wearied were the belligerents
by now that he had no difficulty in separating them. He surveyed their
wrecks with a sardonic half smile.

"I call this a draw," said he finally. His attitude became threatening
as the two up-river men, recovering somewhat, showed ugly symptoms.
"Git!" he commanded. "Scat! I guess you don't know me. I'm Jack Orde.
Jimmy and I together could do a dozen of you." He menaced them until,
muttering, they had turned away.

"Well, Jimmy," said he humorously, "you look as if you'd been run
through a thrashing machine."

"Those fellers make me sick!" growled the Rough Red.

Orde looked him over again.

"You look sick," said he.

When the buckboard drew into camp, Orde sent Bourke away to repair
damages while he called the cookee to help unpack several heavy boxes
of hardware. They proved to contain about thirty small hatchets, well
sharpened, and each with a leather guard. When the rear crew had come in
that night, Orde distributed the hatchets.

"Boys," said he, "while you're on the work, I want you all to keep a
watch-out for these "H" logs, and whenever you strike one I want you to
blaze it plainly, so there won't be any mistake about it."

"What for?" asked one of the Saginaw men as he received his hatchet.

But the riverman who squatted next nudged him with his elbow.

"The less questions you ask Jack, the more answers you'll get. Just do
what you're told to on this river and you'll see fun sure."

Three days later the rear crew ran into the head of the pond above
Reed's dam. To every one's surprise, Orde called a halt on the work and
announced a holiday.

Now, holidays are unknown on drive. Barely is time allowed for eating
and sleeping. Nevertheless, all that day the men lay about in complete
idleness, smoking, talking, sleeping in the warm sun. The river,
silenced by the closed sluice-gates, slept also. The pond filled with
logs. From above, the current, aided by a fair wind, was driving down
still other logs--the forerunners of the little drive astern. At sight
of these, some of the men grumbled. "We're losin' what we made," said
they. "We left them logs, and sorted 'em out once already."

Orde sent a couple of axe-men to blaze the newcomers. A little before
sundown he ordered the sluice-gates of the dam opened.

"Night work," said the men to one another. They knew, of course, that
in sluicing logs, the gate must be open a couple of hours before the
sluicing begins in order