bigger the pressure the tighter she locks,” replied Orde, lighting his pipe.
The high bank where the men sat lay well above the reach of the water. Not so the flat on which stood Reed's mill. In order to take full advantage of the water-power developed by the dam, the old man had caused his structure to be built nearly at a level with the stream. Now the river, backing up, rapidly overflowed this flat. As the jam tightened by its own weight and the accumulation of logs, the water fairly jumped from the lowest floor of the mill to the one above.
Orde had not long to wait for Reed's appearance. In less than five minutes the old man descended on the group, somewhat of his martial air abated, and something of a vague anxiety manifest in his eye.
“What's the matter here?” he demanded.
“Matter?” inquired Orde easily. “Oh, nothing much, just a little jam.”
“But it's flooding my mill!”
“So I perceive,” replied Orde, striking a match.
“Well, why don't you break it?”
“Not interested.”
The old warrior ran up the bank to where he could get a good view of his property. The water was pouring into the first-floor windows.
“Here!” he cried, running back. “I've a lot of grain up-stairs. It'll be ruined!”
“Not interested,” repeated Orde.
Reed was rapidly losing control of himself.
“But I've got a lot of money invested here!” he shouted. “You miserable blackguard, you're ruining me!”
Orde replaced his pipe.
Reed ran back and forth frantically, disappeared, returned bearing an antiquated pike-pole, and single-handed and alone attacked the jam!
Astonishment and delight held the rivermen breathless for a moment. Then a roar of laughter drowned even the noise of the waters. Men pounded each other on the back, rolled over and over, clutching handfuls of earth, struggled weak and red-faced for breath as they saw against the sky-line of the bristling jam the lank, flapping figure with the old plug hat pushing frantically against the immovable statics of a mighty power. The exasperation of delay, the anxiety lest success be lost through the mulish and narrow-minded obstinacy of one man, the resentment against another obstacle not to be foreseen and not to be expected in a task redundantly supplied with obstacles of its own—these found relief at last.
“By Jove!” breathed Newmark softly to himself. “Don Quixote and the windmills!” Then he added vindictively, “The old fool!” although, of course, the drive was not his personal concern.
Only Orde seemed to see the other side. And on Orde the responsibility, uncertainty, and vexation had borne most heavily, for the success of the undertaking was in his hands. With a few quick leaps he had gained the old man's side.
“Look here, Reed,” he said kindly, “you can't break this jam. Come ashore now, and let up. You'll kill yourself.”
Reed turned to him, a wild light in his eye.
“Break it!” he pleaded. “You're ruining me. I've got all my money in that mill.”
“Well,” said Orde, “we've got a lot of money in our logs too. You haven't treated us quite right.”
Reed glanced frantically toward the flood up stream.
“Come,” said Orde, taking him gently by the arm. “There's no reason you and I shouldn't get along together all right. Maybe we're both a little hard-headed. Let's talk it over.”
He led the old man ashore, and out of earshot of the rivermen.
At the end of ten minutes he returned.
“War's over, boys!” he shouted cheerfully. “Get in and break that jam.”
At once the crew swarmed across the log barrier to a point above the centre pier. This they attacked with their peavies, rolling the top logs off into the current below. In less than no time they had torn out quite a hole in the top layer. The river rushed through the opening. Immediately the logs in the wings were tumbled in from either side. At first the men had to do all of the work, but soon the river itself turned to their assistance. Timbers creaked and settled, or rose slightly buoyant as the water loosened the tangle. Men trod on the edge of expectation. Constantly the logs shifted, and as constantly the men shifted also, avoiding the upheavals and grindings together, wary eyes estimating the correlation of the forces into whose crushing reach a single misstep would bring them. The movement accelerated each instant, as the music of the play hastens to the climax. Wood fibres smashed. The whole mass seemed to sink down and forward into a boiling of waters. Then, with a creak and a groan, the jam moved, hesitated, moved again; finally, urged by the frantic river, went out in a majestic crashing and battering of logs.
At the first movement Newmark expected the rivermen to make their escape. Instead, they stood at attention, their peavies poised, watching cat-eyed the symptoms of the break. Twice or thrice several of the men, observing something not evident to Newmark's unpractised eye, ran forward, used their peavies vigorously for a moment or so, and stood back to watch the result. Only at the very last, when it would seem that some of them must surely he caught, did the river-jacks, using their peavy-shafts as balancing poles, zigzag calmly to shore across the plunging logs. Newmark seemed impressed.
“That was a close shave,” said he to the last man ashore.
“What?” inquired the riverman. “Didn't see it. Somebody fall down?”
“Why, no,” explained Newmark; “getting in off those logs without getting caught.”
“Oh!” said the man indifferently, turning away.
The going out of the jam drained the water from the lower floors of the mill; the upper stories and the grain were still safe.
By evening the sluice-gate had been roughly provided with pole guides down which to slide to the bed of the river. The following morning saw the work going on as methodically as ever. During the night a very good head of water had gathered behind the lowered gate. The rear crew brought down the afterguard of logs to the pond. The sluicers with their long pike-poles thrust the logs into the chute. The jam crew, scattered for many miles along the lower stretches, kept the drive going; running out over the surface of the river like water-bugs to thrust apart logs threatening to lock; leaning for hours on the shafts of their peavies watching contemplatively the orderly ranks as they drifted by, sleepy, on the bosom of the river; occasionally gathering, as the filling of the river gave warning, to break a jam. By the end of the second day the pond was clear, and as Charlie's wanigan was drifting toward the chute, the first of Johnson's drive floated into the head of the pond.
V
Charlie's wanigan, in case you do not happen to know what such a thing may be, was a scow about twenty feet long by ten wide. It was very solidly constructed of hewn timbers, square at both ends, was inconceivably clumsy, and weighed an unbelievable number of pounds. When loaded, it carried all the bed-rolls, tents, provisions, cooking utensils, tools, and a chest of tobacco, clothes, and other minor supplies. It was managed by Charlie and his two cookees by means of pike-poles and a long sweep at either end. The pike-poles assured progress when the current slacked; the sweeps kept her head-on when drifting with the stream.
Charlie's temperament was pessimistic at best. When the wanigan was to be moved, he rose fairly to the heights of what might be called destructive prophecy.
The packing began before the men had finished breakfast. Shortly after daylight the wanigan, pushed strongly from shore by the pike-poles, was drifting toward the chute. When the heavy scow threatened