t ain't smoky!"

"Keep your hair on, bub," advised a calm and grizzled old-timer.
"There's never no smoke on the OTHER side of the fire--whichever
that happens to be. And as for wind--she just makes holiday for the
river-hogs."

"Holiday, hell!" snorted the younger man. "We ought to be down to Bull's
Dam before now--"

"And Bull's Dam is half-way to Redding," mocked a reptilian and
red-headed giant on the log, "and Redding is the happy childhood home
of--"

The young man leaped to his feet and seized from a pile of tools a
peavy--a dangerous weapon, like a heavy cant-hook, but armed at the end
with a sharp steel shoe.

"That's about enough!" he warned, raising his weapon, his face suffused
and angry. The red-headed man, quite unafraid, rose slowly from the log
and advanced, bare-handed, his small eyes narrowed and watchful.

But immediately a dozen men interfered.

"Dry up!" advised the grizzled old-timer--Tom North by name. "You,
Purdy, set down; and you, young squirt, subside! If you're going to have
ructions, why, have 'em, but not on drive. If you don't look out, I'll
set you both to rustling wood for the doctor."

At this threat the belligerents dropped muttering to their places. The
wind continued to blow, the fire continued to flare up and down, the men
continued to smoke, exchanging from time to time desultory and
aimless remarks. Only Tom North carried on a consecutive, low-voiced
conversation with another of about his own age.

"Just the same, Jim," he was saying, "it is a little tough on the
boys--this new sluice-gate business. They've been sort of expectin' a
chance for a day or two at Redding, and now, if this son of a gun of a
wind hangs out, I don't know when we'll make her. The shallows at Bull's
was always bad enough, but this is worse."

"Yes, I expected to pick you up 'way below," admitted Jim, whose
"turkey," or clothes-bag, at his side proclaimed him a newcomer. "Had
quite a tramp to find you."

"This stretch of slack water was always a terror," went on North, "and
we had fairly to pike-pole every stick through when the wind blew; but
now that dam's backed the water up until there reely ain't no current at
all. And this breeze has just stopped the drive dead as a smelt."

"Don't opening the sluice-gates give her a draw?" inquired the newcomer.

"Not against this wind--and not much of a draw, anyway, I should guess."

"How long you been hung?"

"Just to-day. I expect Jack will be d