第94章

"Do you want to know how to make those fellows sing so small you can't hear them? Well, I'll tell you.TAKE OUT THIS DRIVE! Do it in spite of them! Show them they're no good when they buck up against Thorpe's One! Our boys died doing their duty--the way a riverman ought to.NOW HUMP YOURSELVES! Don't let 'em die in vain!"The crew stirred uneasily, looking at each other for approval of the conversion each had experienced.Radway, seizing the psychological moment, turned easily toward the blaze.

"Better turn in, boys, and get some sleep," he said."We've got a hard day to-morrow." He stooped to light his pipe at the fire.When he had again straightened his back after rather a prolonged interval, the group had already disintegrated.A few minutes later the cookee scattered the brands of the fire from before a sleeping camp.

Thorpe had listened non-committally to the colloquy.He had maintained the suspended attitude of a man who is willing to allow the trial of other methods, but who does not therefore relinquish his own.At the favorable termination of the discussion he turned away without comment.He expected to gain this result.Had he been in a more judicial state of mind he might have perceived at last the reason, in the complicated scheme of Providence, for his long connection with John Radway.

Chapter LI

Before daylight Injin Charley drifted into the camp to find Thorpe already out.With a curt nod the Indian seated himself by the fire, and, producing a square plug of tobacco and a knife, began leisurely to fill his pipe.Thorpe watched him in silence.Finally Injin Charley spoke in the red man's clear-cut, imitative English, a pause between each sentence.

"I find trail three men," said he."Both dam, three men.One man go down river.Those men have cork-boot.One man no have cork-boot.

He boss." The Indian suddenly threw his chin out, his head back, half closed his eyes in a cynical squint.As by a flash Dyer, the scaler, leered insolently from behind the Indian's stolid mask.

"How do you know?" said Thorpe.

For answer the Indian threw his shoulders forward in Dyer's nervous fashion.

"He make trail big by the toe, light by the heel.He make trail big on inside."Charley arose and walked, after Dyer's springy fashion, illustrating his point in the soft wood ashes of the immediate fireside.

Thorpe looked doubtful."I believe you are right, Charley," said he."But it is mighty little to go on.You can't be sure.""I sure," replied Charley.

He puffed strongly at the heel of his smoke, then arose, and without farewell disappeared in the forest.

Thorpe ranged the camp impatiently, glancing often at the sky.At length he laid fresh logs on the fire and aroused the cook.It was bitter cold in the early morning.After a time the men turned out of their own accord, at first yawning with insufficient rest, and then becoming grimly tense as their returned wits reminded them of the situation.

From that moment began the wonderful struggle against circumstances which has become a by-word among rivermen everywhere.A forty-day drive had to go out in ten.A freshet had to float out thirty million feet of logs.It was tremendous; as even the men most deeply buried in the heavy hours of that time dimly realized.

It was epic; as the journalist, by now thoroughly aroused, soon succeeded in convincing his editors and his public.Fourteen, sixteen, sometimes eighteen hours a day, the men of the driving crew worked like demons.Jams had no chance to form.The phenomenal activity of the rear crew reduced by half the inevitable sacking.

Of course, under the pressure, the lower dam had gone out.Nothing was to be depended on but sheer dogged grit.Far up-river Sadler &Smith had hung their drive for the season.They had stretched heavy booms across the current, and so had resigned themselves to a definite but not extraordinary loss.Thorpe had at least a clear river.

Wallace Carpenter could not understand how human flesh and blood endured.The men themselves had long since reached the point of practical exhaustion, but were carried through by the fire of their leader.Work was dogged until he stormed into sight; then it became frenzied.He seemed to impart to those about him a nervous force and excitability as real as that induced by brandy.When he looked at a man from his cavernous, burning eyes, that man jumped.

It was all willing enough work.Several definite causes, each adequate alone to something extraordinary, focussed to the necessity.

His men worshipped Thorpe; the idea of thwarting the purposes of their comrade's murderers retained its strength; the innate pride of caste and craft--the sturdiest virtue of the riverman--was in these picked men increased to the dignity of a passion.The great psychological forces of a successful career gathered and made head against the circumstances which such careers always arouse in polarity.

Impossibilities were puffed aside like thistles.The men went at them headlong.They gave way before the rush.Thorpe always led.

Not for a single instant of the day nor for many at night was he at rest.He was like a man who has taken a deep breath to reach a definite goal, and who cannot exhale until the burst of speed be over.Instinctively he seemed to realize that a let-down would mean collapse.

After the camp had fallen asleep, he would often lie awake half of the few hours of their night, every muscle tense, staring at the sky.His mind saw definitely every detail of the situation as he had last viewed it.In advance his imagination stooped and sweated to the work which his body was to accomplish the next morning.

Thus he did everything twice.Then at last the tension would relax.

He would fall into uneasy sleep.But twice that did not follow.

Through the dissolving iron mist of his striving, a sharp thought cleaved like an arrow.It was that after all he did not care.The religion of Success no longer held him as its devoutest worshiper.