On Racket River, Mark Ducat, of Piper's Glen, was the most daring and successful negotiator of troublesome logs jambed or jambing or running free. He was cock of the upper river, as his father, Peter, had been before him, and his grandfather, Hercules Ducat, had been before Peter. For five years, on five successive drives, he had shown his superiority to his fellow wielders of peavy and pikepole as a "cuffer" of running logs and a breaker of jambs. And not only that. He was as nimble with his feet and hands, and as fearless in diversion as in toil. There were stronger men than Mark on the river, but there was no man possessed of Mark's combination of strength and speed and nerve. The stronger fellows were too heavy to be speedy. He stood five feet and eleven inches in his spiked boots and weighed one hundred and seventy-eight pounds. New men joined the drive each spring for the brief and well-paid job, and likely lads arrived at their full growth and an appreciation of their own powers; and so it happened that Mark Ducat's title never went a year unchallenged. But still he was Cock of the River. After the first rush of the drive one spring, the boss left Mark and a gang of nine "white-water boys" to keep the logs clear at Frenchman's Elbow, the worst point for jambs in ten miles of bad water. Mark was foreman and Joe Bender was cook. All the others were Racket River men, with the exception of a big stranger with a black beard who said that he was from Quebec. Charlie Lavois was the stranger's name. Underdone beef was his favorite diet and overproof whisky was his favorite drink. He had chopped throughout the previous winter in a big camp on the Gateneau and, to avoid making himself conspicuous, to keep his daily cut down to normal, he had swung his ax only with one hand; and because six men had once attacked him with knives and sticks of stove-wood after a game of forty-fives in which his skill had emptied all their pockets, and he had killed two of them and disabled the others in self defence, he had thought it advisable to leave his native Province for a little while--all this by his own telling. "Ye may be that good in Quebec, Charlie Lavois, but any six yearlin' babies on the Racket River country in this here old Province of New Brunswick could knock the stuffin' out o' ye with nothin' in their hands but their rattles an' little rubber suckin'-nipples," said Joe Bender, the cook. This sally of rustic wit was well received by the lads of Racket River, but Mr. Lavois took exception to it. "Maybe ye could do it yerself," retorted Lavois. "Maybe I could, but it ain't my job," returned Bender. "My job's keepin' the blankets dry an' the beans an' biscuits hot for champeens like yerself. I ain't Cock o' the River." "Cock of the river?" queried Lavois, spitting into the fire. "Where I come from, this here dribble o' dirty water'd be named a brook an' the cock o' it would be called a cockerel."