Reprinted from The Century Magazine by permission
HAD halted at Camp Five to catch my breath. This flying down a Sierran lumber-flume, scurrying through the heady air like another Phaeton, was too full of thrills to be taken all in one gasp. I dropped limply into the rawhide-bottomed chair under the awning in front of the big board shanty which was on stilts beside the airy flume, and gazed on down the long, gleaming, tragic, watery way to the next steep slide. Then I looked at the frail little flume-boat which had borne Oram Sheets and me thus far on our hazardous journey to the valley. Perhaps I shivered a bit at the prospect of more of this hair-raising adventure. At any rate, Oram, the intrepid flume-herder, laughed, dug his picaroon into a log, and asked:
"Sorry yeh come? Wal, it does git onto a man's nerve the first trip. Strange so many brash ones like you wanter try, but few on 'em ever dast git in ag'in. But I've be'n down so often." Then he peered about the cabin. "Looks like none o' the boys was to home. Wish they was; they might git us up a little dinner. It's jest twelve."
He went inside the open door, and I heard him foraging about, the shanty echoing hollowly to the clumping of his big boots. By and by his nasal note was resumed:
"Come in, pardner! Here's a great find: a big can o' green gages an' a hunk o' jerk an' a lot o' cold biscuits."
Inside, with my legs under the greasy, coverless table, I chewed the jerk like one who was determined to give his jaws the benefit of strenuous physical culture, and listened while Oram rattled on, with his mouth full of the sodden, half-baked biscuits.
"You mightn't think it," said he, "but three years ago this here was the most scrumptious camp on the hull flume. Ol' man Hemenway lived here then with his daughter Jess. She kep' house fer him. Jess was a great gal. Every man along the flume, from Skyland to Mill Flat, was in love with her. Shape? You couldn't beat that there gal for figger if yeh was to round up every actress in the country. She had a pair o' big round baby-blue eyes, an' was as pretty as any o' them there cigarette picters. A little on the strawbary-blonde, but not too much red in her hair, an' yet spunky as a badger when yeh teased her.
"The boys down this way didn't have much show. It looked like Jess had hit it off with Jud Brusie, a big, husky, clean-lookin' chap up to the h'ist. Jud used ter send her down notes stuck in sticks wedged inter the clamps, an' he used ter sneak down this way on Sundays when he'd git a chanst. She'd meet him up to the Riffles there by that big bunch o' yaller pines we passed. He didn't dast come down here nary time till ol' man Hemenway he got laid up with a busted laig from slippin' off the trestle in the snow. That there was Jud's show ter git in his fine work. Used ter bring down deer-meat for the ol' man, an' sody-water from that there spoutin' spring up ter Crazy Cañon; an' it begun to look like Hemenway'd give in an' let him have her. But he seemed to hold off.