“Ward—Ward and McClung, two of my best men—chums,” Joe told her bitterly. “I wouldn’t have—Jack! Jack, look there!”
Strung along the jam as the men were when it pulled, some of them had no direct route for shore. Among these were McKenna, Dave Cottrell, and Hill and Laflamme of Deever’s crew. The last three were noted “white water birlers,” experts upon logs under any and all conditions, and McKenna, the old walking boss, in his best days had never found a man who could put him off a stick of pine.
When the jam began to pull they were opposite a stretch of rocky bank that offered no way of escape.
“Boys,” said McKenna, “it’s a bad chance, but we’ve got to take it—we’ve got to ride her down.”
As he spoke the log on which he stood pitched sideways beneath him. He left it as a bird leaves a bough, alighting on another, and ran the tossing mass downstream. Cottrell, active as a squirrel, kept close to him. Hill and Laflamme, too, kept together but without premeditation, for each instinctively took the course that looked best to him. They dodged over and across the up-ending, smashing timbers, avoiding death at each spring by the thickness of a hair. It was this sight which had caused Joe Kent’s exclamation.
Hill was the first to go. Just once he miscalculated by the fraction of an inch. He disappeared without a sound. Laflamme, just behind him, sprang across the spot where his companion had been, his eyes widening, his teeth bared and set, his gaudy voyageur’s sash streaming from his waist, a bright flag fluttering in the face of destruction. Suddenly an up-ending log brushed his thigh. It was little, but it threw him from his stride. His shriek soared high above the roar of wood and water as the great logs nipped out his life.
Neither McKenna nor Cottrell looked back, though they heard the cry. Their own case was too perilous. A log thrust up suddenly beneath Cottrell’s feet and threw him into the air as if he had been shot from a springboard. He alighted on his feet again by the purest of luck, and seeing an opening of water and a free log, leaped on it, whence he made his way to shore. McKenna, dead-beat, gained the outlying logs and fell as he reached solid earth.
Behind them the jam swept by in tossing, foaming grandeur, the backed-up water scouring all before it. McKenna staggered to his feet and waved a gaunt arm.
“Into her, boys, and keep her hustling!” he shouted.
But MacNutt and Deever were already on their way upstream. Tobin and his crew attacked the outlying logs and flung them into the current. Soon the channel was brown with the shooting sticks, flashing by in the racing water.