"What you going to do?" he asked Larsen when they were once on the trail.
"I don't know," confessed the older man, rubbing his cap. "I'm just goin' to see some lawyer, and then I'm goin' to telegraph the Company. I wish Darrell was in charge. I don't know what to do. You can't expect those boys to run a chance of gittin' a hole in 'em."
"Do you believe they'd shoot?" asked Bob.
"I believe so. It's a long chance, anyhow."
But in Twin Falls they received scant sympathy and encouragement. The place was distinctly bucolic, and as such opposed instinctively to larger mills, big millmen, lumber, lumbermen and all pertaining thereunto. They tolerated the drive because, in the first place they had to; and in the second place there was some slight profit to be made. But the rough rivermen antagonized them, and they were never averse to seeing these buccaneers of the streams in difficulties. Then, too, by chance the country lawyers Larsen consulted happened to be attorneys for the little sawmill men. Larsen tried in his blundering way to express his feeling that "nobody had a right to hang our drive." His explanations were so involved and futile that, without thinking, Bob struck in.
"Surely these men have no right to obstruct as they do. Isn't there some law against interfering with navigation?"
"The stream is not navigable," returned the lawyer curtly.
Bob's memory vouchsafed a confused recollection of something read sometime, somewhere.
"Hasn't a stream been declared navigable when logs can be driven in it?" he asked.
"Are you in charge of this drive?" the lawyer asked, turning on him sharply.