# Below the Jam

Extracted from Popular magazine, 01 Dec 1911, pp. 178-186.
Below the Jam
By A. M. Chisholm Author of “The Whining Game” “Before the Snow” Etc.
In the woods with the lumberjacks. It doesn't take much to start a row when you've a full-sized grouch. And when both parties are big, two-fisted woodsmen there's pretty sure to be plenty doing
ONCE there was bad blood between two shantymen named Mitchell and Driscoll, who worked in Crooks & Cameron's lumber camps on the Little Canoe. It began, simply enough, on the train that was to take them to the woods in the fall. Before then neither of them had ever seen the other. They had been hired the preceding day, and had utilized the intervening time and their few remaining dollars in accumulating a parting jag. And as this, by force of cruel circumstance, would have to last them until next spring, a fact of which they were quite aware, it was naturally a daisy. Therefore, when they found themselves occupying one seat in the dilapidated old day coach, they were ready to drink more or to fight, with some preference for the latter amusement.
Mitchell had entered the car last, and for some occult reason had chosen to sit alongside Driscoll, whom he did not know at all; but Driscoll was occupying two men's space himself, and was disinclined to motion.
“Move over there and gimme a seat,” said Mitchell. “Think you own this car?”
Driscoll grunted profanely, but he moved, and Mitchell sat down.
Just before the train pulled out, Teeny Walsh, eldest daughter of old Pat Walsh who drove the engine, came on the platform to deliver a home mes sage to her father. On the way back, she walked beside the coach which held the lumberjacks. Miss Teeny was auburn-haired and shapely, and her general style appealed to Driscoll, who sat next the window. He stuck a tousled head and unshaven face through it.
“Aw, there!” he said insinuatingly but thickly, under the impression that he was a devil of a fellow.
Miss Teeny, who in all her short life had never been unable to look any human being between the eyes and administer a “calling down” when necessary; and who, moreover, was pleasantly conscious that her steady company, Jack Flanagan, the best fighting brakeman on the line, was a few yards farther down the platform, regarded Driscoll with contempt.
“What's bitin' you, you big high-banker?” she demanded acidly. “Want me to send a hardy lad into that cattle car and slam you through the side of it? Don't you open that false face of yours to a lady!”
“Send the lad along, li'l girl,” grinned Driscoll,who was highly entertained by Miss Walsh's repartee, and conceived a sudden violent affection for her. “Say, I like you, an' when I come back——”
Here Mitchell butted in. The only reason he had not been the offender instead of Driscoll was that he sat next the aisle; but, in a somewhat obfuscated perspective, he now saw beauty in distress, and responded to the call as became a chivalrous gentleman virtuously indignant.
“Here, you low-down, flyin' dog, you stop insultin' that young lady!” he commanded.
Driscoll's head and shoulders vanished forever from the blue eyes of Miss Walsh as he jerked back into the car and confronted Mitchell. And a much expurgated version of what he said is:-
“Who on earth are you, and will you kindly mind your own business?”
“You don't insult no woman when I'm around, and you tie into that,” said Miss Walsh's self-elected champion.
“Insult?” echoed Driscoll indignantly. “I never insulted no woman. I guess that little brick-top can take care of herself. Annyways, it ain't your put in, me buck. So take that, to learn you!” And he smote Mitchell on the nose.
In ten seconds, two seats were wrecked, and as many panes were out of the car Windows. Lumberjacks howled joyously and climbed on seats to see the scrap, surging down into the center of the moving car, a swaying, lurching mass of brawny, two-fisted humanity, most of them three parts drunk and willing to take a hand themselves on the slightest provocation. And they offered gratuitous counsel to the tangled mess that was Driscoll and Mitchell.
“Hammer th' face of him!” advised Tom Hales, who knew Mitchell.
“Th' knee—th' knee in th' wind! It's wide open he is till yez!” cried Larry Foley to Driscoll.
