Part 11

Hardly had Orde the opportunity to look about at the progress making, however, before he heard his name shouted from the bank. Looking up, to his surprise he saw the solemn cook waving a frantic dish-towel at him. Nothing could induce the cook to attempt the logs.

“What is it, Charlie?” asked Orde, leaping ashore and stamping the loose water from his boots.

“It's all off,” confided the cook pessimistically. “It's no good. He's stopped us now.”

“What's off? Who's stopped what?”

“Reed. He's druv the men from the dam with a shotgun. We might as well quit.”

“Shotgun, hey!” exclaimed Orde. “Well, the old son of a gun!” He thought a moment, his lips puckered as though to whistle; then, as usual, he laughed amusedly. “Let's go take a look at the army,” said he.

He swung away at a round pace, followed rather breathlessly by the cook. The trail led through the brush across a little flat point, up over a high bluff where the river swung in, down to another point, and across a pole trail above a marsh to camp.

A pole trail consists of saplings laid end to end, and supported three or four feet above wet places by means of sawbuck-like structures at their extremities. To a river-man or a tight-rope dancer they are easy walks. All others must proceed cautiously in contrite memory of their sins.

Orde marched across the first two lengths confidently enough. Then he heard a splash and lamentations. Turning, he perceived Charlie, covered with mud, in the act of clambering up one of the small trestles.

“Ain't got no caulks!” ran the lamentations. “The ---- of a ---- of a pole-trail, anyways!”

He walked ahead gingerly, threw his hands aloft, bent forward, then suddenly protruded his stomach, held out one foot in front of him, spasmodically half turned, and then, realising the case hopeless, wilted like a wet rag, to clasp the pole trail both by arm and leg. This saved him from falling off altogether, but swung him underneath, where he hung like the sloths in the picture-books. A series of violent wriggles brought him, red-faced and panting, astride the pole, whence, his feelings beyond mere speech, he sadly eyed his precious derby, which lay, crown up, in the mud below.

Orde contemplated the spectacle seriously.

“Sorry I haven't got time to enjoy you just now, Charlie,” he remarked. “I'd take it slower, if I were you.”

He departed, catching fragments of vows anent never going on any more errands for nobody, and getting his time if ever again he went away from his wanigan.

Orde stopped short outside the fringe of brush to utter another irrepressible chuckle of amusement.

The centre of the dam was occupied by Reed. The old man was still in full regalia, his plug hat fuzzier than ever, and thrust even farther back on his head, his coat-tails and loose trousers flapping at his every movement as he paced back and forth with military precision. Over his shoulder he carried a long percussion-lock shotgun. Not thirty feet away, perched along the bank, for all the world like a row of cormorants, sat the rivermen, watching him solemnly and in silence.

“What's the matter?” inquired Orde, approaching.

The old man surveyed him with a snort of disgust.

“If the law of the land don't protect me, I'll protect myself, sir,” he proclaimed. “I give ye fair warning! I ain't a-going to have my property interfered with no more.”

“But surely,” said Orde, “we have a right to run our logs through. It's an open river.”

“And hev ye been running your logs through?” cried the old man excitedly. “Hev ye? First off ye begin to tear down my dam; and then, when the river begins a-roarin' and a-ragin' through, then you tamper with my improvements furthermore, a-lowerin' the gate and otherwise a-modifyin' my structure.”

Orde stepped forward to say something further. Immediately Reed wheeled, his thumb on the hammer.

“All right, old Spirit of '76,” replied Orde. “Don't shoot; I'll come down.”

He walked back to the waiting row, smiling quizzically.

“Well, you calamity howlers, what do you think of it?”

Nobody answered, but everybody looked expectant.

“Think he'd shoot?” inquired Orde of Tom North.

“I know he would,” replied North earnestly. “That crazy-headed kind are just the fellers to rip loose.”