't they can bunk
together."

Bob walked to the edge of the stream. It was not very wide, yet at this
point it carried from three to six or eight feet of water, according to
the bottom. A few logs were stranded along shore. Two or three more
floated by, the forerunners of the drive. Bob could see where the
highest water had flung debris among the bushes, and by that he knew
that the stream must be already dropping from its freshet.

It was now late in the afternoon. The sun dipped behind a cold and
austere hill-line. Against the sky showed a fringe of delicate popples,
like spray frozen in the rise. The heavens near the horizon were a cold,
pale yellow of unguessed lucent depths, that shaded above into an
equally cold, pale green. Bob thrust his hands in his pockets and
turned back to where the drying fire, its fuel replenished, was leaping
across the gathering dusk.

Immediately after, the driving crews came tramping in from upstream.
They paid no attention to the newcomers, but dove first for the tent,
then for the fire. There they began to pull off their lower garments,
and Bob saw that most of them were drenched from the waist down. The
drying racks were soon steaming with wet clothes.

Welton fell into low conversation with an old man, straight and slender
as a Norway pine, with blue eyes, flaxen hair, eyebrows and moustache.
This was Larsen, in charge of the jam, honest, capable in his way, slow
of speech, almost childlike of glance. After a few minutes Welton
rejoined Bob.

"He's a square peg, all right," he muttered, more to himself than to his
companion. "He's a good riverman, but he's no river boss. Too
easy-going. Well, all he has to do is to direct the work, luckily. If
anything really goes wrong, Darrell would be down in two jumps."

"Grub pile!" remarked the cook conversationally.

The men seized the utensils from a heap of them, and began to fill their
plates from the kettles on the table.

"Come on, bub," said Welton, "dig in! It's a long time till breakfast!"

XIII

The cook was early a foot next morning. Bob, restless with the
uneasiness of the first night out of doors, saw the flicker of the fire
against the tent canvas long before the first signs of daylight. In
fact, the gray had but faintly lightened the velvet black of the night
when the cook thrust his head inside the big sleeping tents to utter a
wild yell of reveille.

The men stirred sleepily, stretched, yawned, finally ki