Orde laughed with great good-humour
“Where'd our water be by the time he got an injunction for us?”
He fell into a brown study, during which his pipe went out.
“Jim,” he said finally, “it isn't a fair game. I don't know what to do. Delay will hang us; taking men off the work will hang us. I've just got to go up there myself and see what can be done by talking to them.”
“Talking to them!” Denning snorted. “You might as well whistle down the draught-pipe of hell! If they're just up there for a row, there'll be whisky in camp; and you can bet McNeill's got some of 'em instructed on YOUR account. They'll kill you, sure!”
“I agree with you it's risky,” replied Orde. “I'm scared; I'm willing to admit it. But I don't see what else to do. Of course he's got no rights, but what the hell good does that do us after our water is gone? And Jim, my son, if we hang this drive, I'll be buried so deep I never will dig out. No; I've got to go. You can stay up here in charge of the rear until I get back. Send word by Charlie who's to boss your division while you're gone.”
XXIII
Orde tramped back to Sawyer's early next morning, hitched into the light buckboard the excellent team with which later, when the drive should spread out, he would make his longest jumps, and drove to head-waters. He arrived in sight of the dam about three o'clock. At the edge of the clearing he pulled up to survey the scene.
A group of three small log-cabins marked the Johnson, and later the Heinzman, camp. From the chimneys a smoke arose. Twenty or thirty rivermen lounged about the sunny side of the largest structure. They had evidently just arrived, for some of their “turkeys” were still piled outside the door. Orde clucked to his horses, and the spidery wheels of the buckboard swung lightly over the wet hummocks of the clearing, to come to a stop opposite the men. Orde leaned forward against his knees.