“Sacredam! Bite heem on hees ear!” shrieked Moise Groulx impartially to whomsoever that form of assault might come handy,
“Shut up!” roared Foley. “Sure, there never was a pea-jammin' Frenchman yet that knowed what fair fightin' was. Ye dirty man-eaters!”
And the indignation of Foley at the unfair military tactics of the Gauls—deplored aforetime by one Caius Julius Cæsar, who had ample opportunities for observing them—caused him to plant a fist like a bag of stones in the face of the representative of that ancient race, thus enlarging the area of disturbance, which proceeded to grow with startling rapidity.
By this time, the train was out of the yard, and the rumble and click of the wheels and groaning of the trucks mingled with the howls of the combatants. The interior of the car was simply disintegrating. Glass tinkled merrily along the right of way; seats, supposedly fixtures, came out by the roots, and chaos was impending.
But at this juncture, Bill Smith—who was Crooks & Cameron's best foreman, and a rough-and-tumble fighter to his fingers' tips, besides being exceedingly sober as his responsibilities demanded—entered the car from the rear; while the conductor, Rory McLachlin, a huge and hairy son of the Glen, entered from the baggage car.
Smith blamed himself for an unavoidable brief absence which had allowed the row to start. And Big Rory was exceedingly wrath, because, although there is excellent authority to the effect that peacemakers shall be blessed, the same authority is entirely silent as to more immediate personal results; and he happened to be wearing a new uniform, which, for a wonder, was large enough, and yet fitted perfectly.
So they both bored in for the center of the cyclone, and, arriving there about the same time, respectively seized on Mitchell and Driscoll, who were already much the worse for wear, and proceeded to thump them into sobriety and decent behavior.
“It's you that's raisin' this hell, is it?” roared Smith to the former. “Think you're a scrapper, hey? I'll show you. Sit down, you dog!” And Mitchell sat down with exceeding suddenness before the impact of the foreman's fist, while McLachlin performed the same office for Driscoll.
For the time being, the two men had had their fill of fighting, and they would have been content to sit and glower at each other had not Driscoll, after an unavailing search for a half-filled bottle of whisky which he had thoughtfully cached in his “turkey,” accused Mitchell of taking it.
Mitchell's reply, besides a denial, contained certain genealogical reflections covering many generations. Driscoll immediately hit him, and they went at it afresh. Once more Bill Smith intervened; and this time he did it so effectively that they forbore further hostilities; but they sulked and glared at each other, which was considerably worse.
From this period of gestation, when they had nothing to do but think of their wrongs, hate was born. They were battered and sore physically and mentally. Their heads ached with the dying fumes of the cheap whisky they had imbibed; the light struck their eyeballs painfully; they were dry with a thirst which water refused to satisfy, and there was no more whisky to be had. In fact, they were in that peculiarly surly and sometimes murderous mood that follows alcoholic excess, and each considered that he had a good cause of grievance against the other.
From Driscoll's standpoint, Mitchell had it coming to him. He, Driscoll, was not to blame. He had, in fact, comported himself in an exceedingly gentlemanly manner. He had said nothing offensive to that little sorrel-headed girl back on the platform. And, if he had, what business was it of Mitchell's? But Mitchell had butted in and started the whole row. And afterward, not satisfied with that, he had stolen the whisky for which he, Driscoll, would now cheerfully give a month's pay. He was a dirty thief, a disgrace to the ancient and honorable profession of logging. Driscoll felt like taking an ax to him.
But Mitchell saw things from quite another angle. That unmentionable Driscoll had got gay with a good little girl, and he, Mitchell, had done what any gentleman would have done; namely, called him for it. For which Driscoll had slugged him and started the whole fuss. And then Driscoll had wrongfully accused him of stealing some rotgut whisky; and, when he had denied it with becoming emphasis, Driscoll had hit him again. In fact, Driscoll was “picking on” him. He was a bully, was Driscoll. Mitchell would have liked to bash in his head with a peavey. He would show him. He would get square, and he would give him warning.
