“Dynamite!” he repeated, in a tone of consternation. “You don’t mean to say——”
“I don’t mean to say anything,” was the crisp reply, as Bainbridge tied the leather lacings with a jerk, and reached for the other shoe. “I only know it sounded like dynamite to me, and people don’t usually set that off at three in the morning—for fun.”
John Tweedy delayed no longer. With an agility surprising in one so bulky, he fairly flung himself at the pile of outer garments lying on a near-by box, and when Bainbridge, a couple of minutes later, jerked open the door to plunge forth into the night, the stout man was close at his heels.
Quickly as they had acted, there were others equally swift. The windows of the big bunk house across the clearing glowed faintly, and they had no more than reached the open before the door was flung wide to eject a crowd of men fully dressed in the garb of the lumber country. They were headed by Griggs, foreman of the drive. Tall, lean, with a tanned, impassive countenance which betrayed nothing, he glanced for a second toward the approaching pair, and then fell into step with Bainbridge.
“Well?” queried the latter crisply. “What is it, Harvey? The dam?”
The foreman’s eyes narrowed, and, under the drooping lids, seemed to gleam dully.
“I don’t know what else,” he said. “Listen!”
For a second Bainbridge stood still, head thrust slightly forward in the direction of his foreman’s pointing finger. Behind him was the thud and clatter of men still pouring from the bunk house, mingled with the bustle of those already in the open, chafing at the delay, and impatient to reach the scene of action. The wind was blowing half a gale from the north, but above it all could be heard—faintly, intermittently—the distant, ominous roar of rushing water.
It brought Bob’s teeth together with a click, but not in time to cut off a savage exclamation. Then he turned and started down the slope toward the south, followed closely by the entire crowd.
The hillside was dotted thick with stumps and great piles of tops and “slashings.” The resinous, green, unwithered masses of pine branches, as well as the whiteness of stump ends and scattered chips, showed the cutting to have been lately done. It had, in fact, been completed scarcely a month before; the last load of timber had been sent down the short, narrow stream to Chebargo Lake within the past twelve hours. And at the thought of that great drive of logs, held in place by the many booms until the moment came for it to be sent down the river to the mills, Bob’s jaw hardened, and his face took on an expression of tense anxiety and suspense.