DRi and I | Page 8

later
they built a schoolhouse, not quite a mile away, where I found more
fun than learning. After two years I shouldered my axe and went to the
river-land with the choppers every winter morning.
My father was stronger than any of them except D'ri, who could drive
his axe to the bit every blow, day after day. He had the strength of a
giant, and no man I knew tried ever to cope with him. By the middle of
May we began rolling in for the raft. As soon as they were floating, the
logs were withed together and moored in sections. The bay became
presently a quaking, redolent plain of timber.
When we started the raft, early in June, that summer of 1810, and
worked it into the broad river with sweeps and poles, I was aboard with
D'ri and six other men, bound for the big city of which I had heard so
much. I was to visit the relatives of my mother and spend a year in the
College de St. Pierre. We had a little frame house on a big platform,
back of the middle section of the raft, with bunks in it, where we ate
and slept and told stories. Lying on the platform, there was a large flat
stone that held our fires for both cooking and comfort. D'ri called me in
the dusk of the early morning, the first night out, and said we were near
the Sault. I got up, rubbed my eyes, and felt a mighty thrill as I heard
the roar of the great rapids and the creaking withes, and felt the lift of
the speeding water. D'ri said they had broken the raft into three parts,
ours being hindmost. The roaring grew louder, until my shout was as a

whisper in a hurricane. The logs began to heave and fall, and waves
came rushing through them. Sheets of spray shot skyward, coming
down like a shower. We were shaken as by an earthquake in the rough
water. Then the roar fell back of us, and the raft grew steady.
"Gin us a tough twist," said D'ri, shouting down at me--"kind uv a twist
o' the bit 'n' a kick 'n the side."
It was coming daylight as we sailed into still water, and then D'ri put
his hands to his mouth and hailed loudly, getting an answer out of the
gloom ahead.
"Gol-dum ef it hain't the power uv a thousan' painters!" D'ri continued,
laughing as he spoke. "Never see nothin' jump 'n' kick 'n' spit like thet
air, 'less it hed fur on--never 'n all my born days."
D'ri's sober face showed dimly now in the dawn. His hands were on his
hips; his faded felt hat was tipped sideways. His boots and trousers
were quarrelling over that disputed territory between his knees and
ankles. His boots had checked the invasion.
"Smooth water now," said he, thoughtfully, "Seems terrible still. Hain't
a breath uv air stirrin'. Jerushy Jane Pepper! Wha' does thet mean?"
He stepped aside quickly as some bits of bark and a small bough of
hemlock fell at our feet. Then a shower of pine needles came slowly
down, scattering over us and hitting the timber with a faint hiss. Before
we could look up, a dry stick as long as a log fell rattling on the
platform.
"Never see no sech dom's afore," said D'ri, looking upward. "Things
don't seem t' me t' be actin' eggzac'ly nat'ral--nut jest es I 'd like t' see
'em."
As the light came clearer, we saw clouds heaped black and blue over
the tree-tops in the southwest. We stood a moment looking. The clouds
were heaping higher, pulsing with light, roaring with thunder. What
seemed to be a flock of pigeons rose suddenly above the far forest, and

then fell as if they had all been shot. A gust of wind coasted down the
still ether, fluttering like a rag and shaking out a few drops of rain.
"Look there!" I shouted, pointing aloft.
"Hark!" said D'ri, sharply, raising his hand of three fingers.
We could hear a far sound like that of a great wagon rumbling on a
stony road.
"The Almighty 's whippin' his hosses," said D'ri. "Looks es ef he wus
plungin' 'em through the woods 'way yender. Look a' thet air sky."
The cloud-masses were looming rapidly. They had a glow like that of
copper.
"Tryin' t' put a ruf on the world," my companion shouted. "Swingin'
ther hammers hard on the rivets."
A little peak of green vapor showed above the sky-line. It loomed high
as we looked. It grew into a lofty column, reeling far above the forest.
Below it we could see a mighty heaving in the tree-tops. Something
like an immense bird