A train was going down that afternoon at five, and Dale and Owen were set at work with the rest of the gang, loading the trucks with eight long sticks, five and six feet in diameter, that were wanted for some special purpose by a mill down the river. The sticks, each seventy-five feet long, were winched up on the trucks, and there fastened by big chains, so that none of them might slip while rounding the sharp curves. The fastening of three of these chains was left to Dale and Owen, and they performed this duty exactly as they saw the others doing the work.
"I can tell you what, there is some weight to those logs," remarked Owen, when the stick train was ready to start. "If anything breaks loose on the trip, something will get smashed."
"Are you young fellows going down?" asked one of the train hands.
"Yes," answered both.
"All right then, hop on. And to pay for the trip, suppose you take a hand at one of the brakes?" And the man grinned.
"We can do that, too," said Dale promptly. "Where do you want us to go?"
"You can take this brake, and Webb can take the next. Old No. 1 aint good for much any more, and we have to hold up for her all we can." He referred to the locomotive, which had seen its best days, and should have been on the scrap heap instead of trying to haul a load or hold it back.
The line ran in the shape of the letter S, with a long, graceful curve at the top, and a sharper curve at the bottom, where the roadbed ran along the edge of a rocky gully. The grade was up hill and down, and the track was a single one with six switches, used not alone for turning out, but also for loading.
It had been showering, and although the sun was now shining once more, the tracks were still wet and slippery. Here and there the tree branches overhung in such a fashion that a person riding on the trucks had often to duck to avoid getting struck by them.
"Don't let a limb hit you and knock you off," was Owen's final word of caution, and then the whistle of the locomotive tooted, and with a creak and a groan the log train started on its journey over the hills and down to the yard below.