"I don't believe I have."
"Then I fail to see why I should answer your questions," said the
lawyer, with finality. "As to your question," he went on to Larsen with
equal coldness, "if you have any doubts as to Mr. Murdock's rights in
the stream, you have the recourse of a suit at law to settle that point,
and to determine the damages, if any."
Bob found himself in the street with Larsen.
"But they haven't got no right to stop our drive _dead_ that way,"
expostulated the old man.
Bob's temper was somewhat ruffled by his treatment at the hands of the
lawyer.
"Well, they've done it, whether they have the right to or not," he said
shortly; "what next?"
"I guess I'll telegraph Mr. Welton," said Larsen.
He did so. The two returned to camp. The rivermen were loafing in camp
awaiting Larsen's reappearance. The jam was as before. Larsen walked out
on the logs. The boy, seated on the clump of piles, gave a shrill
whistle. Immediately from the little mill appeared the brown-bearded man
and his two companions. They picked their way across the jam to the
piles, where they roosted, their weapons across their knees, until
Larsen had returned to the other bank.
"Well, Mr. Welton ought to be up in a couple of days, if he ain't up the
main river somewheres," said Larsen.
"Aren't you going to do anything in the meantime?" asked Bob.
"What can I do?" countered Larsen.'
The crew had nothing to say one way or the other, but watched with a
cynical amusement the progress of affairs. They smoked, and spat, and
squatted on their heels in the Indian taciturnity of their kind when for
some reason they withhold their approval. That evening, however, Bob
happened to be lying at the campfire next two of the older men. As
usual, he smoked in unobtrusive silence, content to be ignored if only
the men would act in their accustomed way, and not as before a stranger.
"Wait; hell!" said one of the men to the other. "Times is certainly gone
wrong! If they had anything like an oldtime river boss in charge, they'd
come the Jack Orde on this lay-out."
Bob pricked up his ears at this mention of his father's name.
"What's that?" he asked.
The riverman rolled over and examined him dispassionately for a few
moments.
"Jack Orde," he deigned to explain at last, "was a riverman. He was a
good one. He used to run the drive in the Redding country. When he
started to take out logs, he took 'em out, by God! I've heard him often:
'Get your logs out first, and pay the damage afterward,' says he. He was
a holy terror. They got the state troops out after him once. It came to
be a sort of by-word. When you generally gouge, kick and sandbag a man
into bein' real _good_, why we say you come the Jack Orde on him."
"I see," said Bob, vastly amused at this sidelight on the family
reputation. "What would you do here?"
"I don't know," replied the riverman, "but I wouldn't lay around and
wait."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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