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The Riverman
by
The breast, as my landlord had told me, rose sheer from the water to the height of at least twenty-five feet, bristling and formidable. Back of it pressed the volume of logs packed closely in an apparently inextricable tangle as far as the eye could reach. A man near informed me that the tail was a good three miles up stream. From beneath this wonderful chevaux de frise foamed the current of the river, irresistible to any force less mighty than the statics of such a mass.
A crew of forty or fifty men were at work. They clamped their peavies to the reluctant timbers, heaved, pushed, slid, and rolled them one by one into the current, where they were caught and borne away. They had been doing this for a week. As yet their efforts had made but slight impression on the bulk of the jam, but some time, with patience, they would reach the key-logs. Then the tangle would melt like sugar in the freshet, and these imperturbable workers would have to escape suddenly over the plunging logs to shore.
My eye ranged over the men, and finally rested on Dickey Darrell. He was standing on the slanting end of an upheaved log dominating the scene. His little triangular face with the accents of the quadrilateral eyebrows was pale with the blaze of his energy, and his chipmunk eyes seemed to flame with a dynamic vehemence that caused those on whom their glance fell to jump as though they had been touched with a hot poker. I had heard more of Dickey Darrell since my last visit, and was glad of the chance to observe Morrison & Daly’s best “driver” at work.
The jam seemed on the very edge of breaking. After half an hour’s strained expectation it seemed still on the very edge of breaking. So I sat down on a stump. Then for the first time I noticed another acquaintance, handling his peavie near the very person of the rear boss.
“Hullo,” said I to myself, “that’s funny. I wonder if Jimmy Powers got even; and if so, why he is working so amicably and so near Roaring Dick.”
At noon the men came ashore for dinner. I paid a quarter into the cook’s private exchequer and so was fed. After the meal I approached my acquaintance of the year before.
“Hello, Powers,” I greeted him, “I suppose you don’t remember me?”
“Sure,” he responded heartily. “Ain’t you a little early this year?”
“No,” I disclaimed, “this is a better sight than a birling match.”
I offered him a cigar, which he immediately substituted for his corn-cob pipe. We sat at the root of a tree.
“It’ll be a great sight when that jam pulls,” said I.
“You bet,” he replied, “but she’s a teaser. Even old Tim Shearer would have a picnic to make out just where the key-logs are. We’ve started her three times, but she’s plugged tight every trip. Likely to pull almost any time.”
We discussed various topics. Finally I ventured:
“I see your old friend Darrell is rear boss.”
“Yes,” said Jimmy Powers, dryly.
“By the way, did you fellows ever square up on that birling match?”
“No,” said Jimmy Powers; then after an instant, “Not yet.”
I glanced at him to recognise the square set to the jaw that had impressed me so formidably the year before. And again his face relaxed almost quizzically as he caught sight of mine.
“Bub,” said he, getting to his feet, “those little marks are on my foot yet. And just you tie into one idea: Dickey Darrell’s got it coming.” His face darkened with a swift anger. “God damn his soul!” he said, deliberately. It was no mere profanity. It was an imprecation, and in its very deliberation I glimpsed the flare of an undying hate.
About three o’clock that afternoon Jimmy’s prediction was fulfilled. Without the slightest warning the jam “pulled.” Usually certain premonitory cracks, certain sinkings down, groanings forward, grumblings, shruggings, and sullen, reluctant shiftings of the logs give opportunity for the men to assure their safety. This jam, after inexplicably hanging fire for a week, as inexplicably started like a sprinter almost into its full gait. The first few tiers toppled smash into the current, raising a waterspout like that made by a dynamite explosion; the mass behind plunged forward blindly, rising and falling as the integral logs were up-ended, turned over, thrust to one side, or forced bodily into the air by the mighty power playing jack-straws with them.