anything in the meantime?" asked Bob.

"What can I do?" countered Larsen.'

The crew had nothing to say one way or the other, but watched with a
cynical amusement the progress of affairs. They smoked, and spat, and
squatted on their heels in the Indian taciturnity of their kind when for
some reason they withhold their approval. That evening, however, Bob
happened to be lying at the campfire next two of the older men. As
usual, he smoked in unobtrusive silence, content to be ignored if only
the men would act in their accustomed way, and not as before a stranger.

"Wait; hell!" said one of the men to the other. "Times is certainly gone
wrong! If they had anything like an oldtime river boss in charge, they'd
come the Jack Orde on this lay-out."

Bob pricked up his ears at this mention of his father's name.

"What's that?" he asked.

The riverman rolled over and examined him dispassionately for a few
moments.

"Jack Orde," he deigned to explain at last, "was a riverman. He was a
good one. He used to run the drive in the Redding country. When he
started to take out logs, he took 'em out, by God! I've heard him often:
'Get your logs out first, and pay the damage afterward,' says he. He was
a holy terror. They got the state troops out after him once. It came to
be a sort of by-word. When you generally gouge, kick and sandbag a man
into bein' real _good_, why we say you come the Jack Orde on him."

"I see," said Bob, vastly amused at this sidelight on the family
reputation. "What would you do here?"

"I don't know," replied the riverman, "but I wouldn't lay around and
wait."

"Why don't some of you fellows go out there and storm the fort, if you
feel that way?" asked Bob.

"Why?" demanded the riverman, "I won't let any boss stump me; but why in
hell should I go out and get my hide full of birdshot? If this outfit
don't know enough to get its drive down, that ain't my fault."

Bob had seen enough of the breed to recognize this as an eminently
characteristic attitude.

"Well," he remarked comfortably, "somebody'll be down from the mill
soon."

The riverman turned on him almost savagely.

"Down soon!" he snorted. "So'll the water be 'down soon.' It's dropping
every minute. That telegraft of yours won't even start out before
to-morrow morning. Don't you fool yourself. That Twin Falls outfit is
just too tickled to do us up. It'll be two days before anybody shows up,
and then where are you at? Hell!" and the old ri