Part 13

“Matter?” inquired Orde easily. “Oh, nothing much, just a little jam.”

“But it's flooding my mill!”

“So I perceive,” replied Orde, striking a match.

“Well, why don't you break it?”

“Not interested.”

The old warrior ran up the bank to where he could get a good view of his property. The water was pouring into the first-floor windows.

“Here!” he cried, running back. “I've a lot of grain up-stairs. It'll be ruined!”

“Not interested,” repeated Orde.

Reed was rapidly losing control of himself.

“But I've got a lot of money invested here!” he shouted. “You miserable blackguard, you're ruining me!”

Orde replaced his pipe.

Reed ran back and forth frantically, disappeared, returned bearing an antiquated pike-pole, and single-handed and alone attacked the jam!

Astonishment and delight held the rivermen breathless for a moment. Then a roar of laughter drowned even the noise of the waters. Men pounded each other on the back, rolled over and over, clutching handfuls of earth, struggled weak and red-faced for breath as they saw against the sky-line of the bristling jam the lank, flapping figure with the old plug hat pushing frantically against the immovable statics of a mighty power. The exasperation of delay, the anxiety lest success be lost through the mulish and narrow-minded obstinacy of one man, the resentment against another obstacle not to be foreseen and not to be expected in a task redundantly supplied with obstacles of its own--these found relief at last.

“By Jove!” breathed Newmark softly to himself. “Don Quixote and the windmills!” Then he added vindictively, “The old fool!” although, of course, the drive was not his personal concern.

Only Orde seemed to see the other side. And on Orde the responsibility, uncertainty, and vexation had borne most heavily, for the success of the undertaking was in his hands. With a few quick leaps he had gained the old man's side.

“Look here, Reed,” he said kindly, “you can't break this jam. Come ashore now, and let up. You'll kill yourself.”

Reed turned to him, a wild light in his eye.

“Break it!” he pleaded. “You're ruining me. I've got all my money in that mill.”

“Well,” said Orde, “we've got a lot of money in our logs too. You haven't treated us quite right.”

Reed glanced frantically toward the flood up stream.

“Come,” said Orde, taking him gently by the arm. “There's no reason you and I shouldn't get along together all right. Maybe we're both a little hard-headed. Let's talk it over.”

He led the old man ashore, and out of earshot of the rivermen.

At the end of ten minutes he returned.

“War's over, boys!” he shouted cheerfully. “Get in and break that jam.”

At once the crew swarmed across the log barrier to a point above the centre pier. This they attacked with their peavies, rolling the top logs off into the current below. In less than no time they had torn out quite a hole in the top layer. The river rushed through the opening. Immediately the logs in the wings were tumbled in from either side. At first the men had to do all of the work, but soon the river itself turned to their assistance. Timbers creaked and settled, or rose slightly buoyant as the water loosened the tangle. Men trod on the edge of expectation. Constantly the logs shifted, and as constantly the men shifted also, avoiding the upheavals and grindings together, wary eyes estimating the correlation of the forces into whose crushing reach a single misstep would bring them. The movement accelerated each instant, as the music of the play hastens to the climax. Wood fibres smashed. The whole mass seemed to sink down and forward into a boiling of waters. Then, with a creak and a groan, the jam moved, hesitated, moved again; finally, urged by the frantic river, went out in a majestic crashing and battering of logs.

At the first movement Newmark expected the rivermen to make their escape. Instead, they stood at attention, their peavies poised, watching cat-eyed the symptoms of the break. Twice or thrice several of the men, observing something not evident to Newmark's unpractised eye, ran forward, used their peavies vigorously for a moment or so, and stood back to watch the result. Only at the very last, when it would seem that some of them must surely he caught, did the river-jacks, using their peavy-shafts as balancing poles, zigzag calmly to shore across the plunging logs. Newmark seemed impressed.

“That was a close shave,” said he to the last man ashore.

“What?” inquired the riverman. “Didn't see it. Somebody fall down?”