“Maybe you think you can run on me,” he said to him as they stood on the platform of the little backwoods station waiting for the tote teams. “Well, you can't. I won't take nothin' more from you. You try it, and you'll go out of these woods in a blanket. It's comin' to you.”
Driscoll's reply was unprintable, and the feud was on.
Day after day and week after week in the bush, on the trail, and in the bunk house they snarled at each other like two strange dogs, but for want of a fresh, plausible pretext never came to blows.
One night Mitchell, on his way to his bunk, stumbled over Driscoll's outstretched foot, and, believing that he had been tripped deliberately, turned and ran at him. In a twinkling, the camp was in a turmoil.
The noise brought Bill Smith from his quarters. For the third time, he dragged the two men apart, somewhat battered, but full of fight, and threatened to discharge both if there was any further fighting. Neither wished to lose his job; and they bottled up their hatred against the day when there would be no job to lose.
Both men were sawyers; and Smith, out of deviltry or a desire to see if they really meant business, put them on one saw. They sawed as if their lives depended on it. Each tried to wear the other out. They bent their backs, and the tool screeched and ripped ceaselessly from day light to nooning, and from nooning to dark. Down the length of the saw they eyed each other, wordless but hating deeply; and the sweat of their toil dropped from their eyebrows on the snow.
Occasionally the nature of the work demanded speech.
“That way?” Driscoll would say, indicating with a nod the direction in which the tree was to be felled.
“Don't tell me which way she's to go!” Mitchell would reply, with a scowl. And then they would bend and saw with fury, while the steel between them grew hot as it bit the wood.
One day Mitchell dropped his saw as the last fibers of wood began to crack, and coolly walked under the falling tree. It was a piece of foolhardiness not uncommon among the youngsters in the bush, who had yet to learn that there were chances enough in life without creating more. If the tree falls fair and clean, as it does nine times out of ten, it is perfectly safe for a man with a cool head; but if the tree is not sawn true, or if there is a heavy wind, or if it twists in the fall from any cause, it is exceedingly dangerous.
Driscoll sneered at Mitchell.
“You think you're doing something, you—fool,” he said.
“I'm doing something you won't do, because you haven't got the sand,” said Mitchell.
Very childish, wasn't it? Not in any way different from the “dare” of one schoolboy to another, except that it was deliberately playing with death.
Both knew it. A man may walk under a hundred falling trees, quite calmly and taking his time, his eyes on the brown bulk leaning and threatening him with ever-increasing swiftness, and do it without once quickening his pace; but sooner or later, the trunk of some tree will lurch and leap at him with the deadly swiftness of a wild beast on its prey; and then only a quick eye and a quicker spring, with muscles swift to avoid the peril the eye beholds, will prevent his lying a crushed pulp in the snow. And deep snow, bushes, and roots make a poor take-off for a sudden jump. Therefore, the lumberjack who wishes to display his foolishness usually chooses his ground carefully.
Driscoll said nothing; but, as the next tree tottered, he let go his saw and started to walk underneath. Halfway he met Mitchell. Neither would move out of the other's path. The trunk of the tree, descending, actually touched their heads as they sprang back. They glared at each other across the fallen timber. Then Driscoll said:
“You want to kill me, do you?”
And Mitchell answered: “You'll save me the trouble if you try that again.”
“I'll walk under every tree we fall from now on,” Driscoll declared, with an oath, “and we'll see who dies first. Will you go to the right or the left?”
“I'll keep to my right and you keep to yours,” said Mitchell. And so it was arranged.
The grim sport became fascinating. At the first crack of parting wood, one would glance at the other furtively, seeking some sign of weakness or of holding back. When the tree had fallen they regarded each other without word, but with mutual disappointment.
So strongly did hate obsess them that each carried with him, by day and night, a mental picture of the other lying in the snow, crushed by falling timber, and found the secret vision comforting.
