THE RIVER BOSS by Steward Edward White Author of “The Westerners,” “The Blazed Trail,” etc. “Obey orders if you break owners,” is a good motto, 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 needs no instructions from headquarters to tell him how to live up to this rule. That might involve headquarters. Jimmy was such a river boss. Therefore when Mr. Daly, of the firm of Morrison & Daly, unexpectedly found himself contracted to deliver 5,000,000 feet of logs at a certain date, and the logs an impossible number of miles up-stream, 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 label, 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 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 pendent 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 boom as fast as you can. I give you about twenty days. It ought to be done in that. Sanders will keep time for you, and Merrill will cook. You can get a crew from the East Branch, where the drive is just over.” When Daly had quite finished his remarks, Jimmy got up and went out without a word. Two days later he and sixty men were breaking rollways forty-five miles up-stream. Jimmy knew as well as Daly that the latter had given him a hard task. Twenty days was too brief a time. However, that was none of his business.