booms everything was in readiness to receive the jam. The long
swing arm slanting across the river channel was attached to its winch
which would operate it. When shut it would close the main channel and
shunt into the booms the logs floating in the river. There, penned at
last by the piles driven in a row and held together at the top by bolted
timbers, they would lie quiet. Men armed with pike-poles would then take
up the work of distribution according to the brands stamped on the ends.
Each brand had its own separate "sorting pens," the lower end leading
again into the open river. From these each owner's property was rafted
and towed to his private booms at his mill below.

Orde spent the day before the jam appeared in constructing what he
called a "boomerang."

"Invention of my own," he explained to Newmark. "Secret invention just
yet. I'm going to hold up the drive in the main river until we have
things bunched, then I'm going to throw a big crew down here by the
swing. Heinzman anticipates, of course, that I'll run the entire drive
into the booms and do all my sorting there. Naturally, if I turn his
logs loose into the river as fast as I run across them, he will be able
to pick them up one at a time, for he'll only get them occasionally. If
I keep them until everything else is sorted, only Heinzman's logs will
remain; and as we have no right to hold logs, we'll have to turn them
loose through the lower sorting booms, where he can be ready to raft
them. In that way he gets them all right without paying us a cent. See?"

"Yes, I see," said Newmark.

"Well," said Orde, with a laugh, "here is where I fool him. I'm going
to rush the drive into the booms all at once, but I'm going to sort out
Heinzman's logs at these openings near the entrance and turn them into
the main channel."

"What good will that do?" asked Newmark sceptically. "He gets them
sorted just the same, doesn't he?"

"The current's fairly strong," Orde pointed out, "and the river's
almighty wide. When you spring seven or eight million feet on a man, all
at once and unexpected, and he with no crew to handle them, he's going
to keep almighty busy. And if he don't stop them this side his mill,
he'll have to raft and tow them back; and if he don't stop 'em this side
the lake, he may as well kiss them all good bye--except those that drift
into the bayous and inlets and marshes, and other ungodly places."

"I see," said Newmark drily.

"But don't say a