The Promise Page 25

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE LOG JAM

  The feel of spring filled the air; the sun swung higher and higher; andthe snow turned dark and lay soggy with water. With the increasingwarmth of the longer days, men's thoughts turned to the drive.

  They talked of water-front streets, with their calk-riddled planksidewalks and low-fronted bars; of squalid back wine-rooms, where for aweek they would be allowed to bask, sodden, in the smiles of thepainted women--then, drugged, beaten, and robbed, would wake up in afilthy alley and hunt up a job in the mills.

  It was all in a lifetime, this annual spring debauch. The men acceptedit as part of the ordered routine of their lives; accepted it withoutshame or regret, boasting and laughing unblushingly over pastepisodes--facing the future gladly and without disgust.

  "You mind Jake Sonto's place, where big Myrtle hangs out? They friskedJoe Manning fer sixty bucks last year. I seen 'em do it. What! Me? Iwas too sleepy to give a cuss--they got mine, too."

  And so the talk drifted among them. Revolting details of abysmalman-failings, brutal reminiscences of knock-out drops, robbery, andeven murder, furnished the themes for jest and gibe which drew forthroars of laughter.

  And none sought to avoid the inevitable; rather, they looked forward toit in brutish anticipation, accepting it as a matter of course.

  For so had lumber-jacks been drugged, beaten, and robbed since thefirst pine fell--and so will they continue to be drugged, beaten, androbbed until the last log is jerked, dripping, from the river and thelast white board is sawed.

  On the night of the 8th of April the cut was complete, and on themorning of the 9th ten million feet of logs towered on the rollwaysalong the river, ready for the breaking up of the ice.

  Stromberg had banked the bird's-eye to his own satisfaction, andMoncrossen selected his crew for the drive--white-water men, whoseboast it was that they never had walked a foot from the timber to themills; bateau men, who laughed in the face of death as they swarmedover a jam; key-log men, who scorned dynamite; bend watchers, whoseduty it is to stay awake through the long, warm days and prevent theformation of jams as the drive shoots by--each selected with an eye toprevious experience and physical fitness.

  For, among all occupations of men, log driving stands unique for itshardships of peril, discomfort, and bone-racking toil.

  From the breaking out of the rollways until the last log slips smoothlyinto its place in the boom-raft, no man's life is safe.

  Yet men fight for a place on the drive--for the privilege of beingsoaked to the bone for days at a time in ice-cold water; of beingcrushed to a pulp between grinding logs; of being drowned inwhite-water rapids, where a man must stand, his log moving at the speedof an express train, time and again shooting half out of water to meetthe spray of the next rock-tossed wave; of making hair-triggerdecisions, when an instant's hesitation means death, as his log rushesunder the low-hanging branches of a "sweeper."

  For pure love of adventure they fight--and that a few more dollars mayfind their way into the tills of the Jake Sontos of the water-frontdives. For among these men the baiting of death is the excitement oflife, and their pleasures are the savage pleasures of firstlings.

  Those who were not of the drive were handed their vouchers and hauledto Hilarity, while those who remained busied themselves in the packingand storing of gear; for, in the fall, the crew would return to renewthe attack on the timber.

  Followed, then, days of waiting.

  The two bateaux--the cook's bateau, with its camp stove and store ofsupplies; and the big bateau, with its thousand feet of inch and a halfmanila line coiled for instant use, whose thick, flaring sides andfloor of selected timber were built to override the shock and batteringof a thousand pitching logs--were carried to the bank ready forlaunching.

  The sodden snow settled heavily, and around the base of stumps and thetrunks of standing trees appeared rings of bare ground, while thecourse of the skidways and cross-hauls stood out sharp and black, likegreat veins in the clearing.

  Each sag and depression became a pond, and countless rills and rivuletsgurgled riverward, bank-full with sparkling snow-water.

  Over the frozen surface of the river it flowed and wore at theshore-bound ice-floor. And then, one night, the ice went out.

  Titanically it went, and noisily, with the crash and grind of brokencakes; and in the morning the river rushed black, and deep, andswollen, its roiled waters tearing sullenly at crumbling banks, whileupon its muddy surface heaved belated ice-cakes and uprooted trees.

  At daylight men crowded the bank, the bend watchers strung out and tookup their positions, and white-water men stood by with sharp axes tobreak out the rollways.

  The first rollway broke badly.

  A thick-butted log slanted and met the others head-on as they thundereddown the bank, tossing them high in the air whence they fell splashinginto the river, or crashed backward among the tumbling logs, upending,and hurling them about like jack-straws.

  The air was filled with the heavy rumble of rolling logs as otherrollways tore loose at the swift blows of the axes, where, at the crackof toggle-pins, men leaped from in front of the rolling, crushingdeath; and the surface of the river became black with bucking, pitchinglogs which shot to the opposite bank.

  Coincident with the snapping of the first toggle-pin, the branches of agigantic, storm-blasted pine, whose earth-laded butt dragged heavilyalong the bottom of the river, became firmly entangled in thelow-hanging limbs of a sweeper, and swung sluggishly across thecurrent.

