Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp Part 19

Shooting across on a slant was a huge log, all of three feet through at the b.u.t.t, and it was aimed for the timber on which Turner stood. He did not see it. Smaller logs were already piling against the timber he had left, and had he leaped back to the stranded one he would have been comparatively safe.

Mr. Sherwood was quick to act in such an emergency as this; but he was too far from the spot to give practical aid in saving Turner from the result of his own heedlessness. He made a horn of his two hands and shouted to the foreguard at the foot of the bluff:

"He's going into the water! Launch Fred Durgin's boat below the bend!

Get her! Quick, there!"

Old riverman that he was, Uncle Henry was pretty sure of what was about to happen. The huge log came tearing on, b.u.t.t first, a wave of troubled water split by its on-rush. Turner was watching the person bringing him the axe, and never once threw a glance over his shoulder.

Suddenly Nan cried out and seized Uncle Henry's arm. "Look! Oh, Uncle!

It's Rafe!" she gasped, pointing.

"Aye, I know it," said her uncle, wonderfully cool, Nan thought, and casting a single glance at the figure flying over the bucking logs toward the endangered foreman. "He'll do what he can."

Nan could not take her eyes from her cousin after that. It seemed to be a race between Rafe and the charging log, to see which should first reach the foreman. Rafe, reckless and harebrained as he was, flew over the logs as sure-footed as a goat. Nan felt faint. Her cousin's peril seemed far greater to her than that of the foreman.

A step might plunge Rafe into the foaming stream! When a log rolled under him she cried out under her breath and clamped her teeth down on to her lower lip until the blood almost came.

"He'll be killed! He'll be killed!" she kept repeating in her own mind.

But Uncle Henry stood like a rock and seemingly gave no more attention to his son than he did to Turner, or to the men running down the bank to seize upon and launch the heavy boat.

Rafe was suddenly balked and had to stop. Too great a stretch of water separated him from the next floating log. Turner beckoned him on. It was difficult to make the foreman hear above the noise of the water and the continual grinding of the logs, but Rafe yelled some warning and pointed toward the timber now almost upon Turner's foothold.

The man shot a glance behind him. The b.u.t.t of the driving log rose suddenly into the air as though it would crush him.

Turner leaped to the far end of the log on which he stood. But too great a distance separated him from the log on which Rafe had secured a foothold.

Crash!

Nan heard, on top of the bluff, the impact of the great timber as it was flung by the current across the smaller log. Turner shot into the air as though he were flung from a catapult. But he was not flung in Rafe's direction, and the boy could not help him.

He plunged into the racing stream and disappeared. The huge timber rode over the smaller log and buried it from sight. But its tail swung around and the great log was headed straight down the river again.

As its smaller end swung near, Rafe leaped for it and secured a footing on the rolling, plunging log. How he kept his feet under him Nan could not imagine. A bareback rider in a circus never had such work as this.

Rafe rode his wooden horse in masterly style.

There, ahead of him in the boiling flood, an arm and head appeared.

Turner came to the surface with his senses unimpaired and he strove to clutch the nearest log. But the stick slipped away from him.

Rafe ran forward on the plunging timber he now rode the huge stick that had made all the trouble, and tried to reach the man in the water. No use!

Of course, there was no way for Rafe to guide his log toward the drowning man. Nor did he have anything to reach out for Turner to grasp.

The axe handle was not long enough, and the foreman's canthook had disappeared.

Below, the men were struggling to get the big boat out from under the bank into the stream. Two of them stood up with their canthooks to fend off the drifting logs; the others plied the heavy oars.

But the boat was too far from the man in the river. He was menaced on all sides by plunging logs. He barely escaped one to be grazed on the shoulder by another. A third pressed him under the surface again; but as he went down this second time, Rafe Sherwood threw away his axe and leaped into the flood!

Chapter XIX. OLD TOBY VANDERWILLER

Nan was sure her Cousin Rafe would be drowned, as well as his foreman.

