tten agreement, protection of all her rights. But the
old creature, who lived alone, dismissed the timber cruiser with a wave
of her bony hand. "Begone!" she chirped, "I don't want to be scrouged by
your crew comin' in on my land choppin' down trees and settin' up them
racket-makin' contrapshuns under my very nose. No how such as that
skeers off the birds in the forest." Though the cruiser agreed that his
company would even be willing to keep a distance of three miles in all
directions from her little cabin, the old woman still refused, and when
he tried again in honeyed tones to persuade her she up with the ax and
chased him off the place.

The mountain man, however, often seized the opportunity to dispose of
his timber and set to work with a vim to get it to the nearest market,
though such was a mighty task. Having cut down the larger trees, he
rolled the logs down the mountain side toward the watercourse. Usually
the creeks were much too shallow to carry rafts of logs so he
constructed a splash dam at a suitable point between the high banks of
the stream. A splash dam consisted of two square cribs of logs filled
with great stones. Against these two crude piers he built a dam in the
middle of which he placed an enormous gate. He remembered how he had
made rabbit traps when he was a boy. So now, on a bigger scale, he made
a figure-four trap-trigger for his splash dam. On one side, the gate
which he built in the middle, pushed against two projecting logs in the
dam. A long slender pole like a telegraph pole held the gate in place.
This is the trigger pole. Thus dammed, the water soon formed a deep lake
into which strong-armed men threw the logs.

Gate and trigger are in readiness. The mountaineer has only to wait for
a tide, which is often not long in coming. Even overnight, even in a few
short hours, a stream has been known to swell from sudden rains or snow,
bringing the water with a rush down steep mountain sides and carrying
with it the logs that were left strewn on the slopes or near the bank.
Men work with feverish haste to roll the logs into the stream. The whole
is swept into the dam, the trigger is released at the right moment and
the rush of water with its freight of logs sweeps through the open gate
with a mighty roar, carrying its cargo for miles on down to the river.

Zealous workers have been known to splash out in this fashion as many as
thirteen thousand logs in one season.

Timber so floated down the