountedover the ridge of his cheek-bones; and his eyebrows, thick and black,extended in an uninterrupted straight line from one temple to the other.Whatever his small, compact, muscular body might be doing, the mask ofhis black and white imperturbability remained always unchanged.Generally he sat clasping one knee, staring directly in front of him,and puffing regularly on a "meerschaum" pipe he had earned by saving thetags of Spearhead tobacco. Whatever you said to him sank without splashinto this almost primal calm and was lost to your view forever. Perhapsafter a time he might do something about it, but always withoutexplanation, calmly, with the lofty inevitability of fate. In fact, henever explained himself, even to his employers.

  Daly swung his bulk back and forth in the office chair. Jimmy sat boltupright, his black hat pendant between his knees.

  "I want you to take charge of the driving crew, Jimmy," said the bigman; "I want you to drive those logs down to our booms as fast as youcan. I give you about twenty days. It ought to be done in that. Sanderswill keep time for you, and Merrill will cook. You can get a pretty goodcrew from the East Branch, where the drive is just over."

  When Daly had quite finished his remarks, Jimmy got up and went outwithout a word. Two days later he and sixty men were breaking rollwaysforty-five miles up-stream.

  Jimmy knew as well as Daly that the latter had given him a hard task.Twenty days was too brief a time. However, that was none of hisbusiness.

  The logs, during the winter, had been piled in the bed of the stream.They extended over three miles of rollways. Jimmy and his crew began atthe down-stream end to tumble the big piles into the current. Sometimesonly two or three logs would rattle down; at others the whole deck wouldbulge outward, hover for a moment, and roar into the stream like grainfrom an elevator. Shortly the narrows below the rollways jammed. Twelvemen were detailed as the jam crew. Their business was to keep the streamfree in order that the constantly increasing supply from the rollwaysmight not fill up the river. It was not an easy business, nor a verysafe. As the "jam" strung out over more and more of the river, the jamcrew was constantly recruited from the men on the rollways. Thus some ofthe logs, a very few, the luckiest, drifted into the dam pond at GrandRapids within a few days; the bulk jammed and broke and jammed again ata point a few miles below the rollways, while a large proportionstranded, plugged, caught, and tangled at the very rollways themselves.

  Jimmy had permitted himself two days in which to "break out" therollways. It was done in two. Then the "rear" was started. Men in therear crew had to see that every last log got into the current. When ajam broke, the middle of it shot down-stream in a most spectacularfashion, but along the banks "winged out" most distressingly. Sometimesthe heavy sticks of timber had been forced right out on the dry land.The rear crew lifted them back. When an obstinate log grounded, theyjumped cheerfully into the water--with the rotten ice swirling aroundthem--and pried the thing off bottom. Between times they stood uprighton single, unstable logs and pushed mightily with poles, while theice-water sucked in and out of their spiked river shoes.

  As for the compensations, naturally there was a good deal of rivalrybetween the men on the right and left banks of the river as to which"wing" should advance the fastest; and one experiences a certainphysical thrill in venturing under thirty feet of jammed logs for thesole purpose of teasing the whole mass to cascade down on one, or ofshooting a rapid while standing upright on a single timber. I believe,too, it is considered the height of glory to belong to a rear crew.Still, the water is cold and the hours long, and you have to sleep in atent.

  It can readily be seen that the progress of the "rear" measures theprogress of the drive. Some few logs in the "jam" may run fifty miles aday--and often do--but if the sacking has gone slowly at the rear, thedrive may not have gained more than a thousand yards. Therefore Jimmystayed at the rear.

  Jimmy was a mighty good riverman. Of course he had nerve, and could doanything with a log and a peavy, and would fight at the drop of ahat--any "bully boy" would qualify there--but also he had judgment. Heknew how to use the water, how to recognise the key log of jams, whereto place his men--in short, he could get out the logs. Now Jimmy alsoknew the river from one end to the other, so he had arranged in hismind a sort of schedule for the twenty days. Forty-eight hours for therollways; a day and a half to the upper rapids; three days into the dampond; one day to sluice the drive through the Grand Rapids dam; threedays for the Crossing; and so on. If everything went well, he could doit, but there must be no hitches in the programme.

  Even from this imperfect fragment of the schedule the inexperiencedmight imagine Jimmy had allowed an altogether disproportionate time tocover the mile or so from the rapids to the dam pond. As it turned,however, he found he had not allowed enough, for at this point the riverwas peculiar and very trying.