Mitchell, watching Driscoll roll into his bunk at night, would say to himself “This is the last night's sleep for you, me buck!”
And Driscoll, eying Mitchell eating breakfast by dim lamplight an hour before the dawn, would say inwardly: “Eat, you dog! It's little use for grub you'll have to-morrow!”
Each endeavored to shake the other's nerve. All the tales they had ever heard of men killed by falling timber they dug up and retold in loud tones, with fancy touches. Every camp has such yarns in abundance; and, when other men related them, the two searched each others' faces for a sign of apprehension.
They had narrow escapes. Once Driscoll's moccasin caught in a hidden root, and he only saved himself by a wrench and a dive forward that landed him full length on his face beside the fallen trunk. As he rose, Mitchell was grinning at him.
“Not that time,” said Driscoll grimly.
“Next,” said Mitchell.
The same afternoon a tree slewed in the fall, and Mitchell thrust himself away from it with his hands, tripping as he leaped backward. He arose, amid the flying snow, to meet Driscoll's eager eyes.
“Nor that time,” said Mitchell; and Driscoll swore in his disappointment; whereat Mitchell grinned again wolfishly, flirting the snow from the back of his neck.
Driscoll grew cunning. He no longer drew the saw through, firm and steady, against the wood the length of its cut, but lifted his end outward slightly. The result was uneven cutting, and the introduction of an element of uncertainty as to just where the tree would fall. This increased the risk to both, but most to Mitchell as long as he did not know of it. But Driscoll argued that it was perfectly fair.
Mitchell read the new expectancy in the other's eyes, and felt the slight tilt of the saw, which pressed his end into the wood and Driscoll's away from it. From this his attention was drawn to the width of the broken wood fibers on Driscoll's side of the stump.
“Saw true,” he said. “Two can play at that game.”
After that Driscoll gave up the attempt in disgust.
The grim contest could not be hidden from the men, and thence it came to the foreman's ears. He watched them drop two trees and walk under each. Then he called Driscoll and put him to work with Landriau, and paired Mitchell with Scott. Also he told them what he thought of them in unmeasured language.
“You're a pair of fools,” he wound up. “If you want to fight and settle it, do it right here, and then shake hands and be men again.”
They heard him sullenly. At one time they would have jumped at the chance; but now their hate had deepened until it was not to be settled by any casual encounter in the snow with moccasins on their feet. When they fought, if they ever did fight, it would be to a finish, wearing the spiked boots of the river driver, and with no one to interfere. And meanwhile, if either could work the other an injury, he would do so. No, they would not fight.
“Very well,” said Smith. “If you won't fight like men, I won't have you tryin' to kill one another in the bush. If there's any more funny work, I'll make you wish you were dead.”
For the remainder of the winter they worked apart and did not exchange a word. Occasionally coming into camp in the ghostly half light of the winter evening, Driscoll would surprise a covert, baleful glance from under Mitchell's heavily thatched brows; and Mitchell, playing a hand of forty-fives at night and chancing to look up suddenly, would see Driscoll's eyes fixed on him from a distant corner of the room, and in them he read bitter hate. Both waited the opportunity that did not come.
“I'll get him on the river,” thought Mitchell.
“There's ten men drowned to one that's killed by falling timber,” Driscoll reflected. “And the Little Canoe is bad driving. Maybe it will settle his hash.”
With the coming of spring, the roads failed, and, as no more logs could be got out, the camp suspended logging operations. The entire winter's cut was lying on the ice of the river, and banked in huge piles on the rollways at its edge. When the ice went out, these last would be rolled into the river, where the driving crew would take charge of them and pilot them downstream through clear current, rapids, shallows, sluices, and backwaters to their destination at Crooks & Cameron's mills.
