Toward dusk Welton entered the boarding house where Bob was sitting rather gloomily by the central stove. The big man plumped himself down into a protesting chair, and took off his slouch hat. Bob saw his low, square forehead with the peculiar1 hair, black and gray in streaks2, curling at the ends.
"Why don't you take a little trip with me up to the Cedar3 Branch?" he asked Bob without preamble4. "No use your going home right now. Your family's in Washington; and will be for a month or so yet."
Bob thought it over.
"Believe I will," he decided5 at last.
"Do so!" cried Welton heartily6. "Might as well see a little of the life. Don't suppose you ever went on a drive with your dad when you were a kid?"
"No," said Bob, "I used to go up to the booms with him--I remember them very well; but we moved up to Redding before I was old enough to get about much."
Welton nodded his great head.
"Good old days," he commented; "and let me tell you, your dad was one of the best of 'em. Jack7 Orde is a name you can scare fresh young rivermen with yet," he added with a laugh. "Well, pack your turkey to-night; we'll take the early train to-morrow."
That evening Bob laid out what he intended to take with him, and was just about to stuff it into a pair of canvas bags when Tommy Gould, the youngest scaler, pushed open the door.
"Hello!" he smiled engagingly; "where are you going? Been transferred from the office?"
"On drive," said Bob, diplomatically ignoring the last question.
Tommy sat down on the edge of the bed and laughed until he was weak. Bob stared at him.
"Is there anything funny?" he inquired at last.
"Did you say on drive?" inquired Tommy feebly.
"Certainly."
"With that?" Tommy pointed8 a wavering finger at the pile of duffle.
"What's the matter with it?" inquired Bob, a trifle uncertainly.
"Oh, _it's_ all right. Only wait till Roaring Dick sees it. I'd like to see his face."
"Look here, Tommy," said Bob with decision, "this isn't fair. I've never been on drive before, and you know it. Now tell me what's wrong or I'll wring9 your fool neck."
"You can't take all that stuff," Tommy explained, wiping his eyes. "Why, if everybody had all that mess, how do you suppose it would be carried?"
"I've only got the barest necessities," objected Bob.
"Spread out your pile," Tommy commanded. "There. Take those. Now forget the rest."
Bob surveyed the single change of underwear and the extra socks with comical dismay. Next morning when he joined Welton he discovered that individual carrying a tooth brush in his vest pocket and a pair of woolen10 socks stuffed in his coat. These and a sweater were his only baggage. Bob's "turkey," modest as it was, seemed to represent effete11 luxury in comparison.
"How long will this take?" he asked.
"The drive? About three weeks," Welton told him. "You'd better stay and see it. It isn't much of a drive compared with the old days; but in a very few years there won't be any drives at all."
They boarded a train which at the end of twenty minutes came to a stop. Bob and Welton descended12. The train moved on, leaving them standing13 by the track.
The remains14 of the forest, overgrown with scrub oak and popple thickets16 pushed down to the right of way. A road, deep with mud and water, beginning at this point, plunged17 into the wilderness18. That was all.
Welton thrust his hands in his pockets and splashed cheerfully into the ankle-deep mud. Bob shouldered his little bag and followed. Somehow he had vaguely19 expected some sort of conveyance20.
"How far is it?" he asked.
"Oh, ten or twelve miles," said Welton.
Bob experienced a glow of gratitude21 to the blithe22 Tommy Gould. What would he have done with that baggage out here in this lonesome wilderness of unbroken barrens and mud?
The day was beautiful, but the sun breaking through the skin of last night's freezing, softened23 the ground until the going was literally24 ankle-deep in slush. Welton, despite his weight, tramped along cheerfully in the apparently25 careless indifference26 of the skilled woods walker. Bob followed, but he used more energy. He was infinitely27 the older man's superior in muscle and endurance, yet he realized, with respect and admiration28, that in a long or difficult day's tramp through the woods Welton would probably hold him, step for step.
The road wound and changed direction entirely29 according to expedient30. It was a "tote road" merely, cutting across these barrens by the directest possible route. Deep mire31 holes, roots of trees, an infrequent boulder32, puddles33 and cruel ruts diversified34 the way. Occasional teeth-rattling stretches of "corduroy" led through a swamp.
"I don't see how a team can haul a load over this!" Bob voiced his marvel35, after a time.
"It don't," said Welton. "The supplies are all hauled while the ground is frozen. A man goes by hand now."
In the swamps and bottom lands it was a case of slip, slide and wallow. The going was trying on muscle and wind. To right and left stretched mazes36 of white popples and willows37 tangled38 with old berry vines and the abattis of the slashings. Water stood everywhere. To traverse that swamp a man would have to force his way by main strength through the thick growth, would have to balance on half-rotted trunks of trees, wade39 and stumble through pools of varying depths, crawl beneath or climb over all sorts of obstructions40 in the shape of uproots41, spiky42 new growths, and old tree trunks. If he had a gun in his hands, he would furthermore be compelled, through all the vicissitudes43 of making his way, to hold it always at the balance ready for the snap shot. For a ruffed grouse44 is wary45, and flies like a bullet for speed, and is up and gone almost before the roar of its wings has aroused the echoes. Through that veil of branches a man must shoot quickly, instinctively46, from any one of the many positions in which the chance of the moment may have caught him. Bob knew all about this sort of country, and his pulses quickened to the call of it.
