“I’m Bob Bainbridge,” he said, in a crisp, unemotional tone, which was in odd contrast to the sense of tension just passed. “We’ve wasted entirely too much time jawing, and it’s up to you boys to get a move on. That jam’s got to be started before sundown. Understand? Now, where’s the jam boss, Jack Peters?”
“Laid up,” explained one of the men, after a moment’s hesitation. “He got his foot near cut off with an ax.”
Bainbridge’s eves narrowed. This would be termed an accident, of course, but there was no doubt in his mind that it was simply another score to the credit of Schaeffer and the men who had bribed him to do his dirty work.
“Humph!” he shrugged. “Where’s your dynamite, then? Oh, you’re the one, are you? Well, get your stuff down to the jam in a hurry. How many charges have been fired already?”
With downcast eyes the riverman explained that dynamite had not yet been used. Bob’s lips curled.
“I might have guessed it,” he said scornfully. “Well, hustle along the canned thunder! The rest of you get ready to follow down the drive.”
The men obeyed without question, and in a moment were streaming toward the jam. Besides command in Bainbridge’s voice, there was optimistic confidence which stirred these rough-and-ready river hogs. Because Schaeffer ordered it they had dawdled along fruitlessly for several days, knowing perfectly well that the jam was beyond any hope from picking, and that dynamite was the only thing which would stir it. Superficially they had enjoyed these days of loafing, but deep down in their hearts had lingered a feeling of personal shame that a gang of supposedly A-1 lumberjacks should be knowingly throwing away their time in this manner.
The youngster with the bold blue eyes and curly yellow hair went with the rest, but more slowly, perhaps, and biting his lip as he strode away. His face was flushed darkly ad his muscular hands tightly clenched at the thought of having allowed himself to be called down in this humiliating manner, without even a word of retort. Even now he did not know why he had done it. The fact that the newcomer was Bob Bainbridge was not a thing entirely to influence his independent soul. There was something else—some quality in the man himself that had made him knuckle down as he had never done before.
Puzzled, chagrined, scowling blackly, he slouched after his comrades, hands thrust deep in trousers pockets, and feet kicking at roots or hummocks—for all the world like a spoiled, sullen schoolboy.
Bainbridge was, by this time, utterly oblivious to the man’s very existence. He had thrust from his mind every thought save the immediate pressing need of starting the jam, and to this end he bent every effort.