“We're right at your rear,” cried the other, “and you ain't even made a start gettin' through this dam! We'll lose the water next! Why in hell ain't you through and gone?”
“Keep your shirt on,” advised Orde. “We're getting through as fast as we can. If you want these logs pushed any faster, come down and do it yourself.”
Johnson vouchsafed no reply, but splashed away over the logs, examining in detail the progress of the work. After a little he returned within hailing distance.
“If you can't get out logs, why do you take the job?” he roared, with a string of oaths. “If you hang my drive, damn you, you'll catch it for damages! It's gettin' to a purty pass when any old highbanker from anywheres can get out and play jackstraws holdin' up every drive in the river! I tell you our mills need logs, and what's more they're agoin' to GIT them!”
He departed in a rumble of vituperation.
Orde laughed humorously at his foreman.
“Johnson gets so mad sometimes, his skin cracks,” he remarked. “However,” he went on more seriously, “there's a heap in what he means, if there ain't so much in what he says. I'll go labour with our old friend below.”
He regained the bank, stopped to light his pipe, and sauntered, with every appearance of leisure, down the bank, past the dam, to the mill structure below.
Here he found the owner occupying a chair tilted back against the wall of the building. His ruffled plug hat was thrust, as usual, well away from his high and narrow forehead; the long broadcloth coat fell back to reveal an unbuttoned waistcoat the flapping black trousers were hitched up far enough to display woollen socks wrinkled about bony shanks. He was whittling a pine stick, which he held pointing down between his spread knees, and conversing animatedly with a young fellow occupying another chair at his side.
“And there comes one of 'em now,” declaimed the old man dramatically.