"Many partridge?" he asked.
"Lots," replied Welton; "but the country's too confounded big to hunt them in. Like to hunt?"
"Nothing better," said Bob.
After a time the road climbed out of the swamp into the hardwoods, full of warmth and light and new young green, and the voices of many creatures; with the soft, silent carpet of last autumn's brown, the tiny patches of melting snow, and the pools with dead leaves sunk in them and clear surfaces over which was mirrored the flight of birds.
Welton puffed47 along steadily48. He did not appear to talk much, and yet the sum of his information was considerable.
"That road," he said, pointing to a dim track, "goes down to Thompson's. He's a settler. Lives on a little lake.
"There's a deer," he remarked, "over in that thicket15 against the hill."
Bob looked closely, but could see nothing until the animal bounded away, waving the white flag of its tail.
"Settlers up here are a confounded nuisance," went on Welton after a while. "They're always hollering for what they call their 'rights.' That generally means they try to hang up our drive. The average mossback's a hard customer. I'd rather try to drive nails in a snowbank than tackle driving logs through a farm country. They never realize that we haven't got time to talk it all out for a few weeks. There's one old cuss now that's making us trouble about the water. Don't want to open up to give us a fair run through the sluices49 of his dam. Don't seem to realize that when we start to go out, we've got to go out in a _hurry_, spite o' hell and low water."
He went on, in his good-natured, unexcited fashion, to inveigh50 against the obstinacy51 of any and all mossbacks. There was no bitterness in it, merely a marvel over an inexplicable52, natural phenomenon.
"Suppose you _didn't_ get all the logs out this year," asked Bob, at length. "Of course it would be a nuisance; but couldn't you get them next year?"
"That's the trouble," Welton explained. "If you leave them over the summer, borers get into them, and they're about a total loss. No, my son, when you start to take out logs in this country, you've got to _take them out!_"
"That's what I'm going in here for now," he explained, after a moment. "This Cedar Branch is an odd job we had to take over from another firm. It is an unimproved river, and difficult to drive, and just lined with mossbacks. The crew is a mixed bunch--some old men, some young toughs. They're a hard crowd, and one not like the men on the main drive. It really needs either Tally53 or me up here; but we can't get away for this little proposition. He's got Darrell in charge. Darrell's a good man on a big job. Then he feels his responsibility, keeps sober and drives his men well. But I'm scared he won't take this little drive serious. If he gets one drink in him, it's all off!"
"I shouldn't think it would pay to put such a man in charge," said Bob, more as the most obvious remark than from any knowledge or conviction.
"Wouldn't you?" Welton's eyes twinkled. "Well, son, after you've knocked around a while you'll find that every man is good for something somewhere. Only you can't put a square peg54 in a round hole."
"How much longer will the high water last?" asked Bob.
"Hard to say."
"Well, I hope you get the logs out," Bob ventured.
"Sure we'll get them out!" replied Welton confidently. "We'll get them out if we have to go spit in the creek55!" With which remark the subject was considered closed.
About four o'clock of the afternoon they came out on a low bluff56 overlooking a bottom land through which flowed a little stream twenty-five or thirty feet across.
"That's the Cedar Branch," said Welton, "and I reckon that's one of the camps up where you see that smoke."
They deserted57 the road and made their way through a fringe of thin brush to the smoke. Bob saw two big tents, a smouldering fire surrounded by high frames on which hung a few drying clothes, a rough table, and a cooking fire over which bubbled tremendous kettles and fifty-pound lard tins suspended from a rack. A man sat on a cracker58 box reading a fragment of newspaper. A boy of sixteen squatted59 by the fire.
This man looked up and nodded, as Welton and his companion approached.
"Where's the drive, doctor?" asked the lumberman.
"This is the jam camp," replied the cook. "The jam's upstream a mile or so. Rear's back by Thompson's somewheres."
"Is there a jam in the river?" asked Bob with interest. "I'd like to see it."
"There's a dozen a day, probably," replied Welton; "but in this case he just means the head of the drive. We call that the 'jam.'"
"I suppose Darrell's at the rear?" Welton asked the cook.
"Yep," replied that individual, rising to peer into one of his cavernous cooking utensils60.
"Who's in charge here?"
"Larsen"
"H'm," said Welton. "Well," he added to himself, "he's slow, safe and sure, anyway."
He led the way to one of the tents and pulled aside the flap. The ground inside was covered by a welter of tumbled blankets and clothes.
"Nice tidy housekeeping," he grinned at Bob. He picked out two of the best blankets and took them outside where he hung them on a bush and beat them vigorously.
"There," he concluded, "now they're ours."
"What about the fellows who had 'em before?" inquired Bob.
"They probably had about eight apiece; and if they hadn't they can bunk61 together."
