Part 8

Orde whistled a jig tune.

“Kind of expected that, boys,” said he. “Let's see. The next train out from Redding--They'll be here by five in the morning at soonest. Hope it'll be later.”

“What will you do?” asked Newmark.

“Take chances,” replied Orde. “All you boys get to work. Zeke,” he commanded one of the cookees, “go up road, and report if Morris comes back. I reckon this time we'll have to scatter if he comes after us. I hope we won't have to, though. Like to keep everything square on account of this State troop business.”

The sun had dropped below the fringe of trees, which immediately etched their delicate outlines against a pale, translucent green sky. Two straight, thin columns of smoke rose from the neglected camp-fires. Orde, glancing around him, noticed these.

“Doctor,” he commanded sharply, “get at your grub! Make some coffee right off, and bring it down. Get the lanterns from the wanigan, and bring them to the dam. Come on, boys!”

Over a score of men attacked the sluice-way, for by now part of the rear crew had come down river. The pond above had recovered its volume. Water was beginning to trickle over the top of the gate. In a short time progress became difficult, almost impossible, The men worked up to their knees in swift water. They could not see, and the strokes of axe or pick lost much of their force against the liquid. Dusk fell. The fringe of the forest became mysterious in its velvet dark. Silver streaks, of a supernal calm, suggested the reaches of the pond. Above, the sky's day surface unfolded and receded and dissolved and melted away until, through the pale afterglow, one saw beyond into the infinities. Down by the sluice a dozen lanterns flickered and blinked yellow against the blue-blackness of the night.

After some time Orde called his crew off and opened the sluice-gates. The water had become too deep for effective work, and a half hour's flow would reduce the pressure. The time was occupied in eating and in drying off about the huge fire the second cookee had built close at hand.

“Water cold, boys?” asked Orde.

“Some,” was his reply.

“Want to quit?” he inquired, with mock solicitude.

“Nary quit.”

Orde's shout of laughter broke the night silence of the whispering breeze and the rushing water.

“We'll stick to 'em like death to a dead nigger,” was his comment.

Newmark, having extracted a kind of cardigan jacket from the bag he had brought with him as far as the mill, looked at the smooth, iron-black water and shivered.

When the meal was finished, the men lit their pipes and went back to work philosophically. With entire absorption in the task, they dug, chopped, and picked. The dull sound of blows, the gurgle and trickle of the water, the occasional grunt or brief comment of a riverman alone broke the calm of evening. Now that the sluice-gate was down and the water had ceased temporarily to flow over it, the work went faster. Orde, watching with the eye of an expert, vouchsafed to the taciturn Newmark that he thought they'd make it.

Near midnight, however, a swaying lantern was seen approaching. Orde, leaping to his feet with a curse at the boy on watch, heard the sound of wheels. A moment later, Daly's bulky form stepped into the illumination of the fire.

Orde wandered over to where his principal stood peering about him.

“Hullo!” said he.

“Oh, there you are!” cried Daly angrily. “What in hell you up to here?”

“Running logs,” replied Orde coolly.

“Running logs!” shouted Daly, tugging at his overcoat pocket, and finally producing a much-folded newspaper. “How about this?”

Orde unfolded the paper and lowered it to the campfire. It was an extra, screaming with wood type. He read it deliberately over.

WAR!

the headline ran.

RIOTING AND BLOODSHED IN THE WOODS

RIVERMEN AND DAM OWNERS CLASH!

There followed a vague and highly coloured statement to the effect that an initial skirmish had left the field in possession of the rivermen, in spite of the sheriff and a large posse, but that troops were being rushed to the spot, and that this “high-handed defiance of authority” would undoubtedly soon be suppressed. It concluded truthfully with the statement that the loss of life was as yet unknown.