"Git out av me road," cried the big Irishman, "befoor Oi put a shtick av giant in under ye an' blow ye out!" Long Leaf backed away and, proceeding to a point opposite the jam, Hurley seated himself upon a log, and calmly filled his pipe.
"If you think you're bossin' this drive, why in tarnation ain't you busted this jam," growled Long Leaf, as he came up a few minutes later.
"They ain't no hurry, me b'y, not a bit of a hurry. They'll be another wan just a moile above th' mouth. Ut's a way good river-min has got to let the rear drive ketch up."
"You wait 'til Metzger hears of this!" fumed Long Leaf.
Hurley laughed: "Oi'll be there at th' tellin'. An' you wait 'til Metzger sees eight er noine million feet av my logs slidin' t'rough his sortin' gap—an' him havin' to pay fifty dollars a thousand fer um. D'ye think he'll doie av a stroke, er will he blow up?"
"What do you mean—eight million—fifty dollars——"
Hurley laughed tantalizingly: "Wait an' see. 'Twill be worth th' proice av admission." And not another word could Long Leaf get out of him.
During the previous summer Hurley had studied his ground well. For several miles above the jam the river flowed between high banks, and it was that fact that made his scheme practicable, for had the land extended back from the river in wide flats or meadows, the backwater from the jam would have scattered his drive far and wide over the country. It was mid-afternoon when the rear-drive crew came up and then it was that Hurley, bearing a bundle of yellow cylinders, crept out along the face of the jam. A quarter of an hour later he came crawling back and joined the men who watched from the edge of the timber. Five minutes passed and the silence of the woods was shattered by a dull boom. The whole mass of logs that had lain, heaped like jack-straws in the bed of the river, seemed to lift bodily. A few logs in the forefront were hurled into the air to fall with a noisy splash into the river, or with a crash upon the trembling mass that settled slowly into the stream again. For an instant the bristling wall quivered uncertainly, moved slowly forward, hesitated, and then with a roar, the centre shot forward, the sides tumbled in upon the logs that rushed through from behind, and the great drive moved.
The breaking of the second jam was a repetition of the first, and when the drive hit the big river there were left on the bars and rock-ledges of the Dogfish only a few stragglers that later could be dry-rolled by a small crew into the stream and rafted down.