were too green. Another boy, in charge of a solemn mule, tramped
ceaselessly back and forth between the engine and a spring that had been
dug out down the hill in a ravine. Before the end of that summer they
had worn a trail so deep and hard and smooth that many seasons of snow
failed to obliterate it even from the soft earth. On either side the
mule were slung sacks of heavy canvas. At the spring the boy filled
these by means of a pail. Returned to the engine, he replenished the
boiler, draining the sacks from the bottom, cast a fleeting glance at
the water gauge of the donkey engine, and hastened back to the spring.
He had charge of three engines; and was busy.

And back along the line of the chutes were other men to fill out this
crew of many activities--old men to signal; young men to stand by with
slush brush, axe, or bar when things did not go well; axe-men with
teams laying accurately new chutes into new country yet untouched.

Bob found plenty to keep him busy. Post, the woods foreman, was a good
chute man. By long experience he had gained practical knowledge of the
problems and accidents of this kind of work. To get the logs out from
the beds in which they lay, across a rugged country, and into the mill
was an engineering proposition of some moment. It is easy to get into
difficulties from which hours of work will not extricate.

But a man involved closely in the practical management of a saw log may
conceivably possess scant leisure to correlate the scattered efforts of
such divergent activities. The cross cutters and swampers may get ahead
of the fellers and have to wait in idleness until the latter have
knocked down a tree. Or the donkey may fall silent from lack of logs to
haul; or the chute crews may smoke their pipes awaiting the donkey. Or,
worst and unpardonable disgrace of all, the mill may ran out of logs!
When that happens, the Old Fellow is usually pretty promptly on the
scene.

Now it is obvious that if somewhere on the works ten men are always
waiting--even though the same ten men are not thus idle over once a
week--the employer is paying for ten men too many. Bob found his best
activity lay in seeing that this did not happen. He rode everywhere
reviewing the work; and he kept it shaken together. Thus he made himself
very useful, he gained rapidly a working knowledge of this new kind of
logging, and, incidentally, he found his lines fallen in very pleasant
places indeed.

The forest never los