g a clientele which should do them credit.

The winter was a bad one for everybody. Deep snows put the job behind;
frequent storms undid the work of an infinitely slow patience. When the
logging roads were cut through, the ground failed to freeze because of
the thick white covering that overlaid it. Darrell in his mysterious
compelling fashion managed somehow. Everywhere his thin eager triangle
of a face with the brown chipmunk eyes was seen, bullying the men into
titanic exertions by the mere shock of his nervous force. Over the thin
crust of ice cautious loads of a few thousand feet were drawn to the
banks of the river. The road-bed held. Gradually it hardened and
thickened. The size of the loads increased. Finally Billy O'Brien drew
up triumphantly at the rollway.

"There's a rim-racker!" he exclaimed. "Give her all she'll stand,
Jimmy."

Jimmy Hall, the sealer, laid his flexible rule over the face of each
log. The men gathered, interested in this record load.

"Thirteen thousand two hundred and forty," announced the scaler at last.

"Whoopee!" crowed Billy O'Brien, "that'll lay out Rollway Charley by two
thousand feet!"

The men congratulated him on his victory over the other teamster,
Rollway Charley. Suddenly Darrell was among them, eager, menacing,
thrusting his nervous face and heavy shoulders here and there in the
crowd, bullying them back to the work which they were neglecting. When
his back was turned they grumbled at him savagely, threatening to
disobey, resolving to quit. Some of them did quit: but none of them
disobeyed.

Now the big loads were coming in regularly, and the railways became
choked with the logs dumped down on them from the sleighs. There were
not enough men to roll them down to the river, nor to "deck" them there
in piles. Work accumulated. The cant-hook men became discouraged. What
was the use of trying? They might as well take it easy. They did take it
easy. As a consequence the teamsters had often to wait two, three hours
to be unloaded. They were out until long after dark, feeling their way
homeward through hunger and cold.

Dick Darrell, walking boss of all the camps, did the best he could. He
sent message after message to Beeson Lake demanding more men. If the
rollways could be definitely cleared once, the work would lighten all
along the line. Then the men would regain their content. More help was
promised, but it was slow in coming. The balance hung trembling. At any
moment