“That's good. You'll find him ready for you. I'll be glad to get started again myself—it's been a mean pull; and there just wasn't any getting along with Robbie. I never saw him so down. Dry weather, isn't it.”
“Yes, better for you than for us. Are you going to let Bigelow steal your men off you this trip?”
“I hardly think so.”
“You may have a chance yet—you're to go to Chicago.”
The Captain smiled dryly. He was in fine mettle now; his clear eyes and sound colour belied his wrinkles and the white streaks in his hair.
“I wish he'd try it,” he replied. “We'll be glad to hear from him any time.”
Late that afternoon the two steamers swung away from the wharves, one after the other, steamed out through the channel, passed the life-saving station and the lighthouse, and headed, the Higginson Number 1, sou'west-by-south toward Chicago, the Number 2 sou'west toward Milwaukee, to bring in the first loads of lumber. And a thrill went through the yards, where there were a few men at work, and passed on to the long lines of waiting labourers outside, as the shouts of the officers and the rumble of the engines and the wash of the propellers sounded through the dry autumn air. The mills were still silent the little world that depended almost for its existence on the movements of that machinery was still suffering from poverty and idleness, was still facing the possibility of a winter without employment; but somehow the sight of the two steamers once more plowing up the water of the harbour, of the blue smoke once more spreading low over the sand-dunes and over the sparkling lake that stretched beyond, spoke to them of new life at the Higginson yards. If the steamers were started out after the long wait, why might not the mills be soon humming and singing again, why might not the ax again flash and strike in the forest, and the songs of the river gang again ring down the long reaches of pine-edged water? The possibility was in the thoughts of them all as their eyes followed the steamers far out into the lake, and lingered on the fading smoke long after the boats themselves had dropped over the southwestern horizon. It was something to be moving again; and every one was a little more cheerful that evening for what they had seen and felt.
Now that the steamers were on the way, Halloran found that he had a problem on his hands. More than six million feet of lumber demands a large area, and the question of getting it into the yards was a serious one.
The Higginson yards occupied a peninsula, formed on the inland side by the Wauchung River, on the other side by the harbour. This harbour was in reality a small lake, such as one will find duplicated every little way for a hundred and fifty miles on the eastern coast of Lake Michigan. The prevailing west winds have thrown up a line of high dunes along this shore, forming a natural dam at the mouth of each of the many small rivers. The Government had at Wauchung, as at many similar places, dredged out a channel that enabled steamers to get in to the wharves and to turn in the harbour.
The two mills were on the upper or river side of the peninsula, where they could receive the logs that were floated down from the timberlands.