"It's probably safe; but another flood might send it
out."
"The floods are going down," said North.
"Good Lord; I hope so!" said Orde.
Newmark sent word that a sudden fit of sickness had confined him to
the house.
"Didn't think of a little thing like piles," said Orde to himself.
"Well, that's hardly fair. Joe couldn't have realised when he left
here just how bad things were."
For two days, as has been said, nothing happened. Then Orde decided
to break out a channel through the jam itself. This was a necessary
preliminary to getting the logs in shape for distribution. An
opening was made in the piles, and the rivermen, with pike-pole and
peavy, began cautiously to dig their way through the tangled
timbers. The Government pile-driver, which had finally been sent up
from below, began placing five extra booms at intervals down stream
to capture the drift as fast as it was turned loose. From the mills
and private booms crews came to assist in the labour. The troubles
appeared to be quite over, when word came from Redding that the
waters were again rising. Ten minutes later Leopold Lincoln Bunn,
the local reporter, came flapping in on Randall's old white horse,
like a second Paul Revere, crying that the iron bridge had gone, and
the logs were racing down river toward the booms.
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