As for the compensations, naturally there was a good deal of rivalry between the men on the right and left banks of the river as to which "wing" should advance the fastest; and one experiences a certain physical thrill in venturing under thirty feet of jammed logs for the sole purpose of teasing the whole mass to cascade down on one, or of shooting a rapid while standing upright on a single timber. I believe, too, it is considered the height of glory to belong to a rear crew. Still, the water is cold and the hours long, and you have to sleep in a tent.
It can readily be seen that the progress of the "rear" measures the progress of the drive. Some few logs in the "jam" may run fifty miles a day—and often do—but if the sacking has gone slowly at the rear, the drive may not have gained more than a thousand yards. Therefore Jimmy stayed at the rear.
Jimmy was a mighty good riverman. Of course he had nerve, and could do anything with a log and a peavy, and would fight at the drop of a hat—any "bully boy" would qualify there—but also he had judgment. He knew how to use the water, how to recognise the key log of jams, where to place his men—in short, he could get out the logs. Now Jimmy also knew the river from one end to the other, so he had arranged in his mind a sort of schedule for the twenty days. Forty-eight hours for the rollways; a day and a half to the upper rapids; three days into the dam pond; one day to sluice the drive through the Grand Rapids dam; three days for the Crossing; and so on. If everything went well, he could do it, but there must be no hitches in the programme.
Even from this imperfect fragment of the schedule the inexperienced might imagine Jimmy had allowed an altogether disproportionate time to cover the mile or so from the rapids to the dam pond. As it turned, however, he found he had not allowed enough, for at this point the river was peculiar and very trying.
The backwater of the dam extended up-stream a half mile; then occurred a rise of four feet, down the slope of which the water whirled and tumbled, only to spread out over a broad fan of gravel shallows. These shallows did the business. When the logs had bumped through the tribulations of the rapids, they seemed to insist obstinately on resting in the shallows, like a lot of wearied cattle. The rear crew had to wade in. They heaved and pried and pushed industriously, and at the end of it had the satisfaction of seeing a single log slide reluctantly into the current. Sometimes a dozen of them would clamp their peavies on either side, and by sheer brute force carry the stick to deep water. When you reflect that there were some twenty thousand pieces in the drive, and that a good fifty per cent. of them balked below the rapids, you can see that a rear crew of thirty men had its work cut out for it. Jimmy's three days were three-fourths gone, and his job not more than a third finished. McGann, the sluice boss, did a little figuring.
"She'll hang over thim twinty days," he confided to Jimmy. "Shure!"
Jimmy replied not a word, but puffed piston-like smoke from his pipe. McGann shrugged in Celtic despair.
But the little man had been figuring, too, and his arrangements were more elaborate and more nearly completed than McGann suspected. That very morning he sauntered leisurely out over the rear logs, his hands in his pockets. Every once in a while he stopped to utter a few low-voiced words to one or another of the men. The person addressed first looked extremely astonished; then shouldered his peavy and started for camp, leaving the diminished rear a prey to curiosity. Soon the word went about. "Day and night work," they whispered, though it was a little difficult to see the difference in ultimate effectiveness between a half crew working all the time and a whole crew working half the time.
About now Daly began to worry. He took the train to Grand Rapids, anxiety written deep in his brows. When he saw the little inadequate crew pecking in a futile fashion at the logs winged out over the shallows, he swore fervidly and sought Jimmy.
Jimmy appeared calm.