Was Foster hanging around the logging operation trying to get a chance at him or was he up to some other mischief? It did not seem likely that he was looking for him. Why should he come there where there were so many people when he could so very easily catch him out in the woods alone? No, he must be up to something else. And Scott determined that he would make it his business to find out what it was as soon as possible.
He watched all along the road for traces of the runaway team. At each turn in the road he expected to find them piled up against a tree or in the ditch, but although the road was badly scratched up in places as though they had stumbled or slipped badly they had evidently made it.
Some of the men whom he passed told him that the team had passed safely at that point and was going strong. When he came in sight of the landing beside the railroad track he spied the big blacks standing in a little bunch of men. Jimmy was rubbing them down and trying to soothe their ruffled nerves.
They were pretty well lathered up from the long run, and one of them had an ugly cut in his side but otherwise they seemed to be all right. They had left the road on the turn by the skidway and had run between two trees. The space had not been wide enough for the double-tree, and the sudden jerk had thrown one of the horses. Before they could untangle themselves from the broken harness the men had caught them.
“Better take them to the barn, Jimmy,” Scott said, when he had looked them over carefully and noticed their violently heaving flanks and trembling legs.
“I’ll take them over and doctor that cut and the harness,” Jimmy replied, “but I’ll have them out after lunch. If they had a run like that every day for a couple of weeks they might get down to where a fellow could handle them.” It was the second time they had run away with Jimmy, and he was getting a little peevish. He was afraid that they might endanger his reputation as the best teamster in the mountains.
Scott knew what was the matter. “Never mind, Jimmy, you are doing fine. Nobody else could handle them at all. Once you have trained them they will be the best team on the job.”
“They are that now,” Jimmy replied stoutly. “They have the record for coming down that mountain, anyway. By the way, did you get that guy who scared them?”
“No, we hadn’t any proof that he did it on purpose so we let him go.”
“I don’t need any proof,” Jimmy retorted angrily. “That’s the third time he’s tried it, and if I ever catch him around here again I’m going to lose a peavey in him.”