carry the last stick of timber
over the shallowest rapids. Weather conditions were phenomenal--and
perfect. All up and down the river the work went with that vim and dash
that is in itself an assurance of success. The Heinzman affair, which
under auspices of evil augury might have become a serious menace to the
success of the young undertaking, now served merely to add a spice
of humour to the situation. Among the men gained currency a
half-affectionate belief in "Orde's luck."

After this happy fashion the drive went, until at last it entered the
broad, deep, and navigable stretches of the river from Redding to the
lake. Here, barring the accident of an extraordinary flood, the troubles
were over. On the broad, placid bosom of the stream the logs would
float. A crew, following, would do the easy work of sacking what logs
would strand or eddy in the lazy current; would roll into the faster
waters the component parts of what were by courtesy called jams, but
which were in reality pile-ups of a few hundred logs on sand bars
mid-stream; and in the growing tepid warmth of summer would tramp
pleasantly along the river trail. Of course, a dry year would make
necessary a larger crew and more labour; of course, a big flood might
sweep the logs past all defences into the lake for an irretrievable
loss. But such floods come once in a century, and even the dryest of dry
years could not now hang the drive. As Orde sat in his buckboard, ready
to go into town for a first glimpse of Carroll in more than two months,
he gazed with an immense satisfaction over the broad river moving brown
and glacier-like as though the logs that covered it were viscid and
composed all its substance. The enterprise was practically assured of
success.

For a while now Orde was to have a breathing spell. A large number
of men were here laid off. The remainder, under the direction of Jim
Denning, would require little or no actual supervision. Until the jam
should have reached the distributing booms above Monrovia, the affair
was very simple. Before he left, however, he called Denning to him.

"Jim," said he, "I'll be down to see you through the sluiceways at
Redding, of course. But now that you have a good, still stretch of
river, I want you to have the boys let up on sacking out those "H" logs.
And I want you to include in our drive all the Heinzman logs from above
you possibly can. If you can fix it, let their drive drift down into
ours.

"Then we'll