"Right you are, son! A log of wood might look like a mule, and then again it mightn't. Same time I've often thought that some hump-durgins wasn't much better than logs of wood, after all. Anyway, now that I've described the critter so that you know all about him, you can see why the boss has decided to put our young friend here in charge of one."
"I'm sure I can't," said Alaric, more puzzled than ever.
"Because of your experience with both mules and boats," laughed the big "faller" teasingly, and that was all the satisfaction the boys could get from him that night.
The next morning, bright and early, the occupants of the camp scattered to their respective duties: the loggers trudging up the skid-road and deep into the forest, there to resume their work of converting trees into logs; the loading-gang going in the opposite direction, to the distant railway landing, where they would spend the day loading logs on to flat cars; the engineers with their firemen to their respective engines; the road-gang up to the head of a side gulch where they were constructing a branch skid-road; the blacksmiths to their ringing anvils; Bonny to the store, where he was to take an account of stock; and Alaric, in company with the man whose place he was to fill, after receiving from him half a day's instruction in his new duties, to make the acquaintance of his hump-durgin. They went a short distance down the skid-road to where one of the relay engines was winding in a half-mile length of wire cable over a big steel drum. This cable stretched its shining length up the gulch and out of sight around a bend. Near the engine-house, and at one edge of the skid-road, was a little siding, or dock, protected by a heavy sheer-skid. In it lay what looked like a log canoe, sharp pointed at both ends, and having a flat bottom.
"There," said Alaric's guide, "is your hump-durgin."
"That thing!" exclaimed the lad, gazing at the canoe-like object curiously. "But I thought a hump-durgin went by steam?"
"So it does," laughed the man, "when it goes at all. Just wait a minute, and you'll see."
Almost as he spoke there came a sound of bumping and sliding from up the skid-road, and directly afterwards the end of an enormous log came into sight around the bend, drawn by the cable the engine was winding in. As this log rounded the bend and came directly towards them, another was seen to be chained to it, then another, and another, until the "turn" was seen to contain five of the woody monsters. Attached to the rear end of the last log came another hump-durgin, in which a man was seated, and to the after end of which was fastened a second wire cable that stretched away for half a mile to the next engine above.
Every log was made fast to the one ahead of it by two short chains, each of which was armed at either end with a heavy steel spur having a sharp point and a flat head. These are called "dogs," and, driven deep into the logs, bind them together. The hump-durgin was also attached to the rear log by a chain and "dog," and one of the principal duties of a hump-durgin man is to see that none of these dogs pulls out.
As the "turn" of logs stopped just above the station, the man who had come with them knocked out his hump-durgin dog, while the man with Alaric disconnected the cable that had drawn the logs down to that point, and hooked on the upper end of another that stretched away out of sight down the road. Then he waved to the engineer, who telephoned to the next station down the line, and at the same time to the one above. In another minute the hump-durgin that had just arrived was being pulled back by its cable over the way it had come, and the "turn" of logs was drawn forward by the new cable just attached to them. When the rear end of the last log was passing Alaric's hump-durgin, the man with him hammered its "dog" into the wood, the chain straightened with a jerk, and the novel craft was under way. As it started, both the man and Alaric jumped in, and away they went, bumping and sliding down the skid-road, slewing around corners that were protected by sheer-skids, and dragging behind them a half-mile length of cable attached to the after end of their craft.