“He told me to go to hell,” he said shortly.
“Oh, he did,” snapped Orde. “I should think we had enough without that old idiot!”
With the short nervous leaps of a suppressed anger he ran down to where the SPRITE had just towed the Number One driver into a new position.
“Lay me alongside the LUCY BELLE,” he told Marsh.
But Simpson, in a position of importance at last, was disinclined to listen. He had worn his blue clothes and brass buttons for a good many years in charge only of boxes and barrels. Now at a stroke he found himself commander over tenscore people. Likewise, at fifty cents a head, he foresaw a good thing as long as high water should last. He had risen nobly to the occasion; for he had even hoisted his bunting and brought with him the local brass band. Orde, brusque in his desire to hurry through an affair of minor importance, rubbed the man the wrong way.
“I reckon I've some rights on this river,” Captain Simpson concluded the argument, “and I ain't agoin' to be bulldozed out of them.”
The excursionists, typical “trippers” from Redding, Holland, Monrovia and Muskegon, cheered this sentiment and jeered at Orde.
Orde nodded briefly.
“Marsh,” said he to his captain in a low voice, “get a crew and take them in charge. Run 'em off.”
As soon as the tug touched the piling, he was off and away, paying no further attention to a matter already settled. Captain Marsh called a dozen rivermen to him; laid the SPRITE alongside the LUCY BELLE, and in spite of Simpson's scandalised protests and an incipient panic among the passengers, thrust aside the regular crew of the steamship and took charge. Quite calmly he surveyed the scene. From the height of the steamer's bridge he could see abroad over the country. A warm June sun flooded the landscape which was filled with the peace of early summer. The river seemed to flow smoothly and quietly enough, in spite of the swiftness of its current and the swollen volume of its waters. Only up stream where the big jam shrugged and groaned did any element jar on the peace of the scene; and even that, in contrast to the rest of the landscape, afforded small hint to the inexperienced eye of the imminence of a mighty destruction.