“No, that wouldn’t do. Some of them are going to their blankets already. To-morrow night—when the jam is broken—we’ll have a celebration. I’ll sing to them myself.”
“If it is broken!”
“Now, Joe,” she reproved him severely, “you brace up. We’re going to break that jam to-morrow; and we’re going to deliver our logs on time, and don’t you dare to even think we’re not. I tell you we are! Don’t get discouraged, for we’re going to win out.”
“You’re a good booster, Jack” he said, smothering a sigh. “Of course we are. And once we get through here we’ll have plain sailing.”
He pressed her hand gratefully. It was something to receive encouragement, even if it was plainly labelled, and he would not be so ungracious as to tell her so. Crooks loomed out of the darkness and called for his team. Half an hour afterward Joe was the only man awake in camp, and he drifted into slumber with the memory of the soft touch of Jack’s lips as they lay for a moment on his.
In the morning the jam was sown with dynamite, planted deep beneath the logs at points approved by McKenna. Crooks and Jack arrived. The men came ashore and waited anxiously.
Almost simultaneously, columns of water, strips of bark and twisted, riven wood shot high in the air, and the detonations thundered back from the rocks. A rumbling growl issued from the inwards of the wooden monster. It heaved and rose. Logs toppled down the face of it, and then the whole front cascaded in wild confusion. Just when it seemed that the whole thing must go motion ceased. The shaggy, bristling brute settled back into immobility. The shots had failed.
Bosses and men swore fervently. These continued failures were blots on their records as rivermen. Their employer needed those logs badly, and it was up to them not to disappoint him. The jam was big and ugly, but it must be broken. Doggedly they climbed out on the logs again and set to work.
When the jam failed to “pull,” Kent looked at Jack, reading the bitter disappointment in her face. Somehow it helped him to conceal his own.
“Better luck next time, girlie,” he said. “Anyway, we made a lot of noise.”