Rodburd Ide’s stout soul uttered no complaints when the two had locked themselves in the little back office of the store. But his mute distress and bewilderment in the face of calamity sanctioned by the law touched his young partner more than complaints would have done. The fighting spirit was gone out of the little man.
“I didn’t reckon it could go against us that bad, not after what the lawyer said. He seemed to know his business, Wade. But maybe he was too honest to fight a crowd like that. It’s a crusher to come after hopes was up like mine was. I even went to work the minute the ice slid down-river, and set our sheer-booms above the logan and got the sortin’-gap ready. I was that sure our logs were comin’ down. But it ain’t your fault, Wade, and it ain’t mine. It’s just as I told you once before. It’s what we’re up against!”
And then, striving for a pretext to end the doleful session, he invited Wade to walk up the river-bank. He wanted to show him the site for the new great mills. “They can’t steal that much away from me, my boy,” he said, trying to be cheerful. “The mills will have to buy out of the corporation drive this year, seeing that we’re coopered on our contract. That means so much more good profit for Britt and his crowd. They’ve got their smell of what’s comin’, too, and that’s probably why they fought so hard to get the injunction. They’re in for a big make and their own prices this year. But the more I know about that charter of the Great Independent the more trouble I can see for the old crowd when the next legislature gets to tearin’ this thing to pieces. The G. I.’s know what they’re doin’. They’ll have their rights. And when the big wagon starts little fellers like you and me can climb aboard and ride, too. But the big wagon won’t start till next year,” he added, sadly.
Out-of-doors they did not talk. The roar of the Hulling Machine dominated everything, and the spume-clouds swaying above it spat in their faces. On the platform of Ide’s store the pathetic brotherhood of the “It-’ll-git-ye Club” sat in silent conclave, stunned into a queer stupor by the bellow of the Hulling Machine, even as habitual opium-eaters succumb to the blissful influence of the drug.
Above the falls an island divided the river. On the channel side the waters raced turbulently. The island sentinelled the mouth of the logan that deeply indented the shore on the quiet side of the river. Ide had installed a system of sheer-booms. They spanned the current diagonally, and were to be the silent herders that would edge the log-flocks away from the banks, crowd them to centre at the sorting-gap, and keep them running free. Below the sorting-gap there were two sheer-booms—divergent. One ushered the down-river logs back into the current that dashed towards the Hulling Machine. The other would swing the logs of the Enchanted drive into the quiet holding-ground of the logan.
“‘WHAT I SAY ON THIS RIVER GOES!’”
The thought of the heaped logs in Blunder valley, the memory of the dynamite bellowing its farewell to him over the tree-tops, and now the spectacle of these empty booms, had the eloquence of despair and the pathos of failure for Dwight Wade. And as the two of them—he and his partner—stood there and gazed silently, they were forced to face bitter accentuation of their stricken fortunes. Pulaski D. Britt, master of the Umcolcus drive, came on his way north at the head of his men. It was an army marching with all its impedimenta. There were many huge bateaux swung upon trucks that had hauled them around the white-water. Men launched them into the eddy above the Hulling Machine, and began to load them with tents, cordage, and the wangan stores.
Rodburd Ide and his young partner stood at one side, and surveyed this scene of activity without speaking. And Britt marched up to them, raucous and domineering with the masterfulness of the river tyrant. It had long been the saying along the Umcolcus that Pulaski Britt got mad a week before the driving season opened, and stayed mad a week after it ended.