Part 8 (1/2)

CHAPTER VII

THE BREAKING OF THE JAM

It was late one moonlight night when Geoffrey Thurston sat inside his double-skinned tent which was pitched above a river of British Columbia. A few good furs checkered the spruce twigs which served as a carpet, and the canvas dwelling was both commodious and comfortable. A bright bra.s.s lamp hung from the ridge pole, a nickeled clock ticked cheerily upon a hanging shelf behind the neat camp cot, while the rest of the well-made furniture betokened a degree of prosperity. One of Savine's junior a.s.sistants, sent up there in an emergency to replace an older man, sat close by, and, because he dwelt in a bark shanty, envied Thurston his tent.

Geoffrey was studying a bridge-work tracing that lay unrolled upon his knees.

”I can only repeat what I said months ago. The wing slide of the log pa.s.s is too short and the angle over sharp,” he said, glancing at the jam. ”An extra big log will jam there some day and imperil the whole bridge. Did you send a man down to keep watch to-night?”

”The slide is in accordance with the Roads and Trails specification,”

answered the young man, airily. ”There was no reason why we should do more work than they asked for. You're an uneasy man, Thurston, always looking for trouble, and I've had enough of late over the rascally hoboes who, when they feel inclined, condescend to work for me. Oh, yes! I posted the lookout as soon as I heard Davies was running his saw logs down.”

Thurston hitched his chair forward and threw the door-flap back so that he could look out into the night. The tent stood perched on the hillside. Long ranks of climbing pines stretched upwards from it to the scarped rocks which held up the snow-fields on the shoulders of the mighty peaks above. Thin white mist and the roar of water rose up from the shadowy gorge below, but in one place, where the rock walls which hemmed it in sloped down, a gossamer-like structure spanned the chasm.

This was a wagon-road bridge Julius Savine, the contractor of large interests and well-known name, was building for the Provincial authorities, and on their surveyor's recommendation he had sub-let to Thurston the construction of a pa.s.s through which saw-logs and driftwood might slide without jamming between the piers. Savine, being pressed for time, had brought in a motley collection of workmen, picked up haphazard in the seaboard cities. After bargaining to work for certain wages, these workmen had demanded twenty per cent. more.

Thurston, who had picked his own a.s.sistants carefully, among the st.u.r.dy ranchers, and had aided Savine's representative in resisting this demand, now surmised that the malcontents were meditating mischief.

There were some mighty mean rascals among them, his foreman said.

”You're looking worried again,” observed his companion, presently, and Thurston answered, ”Perhaps I am. I wish Davies would run his logs down by daylight, but presumably the stream is too fast for him when the waters rise. It might give some of your friends yonder an opportunity, Summers.”

”You don't figure they're capable of wrecking the bridge?” replied Summers, showing sudden uneasiness.

”One or two among them, including the man I had to thrash, are capable of anything. Perhaps you had better hail your watchman,” Thurston said.

Summers blew a whistle, and an answer came back faintly through the fret of the river: ”Plenty saw logs coming down. All of them handy sizes and sliding safely through.”

”That's good enough,” declared Summers. ”I'm not made of cast-iron, and need a little sleep at times, so good-night to you!”

He departed with the cheerful confidence of the salaried man, and Thurston, who fought for his own interests, flung himself down on his trestle cot with all his clothes on. Neither the timber slide nor the bridge was quite finished, but because rivers in that region shrink at night when the frost checks the drainage from the feeding glaciers on the peaks above, the saw-miller had insisted on driving down his logs when there was less chance of their stranding on the shoals that c.u.mbered the high-water channel. Thurston lay awake for some time, listening to the fret of the river, which vibrated far across the silence of the hills, and to the occasional crash of a mighty log smiting the slide. Hardly had his eyelids closed when he was aroused by a sound of hurried footsteps approaching the tent. He stood wide awake in the entrance before the newcomer reached it.

”There's a mighty big pine caught its b.u.t.t on one slide and jammed its thin end across the pier,” said the man. ”Logs piling up behind it already!”

As he spoke somebody beat upon a suspended iron sheet down in the valley and drowsy voices rose up from among the cl.u.s.tered tents.

Summers went by shouting, ”Get a move on, before we lose the bridge!”

Five minutes later Thurston, running across a bending plank, halted on the rock which served as foundation for the main bridge pier. Beside him Summers shouted confused orders to a group of struggling men. The moonlight beat down mistily through the haze that rose from the river, and Geoffrey could see the long wedge-headed timber framing that he had built, beside the wing on the sh.o.r.e-side, so that any trunk floating down would cannon off at an angle and shoot safely between the piers.

But one huge fir had proved too long for the pa.s.s, and when its b.u.t.t canted, the other end had driven athwart the point of the wedge, after which, because the river was black with drifting logs, other heavy trunks drove against it and jammed it fast. Panting men were hard at work with levers and pike-poles striving to wrench the ma.s.sive trunk clear, and one lighted an air-blast flare, whose red glare flickered athwart the strip of water foaming between the piers. It showed that some of the logs forced up by the pressure were sliding out above the others, while, amid a horrible grinding, some sank. One side of the river was blocked by a ma.s.s of timber that was increasing every moment.

Thurston feared that the unfinished piers could not long withstand the pressure, and he remembered that his own work would be paid for only on completion. Nevertheless, he pa.s.sed several minutes in a critical survey, and then glanced towards certain groups of dark figures watching for the approaching ruin.

”She'll go down inside an hour--that is certain, and Savine will lose thousands of dollars,” said Summers, whose eyes were wide with apprehension. ”I'm rattled completely. Can't you think of anything that might be done?”

”Yes!” answered Thurston, coolly. ”It is, however, almost too late now.It could have been done readily, if the man who should have seen to it had not turned traitor. h.e.l.lo! Where's Mattawa Tom?”

A big sinewy ax-man from the forests of Northern Ontario sprang up beside him, and Thurston said:

”I'm going to try to chop through the king log that's keying them.

It's rather more than you bargained for, but will you stand by me, Tom?”

”Looks mighty like suicide!” was the dry answer. ”But if you're ready to chance it, I'm coming right along.”