style="font-size:15px;"> “Some of the boys and I have been wondering how you contrived to finance the thing,” he said.
Nasmyth smiled, though there was just a trace of darker colour in his face. “Well,” he replied, “one can get tolerably long credit from most of the Bush stores, and Clipton has let me have provisions for the boys on quite reasonable terms. Besides, as it happens, there is money in the family. There was a time when one might have considered it almost the duty of certain relatives of mine to give me a lift, but I didn’t offer them the opportunity. I came out here and set about driving cows and chopping trees instead.”
“You felt you’d sooner cut your hand off than give them a gentle hint,” remarked Gordon. “It’s not an uncommon feeling, but, when you give way to it, it clears the other people. Won’t you go on?”
“When I undertook this affair, I laid the opportunity before them, and one–the last I expected anything of that kind from–sent me out a draft. He kindly pointed out that there appeared to be in me certain capabilities, which he had never supposed I possessed, and added that, if I ever really succeeded in building a dam or anything else useful, he would be pleased to take a share in my next venture. In the meanwhile, he would charge me interest on the amount of that draft. Perhaps I may mention that the man in question was naturally the one the rest of them rather looked down upon.”
Gordon laughed. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I like that, naturally. I guess you would have taken their view of him once. Well, since you can put your pride in your pocket, you’re evidently growing. There’s just one way of putting anything through here, and that’s to take hold and hang right on, no matter what it costs. I guess there’s one of the boys wanting you.”
A man stood knee-deep in the river waving his hand. Nasmyth rose and stretched himself.
“They seem to want me all the time from sun-up until it’s dark,” he said. “In one way it’s a little curious, since there’s reason to believe that most of them know a good deal more about what we’re doing than I do myself. You’ll excuse me.”
Gordon smiled as his comrade strode away. He was one who had studied human nature, and because he was well acquainted with the Bushman’s capabilities, he knew that there were also limitations to them. Even in such matters as the splitting of hard rock and the driving of massive piles into the river-bed, the higher intelligence of the man of intellect had its effect. Gordon smoked his pipe out as he watched Nasmyth flounder into the stream among the other men, pushing a little car loaded with broken rock that apparently ran along a submerged track. Then he strolled back toward the settlement.
Nasmyth toiled on in the river until the camp-cook hammered upon a suspended iron sheet as a signal that supper was ready. The summons was answered without delay. With the water running from their clothing Nasmyth and his men went back to the little log shanty. One or two changed their dripping garments, but the rest left their clothes to dry upon them, as their employer did. When the plentiful, warm supper had been eaten, Nasmyth went back to the little hut that served him as store and sleeping quarters. A big, grizzled man from Mattawa, Ontario, went in with him, and lounged upon the table while he sat in his bunk, which was filled with fresh spruce twigs.
“I’m pretty well played out, and if I’m to work to-morrow, I’ve got to sleep to-night,” said Nasmyth.
The grizzled axeman nodded. “Well,” he volunteered, “I’ll stand watch. I was in the last two nights, and I guess it’s up to me to see you through. We’re going to have trouble, if one of those big logs fetches up across the sluiceway. The river’s full of them, and she’s risen ’most a foot since sun-up.”
Nasmyth held up one hand, and both heard the deep roar of frothing water that came in with the smell of the firs through the open door. The Bush was very still outside, and that hoarse, throbbing note flung back by the rock slope and climbing pines filled the valley. Nasmyth smiled grimly, for it was suggestive of the great forces against which he had pitted his puny strength. Then there was a crash, and, a few moments later, a curious thud, and both men listened, intent and strung up, until the turmoil of the river rose alone again.
“A big log,” said the older man. “She has gone through the run. Guess we’ll get one by-and-by long enough to jamb. Now, if you’d run out those wing-frames I was stuck on, she’d have took them straight through, every one.”
“The trouble was that I hadn’t the money, Mattawa,” said Nasmyth dryly.
His companion nodded, for this was a trouble he could understand. “Well,” he answered, “when you haven’t got it you have to face the consequences. I’ll roust you out if a big log comes along.”
Mattawa went out, and soon afterwards Nasmyth, whose clothes were now partly dry, lay down, dressed as he was, in his twig-packed bunk, with his pipe in his hand. It was growing a little colder, and a keen air, which had in it the properties of an elixir, blew in, but that was a thing Nasmyth scarcely noticed, and the dominant roar of the river held his attention. He wondered again why he had been drawn into the conflict with it, or, rather, why he had permitted Laura Waynefleet to set him such a task, and the answer that it was because he desired to hold her good opinion, and, as he had said, to do her credit, did not seem to go far enough. It merely suggested the further question why he should wish to keep her friendship. Still, there was no disguising the fact that, once he had undertaken the thing, it had got hold of him, and he felt he must go on until his task was successfully accomplished or he was crushed and beaten. It seemed very likely, then, that utter defeat would be his fate. While he pondered, the pipe fell from his hand, and the river’s turmoil rang in deep pulsations through his dreams. He was awakened suddenly by a wet hand on his shoulder, and, scrambling out of his bunk on the instant, he saw Mattawa with a lantern in his hand.
“Log right across the sluice-run,” said the watcher. “More coming along behind it. They’ll sure get piling up.”
Nasmyth did not remember that he gave any directions when he sprang, half asleep, out of the shanty. The roar of water had a different note in it, and the clangour of the iron sheet one of the men was pounding rang out harshly. A half-moon hung above the black pines, and dimly-seen men were flitting like shadows toward the waterside. They appeared to know what it was advisable to do, but they stopped just a moment on the edge of the torrent, for which nobody could have blamed them. The water, streaked with smears of froth and foam, swirled by, and there was a tumultuous white seething where the flood boiled across the log in the midst of the stream. The log blocked the gap left open to let the driftwood through, and, as Nasmyth knew, great trees torn up in distant valleys were coming down with the flood. It seemed to him that he could not reasonably have expected to clear that obstacle with a battalion of log-drivers, and he had only a handful of weary men. Still the men went in, floundering knee-deep in the flood, along the submerged pile of stone and clutching at the piles that bound it to save themselves when the stream threatened to sweep their feet from under them, until they came to the gap where the great tree, rolling in the grip of the torrent, thrashed its grinding branches against the stone.
Then, though it was difficult to see how a man of them found a foothold, or kept it on the heaving trunk, the big axes flashed and fell, while a few shadowy figures ran along the top of the log to attack the massy butt across the opening. It would have been arduous labour in daylight and at low-water, but these were men who had faced the most that flood and frost could do. They set about their task in the dark, for that land would have been a wilderness still if the men in it had shown themselves unduly careful of either life or limb.
The great branches yielded beneath the glinting blades, and went on down river again, but Nasmyth, who felt the axe-haft slip in his greasy hands, did not try to lead. It was sufficient if he could keep pace with the rest of the wood-choppers, which was, after all, a thing most men, reared as he had been, would certainly not have
