"I'm sure I can't," said Alaric, more puzzled than ever.
"Because of your experience with both mules and boats," laughed the big "faller" teasingly, and that was all the satisfaction the boys could get from him that night.
The next morning, bright and early, the occupants of the camp scattered to their respective duties: the loggers trudging up the skid-road and deep into the forest, there to resume their work of converting trees into logs; the loading-gang going in the opposite direction, to the distant railway landing, where they would spend the day loading logs on to flat cars; the engineers with their firemen to their respective engines; the road-gang up to the head of a side gulch where they were constructing a branch skid-road; the blacksmiths to their ringing anvils; Bonny to the store, where he was to take an account of stock; and Alaric, in company with the man whose place he was to fill, after receiving from him half a day's instruction in his new duties to make the acquaintance of his hump-durgin.
They went a short distance down the skid-road to where one of the relay engines was winding in a half-mile length of wire cable over a big steel drain. This cable stretched its shining length up the gulch and out of sight around a bend. Near the engine-house, and at one edge of the skid-road, was a little siding, or dock, protected by a heavy sheer-skid. In it lay what looked like a log canoe, sharp-pointed at both ends, and having a flat bottom.
"There," said Alaric's guide, "is your hump-durgin."
"That thing!" exclaimed the lad, gazing at the canoe-like object curiously. "But I thought a hump-durgin went by steam!"
"So it does," laughed the man, "when it goes at all. Just wait a minute, and you'll see."
Almost as he spoke there came a sound of bumping and sliding from up the skid-road, and directly afterwards the end of an enormous log came into sight around the bend, drawn by the cable the engine was winding in. As this log rounded the bend and came directly toward them, another was seen to be chained to it, then another, and another, until the "turn" was seen to contain five of the woody monsters. Attached to the rear end of the last log came another hump-durgin, in which a man was seated, and to the after end of which was fastened a second wire cable that stretched away for half a mile to the next engine above.
Every log was made fast to the one ahead of it by two short chains, each of which was armed at either end with a heavy steel spur having a sharp point and a flat head. These are called "dogs," and, driven deep into the logs, bind them together. The hump-durgin was also attached to the rear log by a chain and "dog," and one of the principal duties of a hump-durgin man is to see that none of these dogs pulls out.