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... team can haul a load over this!" Bob voiced his
marvel, after a time.
"It don't," said Welton. "The supplies are all hauled while the ground
is frozen. A man goes by hand now."
In the swamps and bottom lands it was a case of slip, slide and wallow.
The going was trying on muscle and wind. To right and left stretched
mazes of white popples and willows tangled with old berry vines and the
abattis of the slashings. Water stood everywhere. To traverse that swamp
a man would have to force his way by main strength through the thick
growth, would have to balance on half-rotted trunks of trees, wade and
stumble through pools of varying depths, crawl beneath or climb over all
sorts of obstructions in the shape of uproots, spiky new growths, and
old tree trunks. If he had a gun in his hands, he would furthermore be
compelled, through all the vicissitudes of making his way, to hold it
always at the balance ready for the snap shot. For a ruffed grouse blank cds cheap is
wary, and flies like a bullet for speed, and is up and gone almost
before the roar of its wings has aroused the echoes. Through that veil
of branches a man must shoot quickly, instinctively, from any one of the
many positions in which the chance of the moment may have caught him.
Bob knew all about this sort of country, and his pulses quickened to the
call of it.
"Many partridge?" he asked.
"Lots," replied Welton; "but the country's too confounded big to hunt
them in. Like to hunt?"
"Nothing better," said Bob.
After a time the road climbed out of the swamp into the hardwoods, full
of warmth and light and new young green, and the voices of many
creatures; with the soft, silent carpet of last autumn's brown, the tiny
patches of melting snow, and the pools with dead leaves sunk in them and
clear surfaces over which was mirrored the flight of birds.
Welton puffed along steadily. He did not appear to talk much, and yet
the sum of his information was considerable.
"That road," he said, pointing to a dim track, "goes down to Thompson's.
He's a settler. Lives on a little lake.
"There's a deer," he remarked, "over in that thicket against the hill."
Bob looked closely, but could see nothing until the animal bounded away,
waving the white flag of its tail.
"Settlers up here are a confounded nuisance," went on Welton after a
while. "They're always hollering for what they call their 'rights.' That
generally means they try to hang up our drive. The average mossback's a
hard customer. I'd rather try to drive nails in a snowbank than tackle
driving logs through a farm country.
They never realize that we haven't
got time to talk it all out for a few weeks. There's one old cuss now
that's making us trouble about the water. Don't want to open up to give
us a fair run through the sluices of his dam. Don't seem to realize that
when we start to go out, we've got to go out in a _hurry_, spite o' hell
and low water."
He went on, in his good-natured, unexcited fashion, to blank cds cheap inveigh against
the obstinacy of any and all mossbacks. There was no bitterness in it,
merely a marvel over an inexplicable, natural phenomenon.
"Suppose you _didn't_ get all the logs out this year," asked Bob, at
length.
"Of course it would be a nuisance; but couldn't you get them
next year?"
"That's the trouble," Welton explained. "If you leave them over the
summer, borers get into them, and they're about a total loss.
No, my
son, when you start to take out logs in this country, you've got to
_take them out!_"
"That's what I'm going in here for now," he explained, after a moment.
"This Cedar Branch is an odd job we had to take over from another firm.
It is an unimproved river, and difficult to drive, and just lined with
mossbacks. The crew is a mixed bunch--some old men, some young toughs.
They're a hard crowd, and one not like the men on the main drive. It
really needs either Tally or me up here; but we can't get away for this
little proposition. He's got Darrell in charge. Darrell's a good man blank cds cheap on
a big job. Then he feels his responsibility, keeps sober and drives his
men well. But I'm scared he won't take this little drive serious. If he
gets one drink in him, it's all off!"
"I shouldn't think it would pay to put such a blank cds cheap man in charge," said Bob,
more as the most obvious remark than from any knowledge or conviction.
"Wouldn't you?" Welton's eyes twinkled.
"Well, son, after you've knocked
around a while you'll find that every man is good for something
somewhere.
Only you can't put a square peg in a round hole."
"How much longer will the high water last?" asked Bob.
"Hard to say."
"Well, I hope you get the logs out," Bob ventured.
"Sure we'll get them out!" replied Welton confidently. "We'll get them
out if we have to go spit in the creek!" With which remark the subject
was considered closed.
About four o'clock of the afternoon they came out on a low bluff
overlooking a bottom land through which flowed a little stream
twenty-five or thirty feet across.
"That's the Cedar Branch," said Welton, "and I reckon that's one of the
camps up where you see that blank cds cheap smoke."
They deserted the road and made their way through a fringe of thin brush
to the smoke.
Bob saw two big tents, a smouldering fire surrounded by
high frames on which hung a few drying clothes, a rough table, and a
cooking fire over which bubbled tremendous kettles and fifty-pound lard
tins suspended from a rack. A man sat on a cracker box reading a
fragment of newspaper. A boy of sixteen squatted by the fire.
This man looked up and nodded, as Welton and his companion approached.
"Where's the drive, doctor?" asked the lumberman.
"This is the jam camp," replied the cook. "The jam's upstream a mile or
so. Rear's back by Thompson's somewheres."
"Is there a jam in the river?" asked Bob with interest. "I'd like to
see it."
"There's a dozen a day, probably," replied Welton; "but in this case he
just means the head of the drive. We call that the 'jam.'"
"I suppose Darrell's at the rear?" Welton asked the cook.
"Yep," replied that individual, rising to peer into one of his cavernous
cooking utensils.
"Who's in charge here?"
"Larsen"
"H'm," said Welton. "Well," he added to himself, "he's slow, safe and
sure, anyway."
He led the way to one of the tents and pulled aside the flap. The ground
inside was covered by a welter of tumbled blankets and clothes.
"Nice tidy housekeeping," he grinned at Bob. He picked out two of the
best blankets and took them outside where he hung them on a bush and
beat them vigorously.
"There," he concluded, "now they're ours."
"What about the fellows who had 'em before?" inquired Bob.
"They probably had about eight apiece; and if they hadn't they can blank cds cheap bunk
together."
Bob walked to the edge of the stream. It was not very wide, yet at this
point it carried from three to six or eight feet of water, according to
the bottom. A few logs were str ... |