She covered her eyes for a moment, and could not look.

Then a great cheer arose from the men in the boat and those still remaining on the bank of the river. Her uncle, beside her, muttered:

"Plucky boy! Plucky boy!"

Her eyes flew open and she looked again. In the midst of the scattering foam she saw a small log over which her cousin had flung his left arm; his other arm was around the foreman, and Rafe was bearing his head above water. Turner had been struck and rendered senseless by the blow.

The small log slipped through a race between two shallows, ahead of the greater timber. The latter indeed grounded for a moment and that gave the victim of the accident and his rescuer a chance for life.

They shot ahead with the log to which Rafe clung. The men in the boat shouted encouragement, and rowed harder. In a minute the boat came alongside the log and two of the rivermen grabbed the boy and the unconscious foreman. They had them safely in the boat, and the boat was at the sh.o.r.e again in three minutes.

By that time the big boss himself, Mr. Blackton, was tearing out over the logs from the other sh.o.r.e, axe in hand, to cut the key log of the jam, the formation of which Turner had tried to prevent. A hundred logs had piled up against the stoppage by this time and there promised to be a bad time at the bend if every one did not work quickly.

Before Nan and her uncle could reach the foot of the bluff, Turner had regained consciousness and was sitting on a stranded log, holding his head. Rafe, just as he had come out of the river, was out on the logs again lending a hand at the work so necessary to the success of the drive.

"Oh, dear me!" cried Nan, referring to her cousin, "he ought to go home and change his clothes. He'll get his death of cold."

"He'll work hard enough for the next hour to overcome the shock of the cold water. It's lucky if he isn't in again before they get that trouble over," responded Uncle Henry. Then he added, proudly: "That's the kind of boys we raise in the Big Woods, Nannie. Maybe they are rough-spoken and aren't really parlor-broke, but you can depend on 'em to do something when there's anything to do!"

"Oh, Uncle!" cried the girl. "I think Rafe is just the bravest boy I ever saw. But I should think Aunt Kate would be scared every hour he is away from home, he is so reckless."

She was very proud herself of Rafe and wrote Bess a lot about him. Slow Tom did not figure much in Nan Sherwood's letters, or in her thoughts, about this time. Thoughts and letters were filled with handsome Rafe.

It was while the Blackton drive was near Pine Camp that Nan became personally acquainted with old Toby Vanderwiller. It was after dinner that day that she met Margaret and Bob Llewellen and the three went down to the river bank, below the bridge, to watch the last of the Blackton drive.

The chuck-boat had pushed off into the rough current and was bobbing about in the wake of the logs; but all the men had not departed.

"That's old Toby," said Bob, a black-haired boy, full of mischief. "He don't see us. Le's creep up and scare him."

"No," said Nan, decidedly; "don't you dare!"

"Aw, shucks! Girls ain't no fun," the boy growled. "Mag's bad enough, but you air wuss'n she, Nan Sherwood. What's old Toby to you? He's allus as cross as two sticks, anyway."

"We won't make him any crosser," said Nan, laughing. "What's the good?"

Nan saw that the old man had his coat off, and had slipped down the right sleeve of his woolen shirt to bare his shoulder and upper right arm. He was clumsily trying to bandage the arm.

"He's got hurt," Nan cried to Margaret. "I wonder how?"

"Dunno," returned the smaller girl, carelessly. Although she was not mischievous like her brother, Margaret seldom showed traits of tenderness or affection. Nan was in some doubt as to whether the strange girl liked her. Margaret often patted Nan's cheeks and admired her smooth skin; but she never expressed any real affection. She was positively the oddest little piece of humanity Nan had ever met.

Once Nan asked her if she had a doll. "Doll?" snarled Margaret with surprising energy. "A'nt Matildy give me one once't an' I throwed it as far as I could inter the river, so I did! Nasty thing! Its face was all painted and rough."

Nan could only gasp. Drown a doll-baby! Big girl as she considered herself, she had a very tender spot in her heart for doll-babies.