There were men of the crew who heard an unwonted sound in the midnight hush of the Enchanted camp. It was a dull, heavy, earth-thudding noise that swept down from the north over the tree-tops and travelled on through the forest. Men awoke and asked themselves what had awakened them, and went to sleep again, and knew not what it meant.
Wade did not hear the sound. Exhaustion had fettered his senses when he crawled into his bunk in the office camp. What he did hear, as he roused himself in the gray of early dawn to set his hand to the desperate task he was resolved upon, was the splattering rush of a horse’s feet in the spring ooze of the tote road and a human voice that shrieked, hysterically: “Man the river, damn ye! Man the river!”
It was Tommy Eye. He was crouched on the back of his horse when the men came tumbling out. His little eyes were like fire-points. The wattles of his neck were blood-gorged. He spat froth as he raved at them.
“Man the river, I tell ye! She’s b’ilin’ full from bank to bank. Ben Rodliff’s injunction busted to blazes and the Enchanted drive started slam-whoopin’, and it’s me that’s done it!”
“You hellion, have you blowed Blunder dam?” shouted the chopping-boss, while Dwight Wade was still gasping for words.
“Blowed Blunder dam!” shrieked Tommy, “Why, I’ve blowed Blunder dam so high that Ben Rodliff’s injunction can’t get to it in a balloon. I’ve blowed a gouge ten feet deep in the bed-rock. I’ve let the innards out of Blunder Lake. She’s runnin’ valley-full, ice-cakes dancin’ jigs on the black water! And when they ask who done it, tell ’em it was me—Tommy Eye, the outlaw! Tommy Eye, with a two-hoss load of canned thunder!” He tried to shake his fists above his head, but groaned, and one arm dropped as though it were helpless. Blood was caked on his hand and wrist. He did not wait for Wade to ask the question.
“It’s the pay I got for wakin’ ’em up in time to run, Mr. Wade. I give ’em a chance. They give me a thirty-thirty! They’d have give me more if they could have shot straighter. I’m an outlaw, but there ain’t no blood on my head, Mr. Wade.”
He slid off the horse and staggered towards the cook camp.
“Gimme mine in my hand, cook!” he called. “I’ll eat it while I’m runnin’. For it’s man the river, boys!”
And the rest of them ate running, too. Wade led them, determined that no one should head him in the race. He heard the husky breathing of the hundred runners at his back when he swept around the granite dome of Enchanted and came in view of the valley. They stopped, panting, and surveyed the scene for a moment. They saw the tumbling waters, yeasty and brown. They heard the groan and grunt of dissolving log-piles as the fierce tide tore at them and bore away the logs. And each man took a new grip on his cant-dog handle and loped on.