he greener's possession of uncanny
powers, nevertheless he knew that, whatever happened that night, the
greener knew more than he chose to tell, and as his apprehension
deepened his rage increased.

Hate smoldered in the swinish eyes as, in the seclusion of the office,
he glowered and planned and rumbled his throaty threats.

"The drive," he muttered. "My Bucko Bill, you're right now picked for
the drive, an' I'll see to it myself that you git yourn in the river."

CHAPTER XXIV

THE LOG JAM

The feel of spring filled the air; the sun swung higher and higher; and
the snow turned dark and lay soggy with water. With the increasing
warmth of the longer days, men's thoughts turned to the drive.

They talked of water-front streets, with their calk-riddled plank
sidewalks and low-fronted bars; of squalid back wine-rooms, where for a
week they would be allowed to bask, sodden, in the smiles of the
painted women--then, drugged, beaten, and robbed, would wake up in a
filthy alley and hunt up a job in the mills.

It was all in a lifetime, this annual spring debauch. The men accepted
it as part of the ordered routine of their lives; accepted it without
shame or regret, boasting and laughing unblushingly over past
episodes--facing the future gladly and without disgust.

"You mind Jake Sonto's place, where big Myrtle hangs out? They frisked
Joe Manning fer sixty bucks last year. I seen 'em do it. What! Me? I
was too sleepy to give a cuss--they got mine, too."

And so the talk drifted among them. Revolting details of abysmal
man-failings, brutal reminiscences of knock-out drops, robbery, and
even murder, furnished the themes for jest and gibe which drew forth
roars of laughter.

And none sought to avoid the inevitable; rather, they looked forward to
it in brutish anticipation, accepting it as a matter of course.

For so had lumber-jacks been drugged, beaten, and robbed since the
first pine fell--and so will they continue to be drugged, beaten, and
robbed until the last log is jerked, dripping, from the river and the
last white board is sawed.

On the night of the 8th of April the cut was complete, and on the
morning of the 9th ten million feet of logs towered on the rollways
along the river, ready for the breaking up of the ice.

Stromberg had banked the bird's-eye to his own satisfaction, and
Moncrossen selected his crew for the drive--white-water men, whose
boast it was that they never had walked a foot from