Jimmy was a mighty good riverman. Of course he had nerve, and could do anything with a log and a peevie, and would fight at the drop of a hat--any “bully boy” would qualify there;--but he also had judgment. He knew how to use the water, how to recognize the key log of jams, where to place his men--in short, he could get out the logs. Now Jimmy also knew the river from one end to the other, so he had arranged in his mind a sort of schedule for the twenty days. Forty-eight hours for the rollways; a day and a half for the upper rapid; three days into the dam pond; one day to sluice the drive through the dam; three days to the crossing, and so on. If everything went well, he could do it, but there could be no hitches in the programme. Even from this imperfect fragment of the schedule the inexperienced might imagine that Jimmy had allowed an altogether disproportionate time to cover the mile or so from the upper rapid to the dam pond. As it turned out, however, he found he had not allowed enough, for at this point the river was peculiar and very trying. The backwater of the dam extended upstream half a mile; then occurred a rise of five feet to the mile, down the slope of which the water whirled and tumbled, only to spread out over a broad fan of gravel shallows. These shallows did the business. When the logs had bumped through the tribulations of the rapid, they seemed to insist obstinately on resting in the shallows, like a lot of wearied cattle. The rear crew had to wade in. They heaved and pried and pushed industriously, and at the end of it had the satisfaction of seeing a single log slide reluctantly into the current. Sometimes a dozen of them would clamp their peevies on either side, and by sheer brute force carry the stick to deep water. When you reflect that there were over 40,000 pieces in the drive, and that a good fifty per cent. of them balked below the rapids, you can see that the rear crew had its work cut out for it. Jimmy’s allotted three days were almost gone, and his job had not advanced beyond the third of completion. McGann, the sluice boss, did a little figuring. “She’ll hang over thim twinty days,” he confided to Jimmy. “Shure!” Jimmy replied not a word, but puffed piston-like smoke from his pipe. McGann shrugged in Celtic despair.