The polers were stationed on the booms—long logs fastened together—and by throwing their poles with the sharp, steel spikes into the floating logs would pull them along and so hasten their exit through the gate of the dam.
At four o’clock it was already dark, and it would be impossible to see clearly enough to work more than an hour longer—but the drive must be taken through; there could be no waiting until tomorrow. Hurry! hurry! were the orders. Rob, in his hurry, as he threw his weight upon a backward pull with his pick pole, suddenly felt his hold give way, and over he went backward into the river. Luckily, the logs were not running thickly where he came to the surface hatless, and that he was a strong swimmer, for a few strokes brought him to the boom and to possession again of his pole.
Oh, if he might go to the wangan camp, there before the logheap fire to wring out his streaming, freezing clothing and get back a little warmth into his stiffening limbs. But no! The logs must be run through the dam, and that at once. Every man was needed, and nothing short of death itself would be recognized by the boss as an excuse for failure to stay by the job. During the next hour Rob many times wondered if he would not be able to give that excuse and so escape from the misery of his position, as he labored clumsily in his freezing clothes.
Day by day the cooking outfit, with the sleeping blankets—one for each man—went down river ahead of the drivers as far as the day’s work would probably land them. It can be imagined that stores necessary for nearly two hundred men, to be carried by boats, would be of the simplest character—pork, flour, beans, syrup, and coffee, made the basis for the daily fare, but the five meals a day were eaten with a hearty relish by these strenuous toilers.
As a rule a dry spot was selected for the camping place, and big tents stretched for protection overhead, but the one blanket to the man and the bare ground for the bed, left something to be desired, even in dry weather. When, of necessity, the camping place was wet, and the weather freezing, the day suffering of the men was but a prelude to the real agony of the night. On this drive of which I write it happened that more than once the wet clothing of the Allen boys, in which they “slept,” was found to be frozen to the earth in the morning.
Running the river was no job for a weakling—such a one never undertook the experience the second time, nor long for the first time. It was work that told heavily upon the strongest of constitutions; few of these men lived to be old, the majority falling victims to pneumonia or tuberculosis.
A little below the third of the big dams the river cuts through a stretch of rocky country, ending in a rather steep rapids which have a drop of something like twenty feet. From the points of rock sticking out at almost regular intervals, across the stream, above the current in low water, the falls became known as “Squaw Walk Rapids.” Just below the rapids the river takes a sharp turn, and there, in the great, deep whirlpool was Dead Man’s Hole—a place believed by the rivermen to be sure to take its toll of human life each spring.
No log rider was so foolhardy as to attempt the passage over the rapids and through the whirlpool of his own will; few indeed—none, it was said—had made the trip in safety, having been caught in the fierce rush of the waters above, and drawn over the rapids on their logs.
The day had been clear, and, the depression of spirit caused by the days of suffering lifting, a spirit of roystering play and rough joking possessed the men. The polers, selecting small logs, just large enough to sustain their weights, were giving exhibitions of fancy riding in mid-stream.
A great shout of glee from Ed Allen caused Rob to look back up the river. There he saw, coming majestically down toward them, a great log upon which were seven or eight sackers, taking an unauthorized ride. But there was something in the program of that ride which they had not planned, for quickly, relentlessly, they were approaching a low-hanging “sweep”—a tree stretched out over the water. Frantically they paddled with their peaveys, striving to throw the course of the big log out into the stream away from the threatening danger, but without avail. The log struck the sweep, the momentum bending the body of the tree sharply—when, as the log rolled slightly, it was released, and with a lightning-like spring, as with a mighty hand the men were brushed off, helter-skelter into the river.