Part 5

“Sure,” replied Orde, puzzled. “Look all you want to. The scenery's free.”

“Yes. But can you put me up? Can I get a chance to stay with you a little while?”

“Oh, as far as I'm concerned,” agreed Orde heartily. “But,” he supplemented with one of his contagious chuckles, “I'm only river-boss. You'll have to fix it up with the doctor--the cook, I mean,” he explained, as Newmark look puzzled. “You'll find him at camp up behind that brush. He's a slim, handsome fellow, with a jolly expression of countenance.”

He leaped lightly out over the bobbing timbers, leaving Newmark to find his way.

In the centre of the stream the work had been gradually slowing down to a standstill with the subsidence of the first rush of water after the sluice-gate was opened. Tom North, leaning gracefully against the shaft of a peavy, looked up eagerly as his principal approached.

“Well, Jack,” he inquired, “is it to be peace or war?”

“War,” replied Orde briefly.

III

At this moment the cook stepped into view, and, making a trumpet of his two hands, sent across the water a long, weird, and not unmusical cry. The men at once began slowly to drift in the direction of the camp. There, when the tin plates had all been filled, and each had found a place to his liking, Orde addressed them. His manner was casual and conversational.

“Boys,” said he, “the old mossback who owns that dam has come up here loaded to scatter. He's built up the sill of that gate until we can't get a draw on the water, and he refuses to give, lend, or sell us the right to cut her out. I've made him every reasonable proposition, but all I get back is quotations from the prophets. Now, we've got to get those logs out--that's what we're here for. A fine bunch of whitewater birlers we'd look if we got hung up by an old mossback in a plug hat. Johnny Sims, what's the answer?”

“Cut her out,” grinned Johnny Sims briefly.

“Correct!” replied Orde with a chuckle. “Cut her out. But, my son, it's against the law to interfere with another man's property.”

This was so obviously humourous in intent that its only reception consisted of more grins from everybody.

“But,” went on Orde more seriously, “it's quite a job. We can't work more than six or eight men at it at a time. We got to work as fast as we can before the old man can interfere.”

“The nearest sheriff's at Spruce Rapids,” commented some one philosophically.

“We have sixty men, all told,” said Orde. “We ought to be able to carry it through.”

He filled his plate and walked across to a vacant place. Here he found himself next to Newmark.

“Hello!” he greeted that young man, “fixed it with the doctor all right?”

“Yes,” replied Newmark, in his brief, dry manner, “thanks! I think I ought to tell you that the sheriff is not at Spruce Rapids, but at the village--expecting trouble.”

Orde whistled, then broke into a roar of delight.

“Boys,” he called, “old Plug Hat's got the sheriff right handy. I guess he sort of expected we'd be thinking of cutting through that dam. How'd you like to go to jail?”

“I'd like to see any sheriff take us to jail, unless he had an army with him,” growled one of the river-jacks.

“Has he a posse?” inquired Orde of Newmark.

“I didn't see any; but I understood in the village that the governor had been advised to hold State troops in readiness for trouble.”

Orde fell into a brown study, eating mechanically. The men began an eager and somewhat truculent discussion full of lawless and bloodthirsty suggestion. Some suggested the kidnapping and sequestration of Reed until the affair should be finished.

“How'd he get hold of his old sheriff, then?” they inquired with some pertinence.

Orde, however, paid no attention to all this talk, but continued to frown into space. At last his face cleared, and he slapped down his tin plate so violently that the knife and fork jumped off into the dirt.

“I have it!” he cried aloud.