A lumberjack is not necessarily a riverman; but many of them are. And a goodly proportion, when the river opens, pull on the spiked boots and exchange ax and saw for peavey and pike pole, and so make their way by water to the town where they are paid off. Driscoll and Mitchell were rivermen as well as sawyers.
The men began to break out the rollways, knocking out the wedges and starting the logs with peavies. Pile after pile of brown monsters thundered down the bank, disappeared in clouds of white spray, and emerged, rolling and wallowing, like huge amphibians, to begin their last long journey to the habitations of men.
Mitchell and Driscoll were both working at the rollways. It was the first time they had worked in close proximity in months. Mitchell was at the foot of a pile of banked logs. The wedges had been knocked out, but the skids had settled slightly, and the logs would not move. Mitchell caught a bottom one with his peavey and yanked savagely on the stock. At the same instant, Driscoll, on top of the pile, boosted a stick, and it began to roll. Then, without warning, the whole mass loosened and rumbled down.
Mitchell who was standing directly in front of the middle of the pile, was caught between it and the river. He had no time to get to one side. If he jumped down the bank, he would be killed by the falling timbers. Therefore, his mind working accurately and quickly, he leaped forward, and began to scale the face of the rolling logs. He ran up them as a squirrel runs in a treadmill, and bounded from the topmost, as it sank away beneath his feet, onto the solid ground beyond. He alighted beside Driscoll. Driscoll was not to blame for the sudden start of the timbers; but Mitchell chose to believe that he was.
“I'll settle with you for that!” he said grimly.
“Settle nothing!” said Driscoll. “I didn't start them going.”
Public opinion was in Driscoll's favor; and Mitchell, glaring at him, forbore to press the charge home.
“There'll be jams on the river,” he said darkly. “You've got it coming to you this time, me buck.”
Driscoll consigned him to perdition afresh. The other men protested.
“It's sinful of yeez lads to act this way,” said Con Donovan, a veteran of the river. “Take shame to yerselves. Fight out yer grudge, if ye like; but don't charge murder on a man, nor threaten the coward's dirty shove when a jam pulls.”
“Mind your own business,” said Mitchell sulkily, and told him where to go to mind it.
“This is between him and me,” said Driscoll to Donovan. “We'll settle it as we like. It's fair for both. None of yez has call to butt in.”
“If one of yez is bad hurted by the other save in fair fight, I'll make it my business,” said old Donovan grimly. “I'll not stand by and see murder done, nor will the rest of the lads. So mind what I'm tellin' ye.”
In a week's time a jam occurred, and it was a beauty. It took place in an angle of the Chain Rapids, known as the “Dog's Leg.” Here the head of the drive, sweeping downstream, bunched, the big logs, pounding and sousing in the swift current, took the ground for an instant. That did the business. More surged down on them immediately, reared up, twisted, fell across them at every angle, and pinned them down. Still more battered these, and rode them. In ten minutes, the entire drive had caught, plugged, and jammed.
The breast of the jam rose higher and higher, a solid mass of timber bristling in wild confusion, damming back the water, but held fast by its own tremendous weight. When it could rise no higher, the tail of it began to form, stretching upstream, as if by magic, as the logs butted against the main jam and were held there by the water. It formed as quickly as a row of dominoes falls when the end one is tipped over. Almost two miles of rapids were full of timber, all held up and dammed back by the resistance exerted by certain logs somewhere at the bottom of the jam.
To find these key logs and release them was the business of the driving crew; and it was a task of both difficulty and danger. The river boss, whose name was McKeever, arrived from the rear, and, with his lieutenants, sized up the situation. It was not promising. There seemed nothing for it, however, but to get' into the heart of the jam; and the crew went at it at once.
The jam towered high above them, immense, threatening; and from beneath its foot and through the crevices gushed water, driven by the pressure of the stream behind, shooting out in white rivulets, hissing and gurgling as it tore at the timber that obstructed its course.
