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PAGE 4.
1 HE FUTURE CITIZEN.
ill
*
I
; WHEN THE RIVER ROSE , ?
“Fired! Fired! J?ired!” The
rushing river seemed to snarl the
words as Gerald Holt walked home
ward from the Redwood Mills.
Two hours before, he had been
Bred because a letter had been lost;
and Mercer, the bookkeeper, had
been too cowardly to admit his re
sponsibility. Instead, he had placed
the blame on Gerald and gruff old
Bartlett, the manager had dismiss
ed the boy.
Now he was going home—going
home to tell his mother of his dis
grace. That was the hardest task
of all.
It was a morning to encourage
dismal thoughts. Even the lower
ing clouds seemed to share the dis
couraged spirits of the boy. The
old logging road that led away
from Redwood Mills up to the
shakery railroad bridge where
Gerald crossed the river to his home,
was muddy and wagon-rutted from
the heavy loads of logs that had
been hauled down to the mill.
The Redwood had been rising
steadily for three days. Heavy
rains far up in the mountains had
poured into the stream until the
usual shore lines were marked out
by the rush of muddy waters.
Fields had been overswept. Trees
that stood at the normal limits of
the stream bed seemed now almost
in the center of the raging river,
their drift fleeted bcughs protruding
sadly from the tide.
It was *uch a tide as this that the
mill men dreaded, for locked in a
simple dam of logs and chains
swung across the river at the Red
wood mill*, were thousands of logs
that had been floated down from
the hills to the mills to be cut up
into lumber. That was an easy
way the Redwood Company had
of getting sawlogs to the mills. In
the fall, the trees were cut and
rolled down to the brink of the
river. With the summer tide the
logs were picked up by rising
stream and floated to the mills,
mill men.
The drift of logs behind the
boom was bigger now than it had
ever been in the history of the
Redwood Company. Millions of
feet of lumber, as yet uncut floated
and whirled in the seething river,
protesting against the man-made
dam that held them in leash. Men
bad been working night and day
dragging the logs from behind the
overburdened boom, but the vast
hundreds of logs were not diminish
ed, because new recruits to this
army of fallen forest monarchs
kept floating down with the tide*
There was much apprehension
concerning the boom. Although it
had been examined by experts each
year and pronunced safe, it had
never been called upon to hold
back such a tremendous drift of
logs crowded forward by such a
mighty current. If it parted, the
logs belonging to the Redwood
Company would run wild down
the river to be picked up by un
scrupulous mill men further down
the river.
That was the unwritten law of
the river—recognized, if not hon
est.
Gerald paused on his way across
the treacherous bridge to watch
the logs drifting down the river,
whirling as they struck the eddies
in the stream. Presently there came
into view a tiny black speck on
the muddy expanse of the river.
Little by little, the speck grew in
size until Gerald realized that it
was not a single log. Perhaps two
logs had been brought together by
the force of the hastening stream.
The increasing size of the speck
dispelled this belief, though, al
most before the opinion had been
formed.
Then the solution became ap
parent as the speck came fully into
view. It was a raft of logs—hun
dreds of heavy logs, held to gether
by crossbars attached to the logs
by wooden pins driven deep into
heart of the timbers.
Somewhere up the river some
run his forest output to market,
Gerald concluded. Doubtless he
was taking his wares to the Red
wood Mills.
Frequently a raft of timber
came down to Redwood in this
way and after much dickering and
haggling as to price, the woodsman
would go home with the money for
his logs. In the old days, mill men
had told Gerald, hundreds of rafts
came down, but in later days, they
were not seen so often.
The size of tne oncoming raft
caused Gerald to inspect it more
carefully. He looked for the little
shanty built on rafts sometimes, to
afford a scanty shelter to the hardy
crew. This one, strangely enough,
had no cabin. Then another hasty
glance revealed the fact that i* had
no crew.
It was running wild! The reali
zation almost stunned the boy! A
runaway raft on a mad river and
with a log-Blled boom less than a
-mile below!
“It’ll break the booml” gasped
Gerald, staring at the rushing raft
as thongh it threatened his own
destiuction. And then a feeling of
triumpth clutched him, although he
was cherishng an ignoDle thought.
The raft with its tons of weight,
thrust foward by the maddened
river, would sever the boom and
release the thousands of logs held
so weekly in restraint.
It would spell.trouble for Bart
lett—rough, grouff Bill Bartlett,
who that morning had discharged
him. It might cause trouble for
Mercer, even. But what of Mercer’s
wife and Mercer’s little girl. With
that thought came a revulsion of
feeling. A sence of despair poss
essed his soul, for he knew that the
raft—if it broke the bocm, which
it must invetably do—would cause
the mill to shut down. The men
would be out of work and that
would mean disappointment, even
hunger psrhaps tor the wives and
children of the men he knew and
liked at the mill.
The raft was now* only a few
rods above the bridge. Even if he
where they were caught by the
“boom”—as the chain of logs
ac ross the river was known to thedaring woodsmen had decided to
HAVE YOU A LITTLE FUTURE UTIZEN IN YOUR H0MF.?-WEIL, YOU SHOULD.