n do anything but climb a tree,"
Charlie had once boasted to her, in reference to his own machine.

It seemed quite possible to Stella, watching Jack Fyfe's crew at work.
Steam was up in the donkey. They carried a line from its drum through a
snatch block ashore and jerked half a dozen logs crosswise before the
scow in a matter of minutes. Then the same cable was made fast to a
sturdy fir, the engineer stood by, and the ponderous machine slid
forward on its own skids, like an up-ended barrel on a sled, down off
the scow, up the bank, smashing brush, branches, dead roots, all that
stood in its path, drawing steadily up to the anchor tree as the cable
spooled up on the drum.

A dozen men tailed on to the inch and a quarter cable and bore the loose
end away up the path. Presently one stood clear, waving a signal. Again
the donkey began to puff and quiver, the line began to roll up on the
drum, and the big yarder walked up the slope under its own power, a
locomotive unneedful of rails, making its own right of way. Upon the
platform built over the skids were piled the tools of the crew, sawed
blocks for the fire box, axes, saws, grindstones, all that was necessary
in their task. At one o'clock they made their first move. At two the
donkey was vanished into that region where the chute-head lay, and the
great firs stood waiting the slaughter.

By mid-afternoon Stella noticed an acceleration of numbers in the logs
that came hurtling lakeward. Now at shorter intervals arose the grinding
sound of their arrival, the ponderous splash as each leaped to the
water. It was a good thing, she surmised--for Charlie Benton. She could
not see where it made much difference to her whether ten logs a day or a
hundred came down to the boomsticks.

Late that afternoon Katy vanished upon one of her periodic visits to the
camp of her kindred around the point. Bred out of doors, of a tribe
whose immemorial custom it is that the women do all the work, the Siwash
girl was strong as an ox, and nearly as bovine in temperament and
movements. She could lift with ease a weight that taxed Stella's
strength, and Stella Benton was no weakling, either. It was therefore a
part of Katy's routine to keep water pails filled from the creek and the
wood box supplied, in addition to washing dishes and carrying food to
the table. Katy slighted these various tasks occasionally. She needed
oversight, continual admonition, to get any job done in time. She was
slow t