The slogan of Flagg men was, “Gangway for the girl!”
They had taken up her cause; they had enrolled themselves with a perfect abandon of all considerations of self; for them, getting down that timber was merely a means to a much-desired end.
They were recklessly determined to help the girl make good! That was the urgeful sentiment which their thoughts inscribed on the invisible oriflamme of the warfare that was waged for the new Joan along the waters of the Noda.
It was not especially because she was the granddaughter of Echford Flagg. His wages had never bought more than perfunctory service from crews. She was herself—and she had confessed her debts.
When she told them why she was wearing Latisan’s cap and jacket, when she owned to her error and laid the blame on herself, when she pleaded with them to help her in undoing the bitter mischief, she won a devotion that questioned nothing.
“Men, he will come back. He will understand it all when he is himself again. And if you and I are able to show him that we have done his work well he will hold up his head once more as he has a right to do.”
“God bless ye, girl, ye can’t keep yourself apart from Latisan in this thing,” declared an old man. “It’s for the two o’ ye that we do our work from now on! And it’s for all of us, as well! For we’ll ne’er draw happy breaths till we can stand by and see you meet him on the level—eye to eye—like one who has squared all accounts between you two! And the old grands’r, as well. What say, boys?”
But cheers could not serve their emotions then. They pulled off their caps and scrubbed their rough hands across their jackets and walked to her in single file and shook her hand in pregnant silence.
And then the timber went through; the drive was beating all the past records.
When they needed water they took it. They blew their own dams and were very careless with dynamite when they came upon other dams of whose ownership they were not so sure.