  The backwater of the dam extended up-stream a half mile; then occurred arise of four feet, down the slope of which the water whirled andtumbled, only to spread out over a broad fan of gravel shallows. Theseshallows did the business. When the logs had bumped through thetribulations of the rapids, they seemed to insist obstinately on restingin the shallows, like a lot of wearied cattle. The rear crew had to wadein. They heaved and pried and pushed industriously, and at the end of ithad the satisfaction of seeing a single log slide reluctantly into thecurrent. Sometimes a dozen of them would clamp their peavies on eitherside, and by sheer brute force carry the stick to deep water. When youreflect that there were some twenty thousand pieces in the drive, andthat a good fifty per cent. of them balked below the rapids, you can seethat a rear crew of thirty men had its work cut out for it. Jimmy'sthree days were three-fourths gone, and his job not more than a thirdfinished. McGann, the sluice boss, did a little figuring.

  "She'll hang over thim twinty days," he confided to Jimmy. "Shure!"

  Jimmy replied not a word, but puffed piston-like smoke from his pipe.McGann shrugged in Celtic despair.

  But the little man had been figuring, too, and his arrangements weremore elaborate and more nearly completed than McGann suspected. Thatvery morning he sauntered leisurely out over the rear logs, his hands inhis pockets. Every once in a while he stopped to utter a few low-voicedwords to one or another of the men. The person addressed first lookedextremely astonished; then shouldered his peavy and started for camp,leaving the diminished rear a prey to curiosity. Soon the word wentabout. "Day and night work," they whispered, though it was a littledifficult to see the difference in ultimate effectiveness between a halfcrew working all the time and a whole crew working half the time.

  About now Daly began to worry. He took the train to Grand Rapids,anxiety written deep in his brows. When he saw the little inadequatecrew pecking in a futile fashion at the logs winged out over theshallows, he swore fervidly and sought Jimmy.

  Jimmy appeared calm.

  "We'll get them out all right, Mr. Daly," said he.

  "Get them out!" growled Daly. "Sure! But when? We ain't _got_ all thesummer this seas
on. Those logs have got to hit our booms in fourteendays or they're no _good_ to us!"

  "You'll have 'em," assured Jimmy.

  Such talk made Daly tired, and he said so.

  "Why, it'll take you a week to get her over those confounded shallows,"he concluded. "You got to get more men, Jimmy."

  "I've tried," answered the boss. "They ain't no more men to be had."

  "Suffering Moses!" groaned the owner. "It means the loss of afifty-thousand-dollar contract to me. You needn't tell _me_! I've beenon the river all my life. I _know_ you can't get them off inside of aweek."

  "I'll have 'em off to-morrow morning, but it may cost a littlesomething," asserted Jimmy, calmly.

  Daly took one look at the mass of logs, and the fifteen men pulling outan average of one a minute. Then he returned in disgust to the city,where he began to adjust his ideas to a loss on his contract.

  At sundown the rear crew quit work, and swarmed to the encampment ofwhite tents on the river-bank. There they hung wet clothes over a bigskeleton framework built around a monster fire, and ate a dozen eggsapiece as a side dish to supper, and smoked pipes of strong "Peerless"tobacco, and swapped yarns, and sang songs, and asked questions. To thelatter they received no satisfactory replies. The crew that had beenlaid off knew nothing. It appeared they were to go to work after supper.After supper, however, Jimmy told them to turn in and get a little moresleep. They did turn in, and speedily forgot to puzzle.

  At midnight, however, Jimmy entered the big tent quietly with a lantern,touching each of the fresh men on the shoulder. They arose withoutcomment, and followed him outside. There they were given tools. Then thelittle band filed silently down river under the stars.

  Jimmy led them, his hands deep in his pockets, puffing whitesteam-clouds at regular intervals from his "meerschaum" pipe. Aftertwenty minutes they struck the Water Works, then the board-walk of CanalStreet. The word passed back for silence. Near the Oriole Factory theirleader suddenly dodged in behind the piles of sawed lumber, motioningthem to haste. A moment later a fat and dignified officer passed,swinging his club. After the policeman had gone, Jimmy again took up hismarch at the head of fifteen men, now thoroughly aroused to the factthat something unusual was afoot. Soon a faint roar lifted the nightsilence. They crossed a street, and a moment after stood at one end ofthe power-dam.

  The long smooth water shot over, like fluid steel, silent andinevitable, mirroring distorted flashes of light that were the stars.Below, it broke in white turmoil, shouting defiance at the calm velvetrush above. Ten seconds later the current was broken. A man, his heelscaught against the combing, up to his knees in water, was braced back atthe exact angle to withstand the rush. Two other men passed down to hima short heavy timber. A third, plunging his arms and shoulders into theliquid, nailed it home with heavy, inaudible strokes. As though by magica second timber braced the first, bolted through sockets already cut forit. The workers moved on eight feet, then another eight, then another.More men entered the water. A row of heavy, slanted supports grew outfrom the shoulder of the dam, dividing the waters into long,arrow-shaped furrows of light. At half-past twelve Tom Clute was sweptover the dam into the eddy. He swam ashore. Purdy took his place.