They began to get out the logs, prying and boosting them with peavies, pulling and lifting and gradually moving in on the jam. There the logs were wedged into an apparently inextricable tangle; butts and tops thrust forth, piled at every conceivable angle. The jam was a threatening mass; a mighty engine lying inert, waiting for some one to touch the spring that should stir it to wild life. Somewhere down in the heart of the thing, far beneath the shaggy brown of its breast, were certain logs, set like triggers, which controlled the monster. When these were tripped, the whole mass would go out in a whirl of grinding, groaning, upending timbers, thundering downstream with mighty, immeasurable force.
When a river crew goes out to break a jam by hand, its members carry their lives in their hands, or, rather, in their feet. The logs on which they work are wet, set at every angle, and, where the bark has been stripped off, as slippery as a greased plank. Above the men hangs a mass of timber with an awful power behind it, which it is their busines to set in motion. When it starts, it is every man for himself, and his way to shore lies over a writhing, contorting field of sticks of pine. Woe to the man whose boot calks are dull or who makes one misstep! Add to the complexities of the situation a beautiful uncertainty as to just when the jam will pull, and you get some idea of the most risky part of a riverman's job. He must be strong, quick on his feet, possessed of what is almost an intuition in the selection of his footing, and, above all, he must be without nerves.
Driscoll and Mitchell were good rivermen. They dug into the jam with their peavies with apparent carelessness, but, in reality, with great caution. Each had his route for shore marked out in his mind, and knew exactly what he would do when the first premonitory thrill, tremble, and groan heralded a break.
Although the danger of the work demanded much attention, they watched each other closely. Both were suspicions, for, in the confusion of a breaking jam, many things may happen unnoticed. A shove, a trip, a sudden thrust with the stock of a peavey, and there will be a man short at night, with nobody the wiser.
Occasionally their eyes met; but with the hate in them there mingled an abstraction, a speculation, a patient but alert waiting for a moment of peril which would call into play every power of eye, mind, and body. Their ill-feeling was not lessened, but each unconsciously was more suspicions of the other's intentions than desirous of doing him any harm just at that time. Each was willing to leave the matter to the many chances of the jam; but, not knowing the workings of the other's mind, kept a keen lookout for a possible hostile act.
The jam did not break. After a day's work, it was still there, and apparently as firm as ever. The logs that had been released made no impression on it; progress was inappreciable. McKeever began to use dynamite, of which he had but a scanty supply. Logs, fragments of wood and bark, and columns of water shot up; but the jam remained—huge, brown, impassive. On the second day, twenty shots were fired at once. The jam quivered, groaned, began to move, heaved forward a few yards, and then stopped dead, two feet higher and a few hundred tons larger and heavier than before.
The dynamite being exhausted, the men went at it in the good old-fashioned, perilous way, picking out the logs one by one. McKeever himself, wise in the ways of logs and jams, took a peavey and led the assault. Tier after tier of timber was thrown down, and they burrowed into the maw of the monster, seeking the key logs. They did this for two days. At the end of that time it pulled again, and again it plugged. But McKeever thought he had found the spot. He altered his opinion at the close of another day.
The next morning, about ten o'clock, Mitchell and Driscoll found themselves side by side below the face of the jam. Driscoll clamped his peavey into a log and boosted, and boosted again, but failed to move it. Mitchell, without a word, took hold also, and the two strained every muscle.
The log moved, half turned, and then, without warning, the whole mass sprang to life. Up under their feet the heavy timbers heaved suddenly; above their heads the huge sticks shot forward, and began to fall. One moment there was an apparently immovable body. In a second it became magically an irresistible force. The jam roared and pulled; and this time it meant business.
Both men glanced upward, shoreward, and at each other, and sprang for safety with exceeding swiftness, but without haste. The moving logs were dotted with men doing likewise. They held their peavies across them at the waist, and bounded from log to log without pausing. Each contraction of the muscles was followed by another as automatically as the movement of a runner on level ground; and the effect was as if they spurned the rearing logs rather than gained a foothold with every leap.
