"We'll get them out all right, Mr. Daly," said he.
"Get them out!" growled Daly. "Sure! But when? We ain't got all the summer this season. Those logs have got to hit our booms in fourteen days or they're no good to us!"
"You'll have 'em," assured Jimmy.
Such talk made Daly tired, and he said so.
"Why, it'll take you a week to get her over those confounded shallows," he concluded. "You got to get more men, Jimmy."
"I've tried," answered the boss. "They ain't no more men to be had."
"Suffering Moses!" groaned the owner. "It means the loss of a fifty-thousand-dollar contract to me. You needn't tell me! I've been on the river all my life. I know you can't get them off inside of a week."
"I'll have 'em off to-morrow morning, but it may cost a little something," asserted Jimmy, calmly.
Daly took one look at the mass of logs, and the fifteen men pulling out an average of one a minute. Then he returned in disgust to the city, where he began to adjust his ideas to a loss on his contract.
At sundown the rear crew quit work, and swarmed to the encampment of white tents on the river-bank. There they hung wet clothes over a big skeleton framework built around a monster fire, and ate a dozen eggs apiece as a side dish to supper, and smoked pipes of strong "Peerless" tobacco, and swapped yarns, and sang songs, and asked questions. To the latter they received no satisfactory replies. The crew that had been laid off knew nothing. It appeared they were to go to work after supper. After supper, however, Jimmy told them to turn in and get a little more sleep. They did turn in, and speedily forgot to puzzle.