two washed their hands in preparation for a lunch.
"Ye could not bear t' see th' lads burn."

FitzPatrick glowered at him for an instant from beneath his square
brows.

"They can go to hell for all of me," he answered, finally, "but my
people want these logs put in this winter, an' there's nobody else to
put them in."

IV

THE RIVER-BOSS

"Obey orders if you break owners" is a good rule, but a really efficient
river-boss knows a better. It runs, "Get the logs out. Get them out
peaceably if you can, but _get them out_." He does not need a
field-telephone to headquarters to teach him how to live up to the
spirit of this rule. That might involve headquarters.

Jimmy was such a river-boss. Therefore when Mr. Daly, of the firm of
Morrison & Daly, unexpectedly contracted to deliver five million feet of
logs on a certain date, and the logs an impossible number of miles up
river, he called in Jimmy.

Jimmy was a small man, changeless as the Egyptian sphinx. A number of
years ago a French comic journal published a series of sketches supposed
to represent the Shah of Persia influenced by various emotions. Under
each was an appropriate caption, such as Surprise, Grief, Anger, or
Astonishment. The portraits were identically alike, and uniformly
impassive.

Well, that was Jimmy. He looked always the same. His hair, thick and
black, grew low on his forehead; his beard, thick and black, mounted
over the ridge of his cheek-bones; and his eyebrows, thick and black,
extended in an uninterrupted straight line from one temple to the other.
Whatever his small, compact, muscular body might be doing, the mask of
his black and white imperturbability remained always unchanged.
Generally he sat clasping one knee, staring directly in front of him,
and puffing regularly on a "meerschaum" pipe he had earned by saving the
tags of Spearhead tobacco. Whatever you said to him sank without splash
into this almost primal calm and was lost to your view forever. Perhaps
after a time he might do something about it, but always without
explanation, calmly, with the lofty inevitability of fate. In fact, he
never explained himself, even to his employers.

Daly swung his bulk back and forth in the office chair. Jimmy sat bolt
upright, his black hat pendant between his knees.

"I want you to take charge of the driving crew, Jimmy," said the big
man; "I want you to drive those logs down to our booms as fast as you
can. I give you about twent