Bob walked to the edge of the stream. It was not very wide, yet at this point it carried from three to six or eight feet of water, according to the bottom. A few logs were stranded62 along shore. Two or three more floated by, the forerunners63 of the drive. Bob could see where the highest water had flung debris64 among the bushes, and by that he knew that the stream must be already dropping from its freshet.
It was now late in the afternoon. The sun dipped behind a cold and austere65 hill-line. Against the sky showed a fringe of delicate popples, like spray frozen in the rise. The heavens near the horizon were a cold, pale yellow of unguessed lucent depths, that shaded above into an equally cold, pale green. Bob thrust his hands in his pockets and turned back to where the drying fire, its fuel replenished66, was leaping across the gathering67 dusk.
Immediately after, the driving crews came tramping in from upstream. They paid no attention to the newcomers, but dove first for the tent, then for the fire. There they began to pull off their lower garments, and Bob saw that most of them were drenched68 from the waist down. The drying racks were soon steaming with wet clothes.
Welton fell into low conversation with an old man, straight and slender as a Norway pine, with blue eyes, flaxen hair, eyebrows69 and moustache. This was Larsen, in charge of the jam, honest, capable in his way, slow of speech, almost childlike of glance. After a few minutes Welton rejoined Bob.
"He's a square peg, all right," he muttered, more to himself than to his companion. "He's a good riverman, but he's no river boss. Too easy-going. Well, all he has to do is to direct the work, luckily. If anything really goes wrong, Darrell would be down in two jumps."
"Grub pile!" remarked the cook conversationally70.
The men seized the utensils from a heap of them, and began to fill their plates from the kettles on the table.
"Come on, bub," said Welton, "dig in! It's a long time till breakfast!"
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1
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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cedar
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| n.雪松，香柏(木) | |
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preamble
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| n.前言；序文 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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wring
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| n.扭绞；v.拧，绞出，扭 | |
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woolen
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| adj.羊毛(制)的；毛纺的 | |
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effete
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| adj.无生产力的，虚弱的 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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thicket
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| n.灌木丛，树林 | |
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thickets
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| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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conveyance
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| n.(不动产等的)转让，让与；转让证书；传送；运送；表达；（正）运输工具 | |
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gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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blithe
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| adj.快乐的，无忧无虑的 | |
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softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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expedient
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| adj.有用的，有利的；n.紧急的办法，权宜之计 | |
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mire
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| n.泥沼，泥泞；v.使...陷于泥泞，使...陷入困境 | |
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boulder
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| n.巨砾；卵石，圆石 | |
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puddles
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| n.水坑， （尤指道路上的）雨水坑( puddle的名词复数 ) | |
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diversified
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| adj.多样化的，多种经营的v.使多样化，多样化( diversify的过去式和过去分词 )；进入新的商业领域 | |
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marvel
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| vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异；n.令人惊异的事 | |
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mazes
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| 迷宫( maze的名词复数 )； 纷繁复杂的规则； 复杂难懂的细节； 迷宫图 | |
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willows
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| n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木 | |
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tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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wade
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| v.跋涉，涉水；n.跋涉 | |
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obstructions
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| n.障碍物( obstruction的名词复数 )；阻碍物；阻碍；阻挠 | |
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uproots
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| v.把（某物）连根拔起( uproot的第三人称单数 )；根除；赶走；把…赶出家园 | |
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spiky
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| adj.长而尖的，大钉似的 | |
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vicissitudes
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| n.变迁，世事变化；变迁兴衰( vicissitude的名词复数 )；盛衰兴废 | |
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grouse
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| n.松鸡；v.牢骚，诉苦 | |
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wary
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| adj.谨慎的，机警的，小心的 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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puffed
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| adj.疏松的v.使喷出( puff的过去式和过去分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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49
sluices
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| n.水闸( sluice的名词复数 )；（用水闸控制的）水；有闸人工水道；漂洗处v.冲洗( sluice的第三人称单数 )；（指水）喷涌而出；漂净；给…安装水闸 | |
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50
inveigh
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| v.痛骂 | |
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51
obstinacy
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| n.顽固；（病痛等）难治 | |
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52
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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53
tally
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| n.计数器，记分，一致，测量；vt.计算，记录，使一致；vi.计算，记分，一致 | |
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54
peg
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| n.木栓，木钉；vt.用木钉钉，用短桩固定 | |
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creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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bluff
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| v.虚张声势，用假象骗人；n.虚张声势，欺骗 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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cracker
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| n.（无甜味的）薄脆饼干 | |
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squatted
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的过去式和过去分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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utensils
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| 器具，用具，器皿( utensil的名词复数 )； 器物 | |
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bunk
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| n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位；废话 | |
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stranded
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| a.搁浅的，进退两难的 | |
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forerunners
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| n.先驱( forerunner的名词复数 )；开路人；先兆；前兆 | |
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debris
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| n.瓦砾堆，废墟，碎片 | |
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austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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replenished
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| 补充( replenish的过去式和过去分词 )； 重新装满 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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69
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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conversationally
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| adv.会话地 | |
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