It was the next morning. They had eaten an early breakfast and, accompanied by their father, the boys had hastened out to the jam. Jean and his small crew were already at work with their peavies prying out a log here and there. But, as Rex declared, it seemed like a hopeless task where there were so many thousands of them.
Bob and Jack had put on their calked boots, but Rex and Mr. Golden were wearing their ordinary shoes.
“They sure are,” Bob answered his brother’s remark, “But it’ll be all right just as soon as Jack gets his eyes on that key log,” and he gave Rex a sly wink.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never harm me,” Jack laughed as he moved out toward the middle of the river.
The boy stepped slowly from log to log close to the head of the jam. The dark water swirled out from beneath the logs as though trying to tear them loose. Carefully he examined log after log, hoping that he might be able to locate the one which might be causing all the trouble. He had, before now, seen jams held up for days, while the drivers sought for the key log, when all that was needed to start the entire mass in motion was a slight movement of a certain log. It was this log, if such there were, that he was trying to locate. Of course he was aware that Jean and his men had examined them a number of times, and having failed to find it he knew that his chances of success, where they had failed, were slight. But this did not deter him from his determination to find it, provided it existed.
Slowly he worked his way along until he had reached the center of the river. Here the logs were piled three or four deep in what seemed like a hopelessly tangled mass. For some minutes he stood on one end of a large spruce which reached out for five or six feet over the water. A significant appearance of the water two or three feet beneath him had caught his eye.
“There’s a big rock down there, unless I’m very much mistaken,” he muttered to himself, as he stretched out at full length on the log in order to get his eyes nearer the water. Eagerly he strained his eyes to pierce the rushing water. Then, as the sun suddenly came from behind a cloud, he straightened up.
“I thought so,” he whispered. “And the key log is jammed tight against it.”
“Found your key log?” Bob called, as Jack started back toward them.
“Mebby,” he replied, as he reached the log on which they were standing.