alf Scotch, swarthy and
admirably made. He was proud of his strength, and showily fearless in
danger. For there were dangerous hours to the river life: when,
for instance, a mass of logs became jammed at a rapids, and must be
loosened; or a crib struck into the wrong channel, or, failing to enter
a slide straight, came at a nasty angle to it, its timbers wrenched and
tore apart, and its crew, with their great oars, were plumped into the
busy current. He had been known to stand singly in some perilous spot
when one log, the key to the jam, must be shifted to set free the great
tumbled pile. He did everything with a dash. The handspike was waved
and thrust into the best leverage, the long robust cry, "O-hee-hee-hoi!"
rolled over the waters, there was a devil's jumble of logs, and
he played a desperate game with them, tossing here, leaping there,
balancing elsewhere, till, reaching the smooth rush of logs in the
current, he ran across them to the shore as they spun beneath his feet.

His gang of river-drivers, with their big drives of logs, came
sweeping down one beautiful day of early summer, red-shifted, shouting,
good-tempered. It was about this time that Pierre came to know Magor.

It was the old man's duty to keep the booms of several great lumbering
companies, and to watch the logs when the river-drivers were engaged
elsewhere. Occasionally he took a place with the men, helping to make
cribs and rafts. Dugard worked for one lumber company, Magor for others.
Many in the settlement showed Dugard how much he was despised. Some
warned him that Magor had said he would break him into pieces; it seemed
possible that Dugard might have a bad hour with the people of Bamber's
Boom. Dugard, though he swelled and strutted, showed by a furtive eye
and a sinister watchfulness that he felt himself in an atmosphere of
danger. But he spoke of his wickedness lightly as, "A slip--a little
accident, mon ami."

Pierre said to him one day: "Bien, Dugard, you are a bold man to come
here again. Or is it that you think old men are cowards?"

Dugard, blustering, laid his hand suddenly upon his case-knife.

Pierre laughed softly, contemptuously, came over, and throwing out his
perfectly formed but not robust chest in the fashion of Dugard, added:
"Ho, ho, monsieur the butcher, take your time at that. There is too much
blood in your carcass. You have quarrels plenty on your hands without
this. Come, don't be a fool and a scoundrel too."

D