"Never you fret about the lawin', Lon. What I an' me five hearties put into Dogfish last summer looks like drift piles from a summer rain, an' the same charge of canned thunder that busts the jam will blow the log-an' rock foundations of the drift piles to smithereens."
Lon smoked in silence for a few moments, as though pondering the boss's words, and as he smoked his lips gradually expanded into a grin of approval. Hurley noted the smile: "An' it all come of me workin' out the problems of a six-year old kid on the little crick behind the pig pen. An' what's more, I've got some of the problems of the big river more clear in me noodle."
Saginaw Ed winked at Connie; and leaning over, whispered into the boy's ear: "Hurley's done a smart thing," he confided, "an' it'll hurry the drive out of Dogfish. But he ain't got to the meat of the trouble—an' that's up to you an' me."
As the season progressed Hurley had increased his crews until each numbered one hundred and twenty-five men, and the daily work of these men was an unceasing source of interest to Connie. Every moment that could be spared from his duties, the boy was out among them, swinging an axe with the swampers, riding the huge loads of logs that slipped smoothly over the iced log roads on their trips to the landings, standing beside Lon Camden as he scaled the incoming loads, or among the sawyers, watching some mighty pine crash to earth with a roar of protest.
"I never seen a clerk before that ye could prize away from the office stove with a pickpole," remarked Lon Camdon, one day, as he and Hurley watched the boy riding toward them balanced upon the top log of a huge load.
"He'll know more about loggin' be spring," replied the boss, "than many an' old lumberjack. It's the makin' of a fine boss the kid has."
"He kin scale as good as me, a'ready," admitted Lon. "An' that other kid, too—why just from trottin' 'round with this one he's got so he shows some real stuff. If ever I picked a kid fer a bad egg it was him."
"Me too," admitted Hurley. "But Connie stuck up for him, even after he'd throw'd in with the I. W. W's. Steve kin have anything I've got," he added, after a pause. "He saved me life, an' after the drive I'm goin' to take him home with me up to Pine Hook, instead of turnin' him loose to go to the bad around such dumps as Corky Dyer's where I picked him up. He'd got a wrong start. It's like he was follerin' a log road, an' got switched off onto a cross-haul—but, he's back on the main road again, an' it's Jake Hurley'll keep him there."
"He's all right, an' the men like him—but he ain't got the head the other one has."
"Sure he ain't!" agreed Hurley. "You kin take it from me, Lon, before that there Connie is thirty, he'll be ownin' timber of his own."