Light saw the crew at work. There was nothing fancy about the structure which MacNutt planned. It was built entirely of logs. Holes were blown in the bed of the river at intervals of a few feet, and in these were set buttress-logs slanted sharply upstream to back the timbers when the weight of the water should come against them. These things took time—days of the hardest kind of toil—but the impromptu dam was finally completed, even to the construction of a short slide to run the logs to the free water below.
The river rose and backed up. The newly laid timbers groaned and complained. Now and then a startling crack made Joe’s heart leap.
“Will she hold, Mac?” he asked anxiously.
“She’s got to hold,” said the foreman grimly. “I don’t mean she’s a permanent job; she ain’t. If she’ll last till we get through we’ll blow her to glory.”
“Why?” asked Joe.
“Because if we don’t she may go out herself or some skunk may blow her for us when we’re downstream. Half of us might be drowned and the logs winged out into the bush.”
But the jury-rig held. The water mounted higher and higher. Booms were strung, forming a funnel of which the sluiceway was the outlet. These also served to keep the weight of floating timber off the dam structure.
Satisfied with the strength of his work, MacNutt hurried up stream. Many of the logs were afloat, moving sullenly; others were beginning to rock in the rising water. The men were working hard and steadily, with concentrated energy. Their peavies clanked regularly, and the logs twirled out of their resting places and trundled into the stream. Still the river rose, and MacNutt judged that it was high enough. Fearful for the strength of his dam he made an outlet by the simple expedient of knocking a few timbers loose. The water held at the new level.
Down by the dam the herd of logs thickened and packed tight. The boom strained with their pressure. It was manned by men with long pike poles. They pushed here, restrained there, feeding the slide constantly and evenly, so that a nearly solid stream of timber shot through it into the good water below. When darkness fell, huge fires were lighted on the banks and the sluicing continued. Half the crew turned in immediately after supper; the other half kept the logs going. At two o’clock in the morning they shifted. By noon the last logs shot through. Then came the wanegan.
MacNutt picked half a dozen men. “Throw her down little by little, boys,” he ordered. “Don’t be in a hurry, and don’t use powder till there’s no danger of a wave hitting us. We want a head of water, but not too much of it. The river’s rising now.”