“Here comes Hoss, fellers. Give him the stage. We’s only the awjence now;” and the boys, with much jesting and make-believe ceremony, made way for the old “giant-powder deacon,” as they called him. Hoss carried his grotesque sky-rocket with the business end held before him. He walked out on the slippery logs easily, inspecting the conglomeration with an apparently casual eye. Presently he hitched one suspender, rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, and inserted the dynamite in a crevice between the logs, pushing it down slowly with the sapling. He fumbled with the fuse a minute, and then hastened to shore.
Swickey, kneeling, snapped the camera as the rock beneath her trembled, and up rose a geyser of brown foam and logs, pieces of logs, splinters, bark, and stones. The jam moved forward, hesitated, and locked again. A second and third shot produced no apparent effect.
“Three times and out,” said Harrigan. “Hey, Andy! Where’s Andy Slocum?”
“Over talkin’ to Hoss,” said a driver, as he went for a new peavey. His was at the bottom of the river, pinched from his hands by two herculean pine fingers.
“Thought that last shot would fetch her,” said Harrigan, as he came up to Slocum and Avery. “But she’s got her back up. Now, see if you can coax her along, my buck. She didn’t even smile when Hoss persented his bokay.”
Avery grinned. “Thet’s right. I was just tellin’ Andy mebby if he was to go out and sing to her, she might walk right along a’ter him like thet gal up in—”
But the rest of what promised to be of entertainment to the boys remained untold. Slocum skirmished among the men, quietly picking out six of them to go with him and “loosen her up.”
They strode deliberately out on the logs, laughing and talking. Swickey noticed that Joe Smeaton was one of those chosen.
They tried timber after timber, working carefully. There was a directness and unity in their movements that showed they meant to “pick her or bust,” as Avery expressed it. Swickey, pale and trembling so that she could scarcely hold the camera steady enough to find the men, followed with glowing eyes the little band as they moved from spot to spot. Their evident peril reacted on her till even she, used to such things, felt like calling to them to come back. She felt rather than saw their danger. Presently Slocum and Joe Smeaton were working shoulder to shoulder. Smeaton paused to wipe his face on his sleeve. Evidently he said something, for Andy Slocum laughed.
“They’s goin’ to fetch her,” said Avery, as he came to where his daughter stood.