  When the supports had reached out over half of the river's span, and thewater was dotted with the shoulders of men gracefully slanted againstthe current, Jimmy gave orders to begin placing the flash-boards. Heavyplanks were at once slid across the supports, where the weight of theracing water at once clamped them fast. Spikes held the top board beyondthe possibility of a wrench loose. The smooth, quiet river, interruptedat last, murmured and snarled and eddied back, only to rush withincreased vehemence around the end of the rapidly growing obstruction.

  The policeman, passing back and forth on Canal Street, heard no soundof the labour going on. If he had been an observant policeman, he wouldhave noted an ever-changing tone in the volume of sound roaring up fromthe eddy below the dam. After a time even he remarked on a certainobvious phenomenon.

  "Sure!" said he; "now, that's funny!"

  He listened a moment, then passed on. The vagaries of the river were,after all, nothing to him. He belonged on Canal Street, east side; andCanal Street, east side, seemed peaceful.

  The river had fallen absolutely silent. The last of Jimmy's flash-boardswas in place. Back in the sleeping town the clock in Pierce's Towerstruck two.

  Jimmy and his men, having thus raised the level of the dam a good threefeet, emerged dripping from the west-side canal, and cheerfully tooktheir way northward to where, in the chilly dawn, their companions weresleeping the sleep of the just. As they passed the riffles they paused.A heavy grumbling issued from the logs jammed there, a grumbling brutishand sullen, as though the reluctant animals were beginning to stir. Thewater had already backed up from the raised dam.

  Of course the affair, from a river-driver's standpoint, at once becameexceedingly simple. The slumbering fifteen were aroused to astoundeddrowsiness. By three, just as the dawn was beginning to differentiatethe east from the west, the regular _clank, clank, clink_ of thepeavies proclaimed that due advantage of the high water was beingseized. From then until six was a matter of three hours more. A greatdeal can be accomplished in three hours with flood-water. The lastlittle jam "pulled" just about the time the first citizen of the westside discovered that his cellar was full of water. When that startledfreeman opened the front door to see what was up, he uttered atremendous ejaculation; and so, shortly, came to the construction of araft.

  Well, the papers got out an extra edition with scare-heads about"Outrages" and "High-handed Lawlessness!" and factory owners by thecanals raised up their voices in bitterness over flooded fire-rooms; andproperty owners of perishable cellar goods howled about damage suits;and the ordinary citizen took to bailing out the hollow places of hisdomain. Toward nine o'clock, after the first excitement had died, andthe flash-boards had been indignantly yanked from their illegal places,a squadron of police went out to hunt up the malefactor. The latterthey discovered on a boom-pole directing the sluicing. From thisposition he declined to stir. One fat policeman ventured a toppling yardor so on the floating timber, threw his hands aloft in loss ofequilibrium, and with a mighty effort regained the shore, where he satdown, panting. To the appeals of the squad to come and be arrested,Jimmy paid not the slightest heed. He puffed periodically on his"meerschaum" pipe, and directed the sluicing. Through the twenty-footgate about a million feet an hour passed. Thus it happened that a littleafter noon Jimmy came peaceably ashore and gave himself up.

  "You won't have no more trouble below," he observed to McGann, hislieutenant, watching reflectively the last logs shoot through the gate."Just tie right into her and keep her hustling." Then he refilled hispipe, lit it, and approached the expectant squad.

  At the station-house he was interviewed by reporters. That is, theyasked questions. To only one of them did they elicit a reply.

  "Didn't you know you were breaking the law?" inquired the _Eagle_ man."Didn't you know you'd be arrested?"

  "Sure!" replied Jimmy, with obvious contempt.

  The next morning the court-room was crowded. Jimmy pleaded guilty, andwas fined five hundred dollars or ninety days in jail. To the surpriseof everybody he fished out a tremendous roll and paid the fine. Thespectators considered it remarkable that a river-boss should carry suchan amount. They had not been present at the interview between Jimmy andhis principal the night before.

  The latter stood near the door as the little man came out.

  "Jimmy," said Mr. Daly, distinctly, so that everyone could hear, "I amextremely sorry to see you in this trouble; but perhaps it may prove alesson to you. Next time you must understand that you are not supposedto exceed your instructions."

  Thus did the wily Daly publicly disclaim his liability.

  "Yes, sir," said Jimmy, meekly. "Did you get the logs in time, Mr.Daly?"

  They looked at each other steadily. Then, for the first and only time,the black and white mask of Jimmy's inscrut
ability melted away. In hisleft eye appeared a faint glimmer. Then the left eyelid slowlydescended.