The Riverman | Page 5

and kettles they helped themselves liberally; then retired to squat in little groups here and there near the sources of supply. Mere conversation yielded to an industrious silence. Sadly the cook surveyed the scene, his arms folded across the dirty white apron, an immense mental reservation accenting the melancholy of his countenance. After some moments of contemplation he mixed a fizzling concoction of vinegar and soda, which he drank. His rotundity to the contrary notwithstanding, he was ravaged by a gnawing dyspepsia, and the sight of six eggs eaten as a side dish to substantials carried consternation to his interior.
So busily engaged was each after his own fashion that nobody observed the approach of a solitary figure down the highway of the river. The man appeared tiny around the upper bend, momently growing larger as he approached. His progress was jerky and on an uneven zigzag, according as the logs lay, by leaps, short runs, brief pauses, as a riverman goes. Finally he stepped ashore just below the camp, stamped his feet vigorously free of water, and approached the group around the cooking-fire.
No one saw him save the cook, who vouchsafed him a stately and lugubrious inclination of the head.
The newcomer was a man somewhere about thirty years of age, squarely built, big of bone, compact in bulk. His face was burly, jolly, and reddened rather than tanned by long exposure. A pair of twinkling blue eyes and a humorously quirked mouth redeemed his countenance from commonplaceness.
He spread his feet apart and surveyed the scene.
"Well, boys," he remarked at last in a rollicking big voice, "I'm glad to see the situation hasn't spoiled your appetites."
At this they looked up with a spontaneous answering grin. Tom North laid aside his plate and started to arise.
"Sit still, Tom," interposed the newcomer. "Eat hearty. I'm going to feed yet myself. Then we'll see what's to be done. I think first thing you'd better see to having this wind turned off."
After the meal was finished, North and his principal sauntered to the water's edge, where they stood for a minute looking at the logs and the ruffled expanse of water below.
"Might as well have sails on them and be done with it," remarked Jack Orde reflectively. "Couldn't hold 'em any tighter. It's a pity that old mossback had to put in a mill. The water was slack enough before, but now there seems to be no current at all."
"Case of wait for the wind," agreed Tom North. "Old Daly will be red-headed. He must be about out of logs at the mill. The flood- water's going down every minute, and it'll make the riffles above Redding a holy fright. And I expect Johnson's drive will be down on our rear most any time."
"It's there already. Let's go take a look," suggested Orde.
They picked their way around the edge of the pond to the site of the new mill.
"Sluice open all right," commented Orde. "Thought she might be closed."
"I saw to that," rejoined North in an injured tone.
"'Course," agreed Orde, "but he might have dropped her shut on you between times, when you weren't looking."
He walked out on the structure and looked down on the smooth water rushing through.
"Ought to make a draw," he reflected. Then he laughed. "Tom, look here," he called. "Climb down and take a squint at this."
North clambered to a position below.
"The son of a gun!" he exclaimed.
The sluice, instead of bedding at the natural channel of the river, had been built a good six feet above that level; so that, even with the gates wide open, a "head" of six feet was retained in the slack water of the pond.
"No wonder we couldn't get a draw," said Orde. "Let's hunt up old What's-his-name and have a pow-wow."
"His name is plain Reed," explained North. "There he comes now."
"Sainted cats!" cried Orde, with one of his big, rollicking chuckles. "Where did you catch it?"
The owner of the dam flapped into view as a lank and lengthy individual dressed in loose, long clothes and wearing a-top a battered old "plug" hat, the nap of which seemed all to have been rubbed off the wrong way.
As he bore down on the intruders with tremendous, nervous strides, they perceived him to be an old man, white of hair, cadaverous of countenance, with thin, straight lips, and burning, fanatic eyes beneath stiff and bushy brows.
"Good-morning, Mr. Reed," shouted Orde above the noise of the water.
"Good-morning, gentlemen," replied the apparition.
"Nice dam you got here," went on Orde.
Reed nodded, his fiery eyes fixed unblinking on the riverman.
"But you haven't been quite square to us," said Orde. You aren't giving us much show to get our logs out."
"How so?" snapped the owner, his thin lips tightening.
"Oh, I guess you know, all right," laughed Orde, clambering leisurely back to the