Connie Morgan in the Lumber Camps

by James B. Hendryx

"If I go over the road there'll be others that goes too. There's them in Minneapolis that holds their nose pretty high that's into this as deep as me. An' if I kin knock a few years offen my own time, by turnin' State's evidence, yer kin bet yer life I'll spill a mouthful." Suddenly he turned on Connie: "An' you," he screamed, "you dirty little double-crosser! What be you gittin' out of this?"

"Well," answered the boy, "as soon as the crew out there on the rollways get the red block-and-ball in good honest paint on the ends of those logs, I'll get quite a lot out of it. You see I own the timber."

HURLEY HAD REMAINED AT THE UPPER CAMP, AND AS THE DRIVE AT LAST BEGAN TO THIN OUT, HE CAME FLOATING DOWN, STANDING ERECT UPON A HUGE LOG.

Just at daylight the following morning the Dogfish River burst its prison of ice and "let go" with a rush and a grind of broken cakes; breakfast was bolted, and the men of the drive swarmed to the bank where they stood by to break-out the rollways as soon as the logs from the upper Camp began to thin out. Connie stood beside the big bateau with the cook and John Grey and watched Camp Two's drive rush past—a floating floor of logs that spanned the river from bank to bank. Hurley had remained at the upper Camp and as the drive at last began to thin out, he came floating down, standing erect upon a huge log. When opposite the camp the big boss leaped nimbly from log to log until he reached the bank, where Saginaw stood ready to order out the breaking out of the first rollway. Many of the men of the upper drive had passed, riding as Hurley had done upon logs—others straggled along the shore, watching to see that no trouble started at the bends, and still others formed the rear drive whose business it was to keep the stranded logs and the jill-pokes moving.

So busy were all hands watching the logs that nobody noticed the manacled Slue Foot crawl stealthily from the bateau and slip to the river's brink. A big log nosed into shore and the former boss of Camp Two leaped onto it, his weight sending it out into the current. The plan might have worked, for the next bend would have thrown Slue Foot's log to the opposite bank of the river before any one could possibly have interfered, but luck willed otherwise, for the moment the unfortunate Slue Foot chose as the moment of his escape was the same moment Saginaw Ed gave the word for the breaking-out of the first rollway. There was a sharp order, a few well-directed blows of axes, a loud snapping of toggle-pins, and with a mighty roar the towering pile of logs shot down the steep bank and took the river with a splash that sent a wave of water before it.

Then it was that the horrified spectators saw Slue Foot, his log caught in the wave, frantically endeavouring to control, with his calked boots, its roll and pitch. For a moment it seemed as if he might succeed, but the second rollway let go and hurtled after the first, and then the third, and the fourth—rolling over each other, forcing the tumbling, heaving, forefront farther and farther into the stream, and nearer and nearer to Slue Foot's wildly pitching log. By this time word had passed to the men at the rollways and the fifth was held, but too late to save Slue Foot, for a moment later the great brown mass of rolling tumbling logs reached him, and before the eyes of the whole crew, the boss of Camp Two disappeared for ever, and the great brown mass rolled on.

"Mebbe ut's best," said Hurley, as with a shudder he turned away, "'tis a man's way to die—in the river—an' if they's an-ny wan waitin' fer him um back there, they'll think he died loike a man." In the next breath he bellowed an order and the work of the rollways went on.