filled the air. Quite coolly the
rivermen made their way ashore, their peavies held like balancing poles
across their bodies. Under their feet the logs heaved, sank, ground
together, tossed above the hurrying under-mass, tumultuous as a
close-packed drove of wild horses. The rivermen rode them easily. For an
appreciable time one man perched on a stable timber watching keenly
ahead. Then quite coolly he leaped, made a dozen rapid zigzag steps
forward, and stopped. The log he had quitted dropped sullenly from
sight, and two closed, grinding, where it had been. In twenty seconds
every man was safely ashore.

The river caught its speed. Hurried on by the pressure of water long
dammed back, the logs tumbled forward. Rank after rank they swept past,
while the rivermen, leaning on the shafts of their peavies, passed them
in review.

"That was luck," Welton's voice broke in on Bob's contemplation. "It's
just getting dark. Couldn't have done it without the dynamite. It
splinters up a little timber, but we save money, even at that."

"Billy doesn't carry that with the other supplies, does he?" asked Bob.

"Sure," said Welton; "rolls it up in the bedding, or something. Well,
John Harvey, Junior," said he to that youth, "what do you think of it? A
little different driving this white water than pushing logs with a pike
pole down a slack-water river like the Green, hey?"

"Yes, sir," the boy nodded out of his Indian stolidity.

"You see now why a man has to start young to be a riverman," Welton told
Bob, as they bent their steps toward camp. "Poor little John Harvey out
on that jam when she broke would have stood about as much chance as a
beetle at a woodpecker prayer meeting."

XV

Two days later Welton returned to the mill. At his suggestion Bob stayed
with the drive. He took his place quietly as a visitor, had the good
sense to be unobtrusive, and so was tolerated by the men. That is to
say, he sat at the camp fires practically unnoticed, and the rivermen
talked as though he were not there. When he addressed any of them they
answered him with entire good humour, but ordinarily they paid no more
attention to him than they did to the trees and bushes that chanced to
surround the camp.

The drive moved forward slowly. Sometimes Billy packed up every day to
set forth on one of his highly adventurous drives; again camp stayed for
some time in the same place. Bob amused himself tramping up and down the
river, reviewi