The River Boss

by Stewart Edward White

When Daly had quite finished his remarks, Jimmy got up and went out without a word. Two days later he and sixty men were breaking rollways forty-five miles up-stream.

Jimmy knew as well as Daly that the latter had given him a hard task. Twenty days was too brief a time. However, that was none of his business.

The logs, during the winter, had been piled in the bed of the stream. They extended over three miles of rollways. Jimmy and his crew began at the down-stream end to tumble the big piles into the current. Sometimes only two or three of the logs would rattle down; at others the whole deck would bulge outwards, hover for a moment, and roar into the stream like grain from an elevator. Shortly the narrows below the rollways jammed. Twelve men were detailed as the “jam crew.” Their business was to keep the stream free in order that the constantly increasing supply from the rollways might not fill up the river. It was not an easy business, nor a very safe. As the “jam” strung out over more and more of the river, the jam crew was constantly recruited from the men on the rollways. Thus some of the logs, a very few, the luckiest, drifted into the dam pond at Grand Rapids within a few days; the bulk jammed and broke, and jammed again at a point a few miles below the rollways, while a large proportion stranded, plugged, caught, and tangled at the very rollways themselves.

Jimmy had permitted himself two days in which to break out the rollways. It was done in two. Then the “rear” was started. Men in the rear crew had to see that every last log got into the current, and stayed there. When a jam broke, the middle of it shot down-stream in a most spectacular fashion, but along the banks “winged out” distressingly. Sometimes the heavy sticks of timber had been forced right out on the dry land. The rear crew lifted them back. When an obstinate log grounded they jumped cheerfully into the water--with the rotten ice swirling around them--and pried the thing off bottom, Between times they stood upright on single unstable logs and pushed mightily with poles while the ice water sucked in and out of their spiked river shoes.

As for the compensations. Naturally there was a good deal of rivalry as to which wing should advance 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 a mighty honor to belong to the rear crew. Still, the water is cold, and the hours long, and you have to sleep in tents.

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 peevie, and would fight at the drop of a hat--any “bully boy” would qualify there;--but he also had judgment. He knew how to use the water, how to recognize 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 for the upper rapid; three days into the dam pond; one day to sluice the drive through the dam; three days to the crossing, and so on. If everything went well, he could do it, but there could be no hitches in the programme.

Even from this imperfect fragment of the schedule the inexperienced might imagine that Jimmy had allowed an altogether disproportionate time to cover the mile or so from the upper rapid to the dam pond. As it turned out, 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 upstream half a mile; then occurred a rise of five feet to the mile, 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 rapid, 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 peevies on either side, and by sheer brute force carry the stick to deep water. When you reflect that there were over 40,000 pieces in the drive, and that a good fifty per cent. of them balked below the rapids, you can see that the rear crew had its work cut out for it.

Jimmy’s allotted three days were almost gone, and his job had not advanced beyond the third of completion. McGann, the sluice boss, did a little figuring.