  Against this obstruction crashed the leaping, upending logs of thewrecked rollway. Other logs swept in and wedged, forcing the heavy buttand the riven trunk of the huge tree firmly against the rocks at thehead of the rapid.

  Rollway after rollway tore loose and the released logs, swept downwardby the resistless push of the current, climbed one upon another andlodged. Higher and higher the jam towered, the interlocking logs pilingin hopeless tangle.

  Moncrossen was beside himself. Up and down the bank he rushed,bellowing orders and hurling curses at the men who, gripping theirpeaveys, swarmed over the heaving jam like flies.

  The bateau men, forty of them, lifted the heavy boat bodily, andworking it out to the very forefront of the jam, lowered it into thewater, while other men made the heavy cable fast to the trunk of atree. Close under the towering pile the bateau was snubbed with ashort, light line, and the men clambered shoreward, leaving onlyMoncrossen, Stromberg, Fallon, and one other to search for the key-log.

  It was a comparatively simple jam, the key to which was instantlyapparent to the experienced rivermen, in two large logs wedged in theform of an inverted V. The quick twist of a peavey inserted at thevertex of the angle, and the drive should move.

  Fallon and Stromberg, past masters both of the drive made ready whilethe other stood by to cast off the light line and allow the bateau toswing free on the main cable.

  Moncrossen clambered to the top to shout warning to those who swarmedover the body of the jam and along the edges of the river.

  At the first bellowed orders of the boss, Bill Carmody had leaped ontothe heaving jam and, following in the wake of others, began picking hisway to the opposite shore.

  New to the game, he had no definite idea of what was expected of him,so, with an eye upon those nearest him, he determined to follow theirexample.

  To watch from the bank and see men whose boast it is that they "c'dride a bubble if their calks wouldn't prick it," leap lightly from logto rolling log; hesitate, run its length, and leap to another as itsinks under them, nothing looks simpler.

  But the greener who confidently tries it for the first time instantlyfinds himself in a position uncomfortably precarious, if not actuallydangerous.

  Bill found, to his disgust, that the others had gained the oppositebank before he had reached the middle, where he paused, balancinguncertainly and hesitating whether to go ahead or return.

  The log upon which he stood oscillated dizzily, and as he sprang foran
other, his foot slipped and he fell heavily, his peavey clatteringdownward among the promiscuously tangled logs, to come to rest some sixfeet beneath him, where the white-water curled foaming among the logsof the lower tier.

  Bill glanced hastily about him, expecting the shouts of laughter andgood-natured chaffing which is the inevitable aftermath of the clumsymisadventure of a riverman. The bateau men were just gaining the shoreand the attention of the others was engaged elsewhere, so that nonenoticed the accident, and, with a grin of relief, Bill clambered downto recover his peavey.

  And Moncrossen, peering over the top of the jam, took in the situationat a glance--the river apparently clear of men, and the greener,invisible to those on shore, crawling about among the logs in thecenter of the pile.

  It was the moment for which he had waited. Even the most carefulplanning could not have created a situation more to his liking. At lastthe greener was "his."

  "There she goes!" he roared, and turning, slid hastily from the top andleaped into the waiting bateau.

  "Let 'er go!" he shouted.

  Fallon and Stromberg leaped forward and simultaneously their peaveysbit into the smaller of the two key-logs.

  Both big men heaved and strained, once, twice, thrice, and the logturned slowly, allowing the end of the other to pass.

  The logs trembled for an instant, then, forced by the enormous weightbehind them, shot sidewise, crossed each other, and pressed thetree-trunk deep under the boiling water.

  A mighty quiver ran through the whole mass of the jam, it balanced fora shuddering instant, then with a mighty rush, let go.

  Over the side of the bateau tumbled Fallon and Stromberg, sprawling onthe bottom at the feet of the boss, while the man in the bow cast offthe light line.

  The next instant the heavy boat leaped clear of the water, overriding,climbing to the very summit of the pounding, plunging logs whichthreatened each moment to crush and batter through her sides andbottom.

  The strong, new line was singing taut to the pull of the heavy bateauwhich was being gradually crowded shoreward by the sweep of thedown-rushing logs.

  Suddenly a mighty shout went up from those on the bank. The men in thebateau looked, and there, almost in the middle of the stream, was thegreener leaping from log to log of the wildly pitching jam.

  They stared horror-stricken, with tense, blanched faces. Each instantseemed as if it must be his last, for they knew that no man alive couldhope to keep his feet in the mad rush and sweep of the tumbling,tossing drive.

  Yet the greener was keeping his feet. Time and again he recovered hisbalance when death seemed imminent, and amid wild shouts and yells ofencouragement, climbing, leaping, running, stumbling, he worked his wayshoreward.

  He was almost opposite the bateau now, and Stromberg, hastily coilingthe light line, leaped into the bow. Then, just when it seemed possiblethe greener might make it, a huge log shot upward from the depths andfell with a crash squarely across the log upon which he was riding.

  A cry of horror went up from half a hundred throats as the man wasthrown high in the air and fell back into the foaming white-water thatshowed here and here through the thinning tangle of logs.

  The next instant a hundred logs passed over the spot, drawn down by thesuck of the rapid.