Driscoll was slightly in front of Mitchell and nearer the breaking jam. Neither was thinking of the other at that moment. The eyes of each were fixed on a constantly shifting spot some six feet in front of him—the spot that respresented the take-off for another spring.
Suddenly a log up-ended in front of Driscoll. He was in the act of leaping, and could not check himself. His knees struck against it, and he fell. As he fell, the log rolled and nipped his leg against another. He tried to rise, but could not, and so he drew himself lengthwise on the log, and lay there, setting his teeth to meet the death that roared down upon him.
Mitchell, in his zigzag course, out of the tail of his eye, saw him go down. He balanced himself for an instant; and, as he saw his enemy struggle to rise and fall back, he grinned in triumph, and poised for a fresh spring.
The river had done the business without his help, after all. This, then, was Driscoll's finish! He had cheated the falling timber all winter; but he could not cheat the river that took its toll of life yearly. It was good enough for him, too. In a few ticks of a watch he would be battered to nothingness by the thundering logs. He would not have even a grave! Mitchell uttered the first note of a laugh; but suddenly it stuck in his throat.
Driscoll, lying on the log, clinging to it with his right arm, looked at Mitchell, raised his left hand, and put the thumb of it to his nose, the fingers outstretched in mocking, contemptuous farewell.
The very bravado of the act stirred Mitchell. The helplessness of his enemy made his triumph a poor thing, and he forgot the hate of months in involuntary admiration. After all, Driscoll knew how to die.
“By —— he's game!” Mitchell cried aloud.
His eye swept the blue sky, dotted with fleecy clouds; the budding green of the trees, the glint of the blue, water, and rested once more on the man lying helpless on the log. It was all in the instant as his muscles gathered under him, seeking his own safety. And then his triumphant grin vanished, his jaw set hard, and he leaped across the rearing logs toward the onrushing face of the jam.
Beneath his feet the big sticks surged, heaved, toppled over each other, and sank away. He was being swept downstream, as on the breast of an avalanche; and almost on top of him reared the crumbling crest of the brown monster, ready to engulf him. He reached Driscoll, dropped his peavey, stooped, threw him across his shoulders with a mighty heave, and, carrying this burden, staggered, somehow, ashore. Behind them, the jam, driven by the enormous force of water and its own released weight, thundered past.
Mitchell dumped Driscoll unceremoniously on the ground, and, without even looking at him, grabbed a fresh peavey and joined the crew, who were working furiously at the logs winged out by the rush. Not till night, when, tired and hungry, the men gathered at the tents, did he think again of him. Then McKeever touched him on the arm.
“Driscoll wants to see you, Mitchell,” he said.
Mitchell cursed Driscoll ferociously.
“Cut that out,” said the river boss. “Go and see the man. His leg is broke.”
Mitchell found Driscoll lying on blankets in a tent.
“Well, what do you want o' me?” he demanded sourly.
“I've quit, and I want to tell you so,” said Driscoll. “Maybe I ain't used you just right, Mitchell. We've had it in for each other, but that's over, far's I'm concerned. 'Tain't likely you'll let me thank you for what you done, but it was mighty white of you. You got sand.”
“I didn't know it was you,” said Mitchell untruthfully, much embarrassed. “Sand? Say, I ain't in it with you for nerve! How—how'd it be if we shook hands, Dinny?”
The next fall, Mitchell and Driscoll hired into the same camp, slept in the same bunk, and were inseparable chums. And now, though they have quit the shanties, their little backwoods farms adjoin; and in the evenings, when the tang of the fall frosts is in the air, and through the winter, when the white drifts are piled high and time is plenty on their hands, they visit back and forth, and become guardedly reminiscent of their more innocent exploits, to the pride and open-eyed wonder of their respective families. But they never, in the hearing of third persons, go back of the breaking of the jam on the Little Canoe, for they are both ashamed of what preceded it.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1960, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 64 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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