The Riverman | Page 4

or caulks, a half and sometimes even three quarters of an inch in length. The tight driver's shoe and "stagged" trousers had not then come into use. From the waist down these men wore all alike, as though in a uniform, the outward symbol of their calling. From the waist up was more latitude of personal taste. One young fellow sported a bright-coloured Mackinaw blanket jacket; another wore a red knit sash, with tasselled ends; a third's fancy ran to a bright bandana about his neck. Head-gear, too, covered wide variations of broader or narrower brim, of higher or lower crown; and the faces beneath those hats differed as everywhere the human countenance differs. Only when the inspection, passing the gradations of broad or narrow, thick or thin, bony or rounded, rested finally on the eyes, would the observer have caught again the caste-mark which stamped these men as belonging to a distinct order, and separated them essentially from other men in other occupations. Blue and brown and black and gray these eyes were, but all steady and clear with the steadiness and clarity that comes to those whose daily work compels them under penalty to pay close and undeviating attention to their surroundings. This is true of sailors, hunters, plainsmen, cowboys, and tugboat captains. It was especially true of the old-fashioned river-driver, for a misstep, a miscalculation, a moment's forgetfulness of the sullen forces shifting and changing about him could mean for him maiming or destruction. So, finally, to one of an imaginative bent, these eyes, like the "cork boots," grew to seem part of the uniform, one of the marks of their caste, the outward symbol of their calling.
"Blow, you son of a gun!" cried disgustedly one young fellow with a red bandana, apostrophising the wind. "I wonder if there's ANY side of this fire that ain't smoky!"
"Keep your hair on, bub," advised a calm and grizzled old-timer. "There's never no smoke on the OTHER side of the fire--whichever that happens to be. And as for wind--she just makes holiday for the river-hogs."
"Holiday, hell!" snorted the younger man. "We ought to be down to Bull's Dam before now--"
"And Bull's Dam is half-way to Redding," mocked a reptilian and red- headed giant on the log, "and Redding is the happy childhood home of--"
The young man leaped to his feet and seized from a pile of tools a peavy--a dangerous weapon, like a heavy cant-hook, but armed at the end with a sharp steel shoe.
"That's about enough!" he warned, raising his weapon, his face suffused and angry. The red-headed man, quite unafraid, rose slowly from the log and advanced, bare-handed, his small eyes narrowed and watchful.
But immediately a dozen men interfered.
"Dry up!" advised the grizzled old-timer--Tom North by name. "You, Purdy, set down; and you, young squirt, subside! If you're going to have ructions, why, have 'em, but not on drive. If you don't look out, I'll set you both to rustling wood for the doctor."
At this threat the belligerents dropped muttering to their places. The wind continued to blow, the fire continued to flare up and down, the men continued to smoke, exchanging from time to time desultory and aimless remarks. Only Tom North carried on a consecutive, low- voiced conversation with another of about his own age.
"Just the same, Jim," he was saying, "it is a little tough on the boys--this new sluice-gate business. They've been sort of expectin' a chance for a day or two at Redding, and now, if this son of a gun of a wind hangs out, I don't know when we'll make her. The shallows at Bull's was always bad enough, but this is worse."
"Yes, I expected to pick you up 'way below," admitted Jim, whose "turkey," or clothes-bag, at his side proclaimed him a newcomer. "Had quite a tramp to find you."
"This stretch of slack water was always a terror," went on North, "and we had fairly to pike-pole every stick through when the wind blew; but now that dam's backed the water up until there reely ain't no current at all. And this breeze has just stopped the drive dead as a smelt."
"Don't opening the sluice-gates give her a draw?" inquired the newcomer.
"Not against this wind--and not much of a draw, anyway, I should guess."
"How long you been hung?"
"Just to-day. I expect Jack will be down from the rear shortly. Ought to see something's wrong when he runs against the tail of this jam of ours."
At this moment the lugubrious, round-faced man in the derby hat stepped aside from the row of steaming utensils he had been arranging.
"Grub pile," he remarked in a conversational tone of voice.
The group arose as one man and moved upon the heap of cutlery and of tin plates and cups. From the open fifty-pound lard pails