Reed and Kantochy, two sawyers, were caught by a "kick-back." One of the best horses was sweenied. A teamster who fell asleep on the top of his load awoke in the bottom of a ravine with a shattered arm, a dead horse, and a ruined log-sled. Bill's foot was mashed by a rolling log; and last, and most far-reaching in its effect, the cook contracted spotted fever and died in a reverse curve.
Moncrossen raged. From a steady eighty thousand feet a day the output dropped to seventy, sixty, fifty thousand—and the end was not in sight. Good-natured banter and friendly tussles among the men gave place to surly bickering and ugly fist-fighting, and in spite of the best efforts of the second cook the crew growled sullenly or openly cursed the grub.
Then it was that Moncrossen knew that something must be done—and that something quickly. He shifted Stromberg and Fallon to the sawing crew, made a skidder out of a swamper, and filled his place with a grub-shack flunky.
Then one afternoon he dropped in upon Bill in the bunk-house, where that young man sat fuming at his inaction with his foot propped up on the edge of a bunk.
"How's the foot?" growled the boss.
"Pretty sore," answered Bill, laying aside a magazine. "Swelling is going down a bit."
"Ever handle horses?"
"Yes, a few."
The boss cleared his throat and proceeded awkwardly.
"I don't like to ask no crippled man to work before he's able," he began grudgingly. "But things is goin' bad. What with them two pilgrims that called theirselves sawyers not bein' able to dodge a kick-back, an' Gibson pickin' a down-hill pull on an iced skidway for to go to sleep on his load, an' your gettin' pinched, an' the cook curlin' up an' dyin' on us, an' the whole damned outfit roarin' about the grub, there's hell to pay all around."