The Riverman | Page 4

were gathered thirty-odd men. Some were half-
reclining before the blaze; others sat in rows on logs drawn close for
the purpose; still others squatted like Indians on their heels, their hands
thrown forward to keep the balance. Nearly all were smoking pipes.
Every age was represented in this group, but young men predominated.
All wore woollen trousers stuffed into leather boots reaching just to the
knee. These boots were armed on the soles with rows of formidable
sharp spikes 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