ess, the boldness, and
the executive genius of a military commander.

To all these things, and to the distribution of supplies and implements
among the various camps, Orde had attended. The wanigan for the rear
crew was built. The foremen and walking boss had been picked out.
Everything was in readiness. Orde was satisfied with the situation
except that he found himself rather short-handed. He had counted on
three hundred men for his crews, but scrape and scratch as he would, he
was unable to gather over two hundred and fifty. This matter was not
so serious, however, as later, when the woods camps should break up, he
would be able to pick up more workmen.

"They won't be rivermen like my old crew, though," said Orde regretfully
to Tom North, the walking boss. "I'd like to steal a few from some of
those Muskegon outfits."

Until the logs should be well adrift, Orde had resolved to boss the rear
crew himself.

As the rear was naturally the farthest up stream, Orde had taken also
the contract to break the rollways belonging to Carlin, which in the
season's work would be piled up on the bank. Thus he could get to work
immediately at the break-up, and without waiting for some one else. The
seven or eight million feet of lumber comprised in Carlin's drive would
keep the men below busy until the other owners, farther down and up the
tributaries, should also have put their season's cut afloat.

The ice went out early, to Orde's satisfaction. As soon as the river
ran clear in its lower reaches he took his rear crew in to Carlin's
rollways.

This crew was forty in number, and had been picked from the best--a
hard-bitten, tough band of veterans, weather beaten, scarred in numerous
fights or by the backwoods scourge of small-pox, compact, muscular,
fearless, loyal, cynically aloof from those not of their cult,
out-spoken and free to criticise--in short, men to do great things under
the strong leader, and to mutiny at the end of three days under the
weak. They piled off the train at Sawyer's, stamped their feet on the
board platform of the station, shouldered their "turkeys," and straggled
off down the tote-road. It was an eighteen-mile walk in. The ground had
loosened its frost. The footing was ankle-deep in mud and snow-water.

Next morning, bright and early, the breaking of the rollways began.
During the winter the logs had been hauled down ice roads to the river,
where they were "banked" in piles twenty, and even thirty,