By noon of the following day, Port Agnew was astounded by news brought by the crew of one of the light draft launches used to tow log rafts down the river. Donald McKaye was working for Darrow. He was their raftsman; he had been seen out on the log boom, pike pole in hand, shoving logs in to the endless chain elevator that drew them up to the seas. As might be imagined, Mrs. Daney was among the first to glean this information, and to her husband she repeated it at luncheon with every evidence of pleasure.
"Tut, tut, woman," he replied carelessly, "this is no news to me. He told me yesterday after service that he had the job."
The familiar wrinkle appeared for an instant on the end of her nose before she continued: "I wonder what The Laird thinks of that, Andrew?"
"So do I," he parried skilfully.
"Does he know it?"
"There isn't a soul in Port Agnew with sufficient courage to tell him."
"Why do you not tell him?"
"None of my business. Besides, I do not hanker to see people squirm with suffering."
She wrinkled her nose once more and was silent.
As Mr. Daney had declared, there was none in Port Agnew possessed of sufficient hardihood to inform the Laird of his son's lowly status and it was three weeks before he discovered it for himself. He had gone up the river to one of his logging camps and the humor had seized him to make the trip in a fast little motor-boat he had given Donald at Christmas many years' before. He was busy adjusting the carburetor, after months of disuse, as he passed the Darrow log boom in the morning, so he failed to see his big son leaping across the logs, balancing himself skilfully with the pike pole.
It was rather late when he started home and in the knowledge that darkness might find him well up the river he hurried.
Now, from the Bight of Tyee to a point some five miles above Darrow, the Skookum flows in almost a straight line; the few bends are wide and gradual, and when The Laird came to this home-stretch he urged the boat to its maximum speed of twenty-eight miles per hour. Many a time in happier days he had raced down this long stretch with Donald at the helm, and he knew the river thoroughly; as he sped along he steered mechanically, his mind occupied in a consideration of the dishonor that had come upon his clan.
The sun had already set as he came roaring down a wide deep stretch near Darrow's mill; in his preoccupation he forgot that his competitor's log boom stretched across the river fully two-thirds of its width; that he should throttle down, swerve well to starboard and avoid the field of stored logs. The deep shadows cast by the sucker growth and old snags along the bank blended with the dark surface of the log boom and prevented him from observing that he was headed for the heart of it; the first intimation he had of his danger came to him in a warning shout from the left bank--a shout that rose above the roar of the exhaust.
"Jump! Overboard! Quickly! The log boom!"
Old Hector awoke from his bitter reverie. He, who had once been a river hog, had no need to be told of the danger incident to abrupt precipitation into the heart of that log boom, particularly when it would presently be gently agitated by the long high "bone" the racing boat carried in her teeth. When logs weighing twenty tons come gently together--even when they barely rub against each other, nothing living caught between them may survive.
The unknown who warned him was right. He must jump overboard and take his chance in the river, for it was too late now to slow down and put his motor in reverse. In the impending crash that was only a matter of seconds, The Laird would undoubtedly catapult from the stern sheets into the water--and if he should drift in under the logs, knew the river would eventually give up his body somewhere out in the Bight of Tyee. On the other hand, should he be thrown out on the boom he would stand an equal chance of being seriously injured by the impact or crushed to death when his helpless body should fall between the logs. In any event the boat would be telescoped down to the cockpit and sink at the edge of the log field.
He was wearing a heavy overcoat, for it was late in the fall, and he had no time to remove it; not even time to stand up and dive clear. So he merely hurled his big body against the starboard gunwale and toppled overboard--and thirty feet further on the boat struck with a crash that echoed up and down the river, telescoped and drove under the log boom. It was not in right when old Hector rose puffing to the surface and bellowed for help before starting to swim for the log boom.
The voice answered him instantly: "Coming! Hold On!"
Handicapped as he was with his overcoat, old Hector found it a prodigious task to reach the boom; as he clung to the boom-stick he could make out the figure of a man with a pike pole coming toward him in long leaps across the logs. And then old Hector noticed something else.
He had swum to the outer edge of the log boom and grasped the light boom-stick, dozens of which, chained end to end, formed the floating enclosure in which the log supply was stored. The moment he rested his weight on this boom-stick, however, one end of it submerged suddenly--wherefore The Laird knew that the impact of the motor-boat had broken a link of the boom and that this broken end was now sweeping outward and downward, with the current releasing the millions of feet of stored logs. Within a few minutes, provided he should keep afloat, he would be in the midst of these tremendous Juggernauts, for, clinging to the end of the broken boom he was gradually describing a circle on the outside of the log field, swinging from beyond the middle of the river in to the left-hand bank; presently, when the boom should have drifted its maximum distance he would be hung up stationary in deep water while the released logs bore down upon him with the current and gently shoulder him into eternity.
He clawed his way along the submerging boom-stick to its other end, where it was linked with its neighbor, and the combined buoyancy of both boom-sticks was sufficient to float him.
"Careful," he called to the man leaping over the log-field toward him. "The boom is broken! Careful, I tell you! The logs are moving out--they're slipping apart. Be careful."
Even as he spoke, The Laird realized that the approaching rescuer would not heed him. He
had to make speed out to the edge of the moving logs; if he was to rescue the man clinging to the boom-sticks he must take a chance on those long leaps through the dusk; he
must reach The Laird before too much open water developed between the moving logs.
Only a trained river man could have won to him in such a brief space of time; only an athlete could have made the last flying leap across six feet of dark water to a four-foot log that was bearing gently down, butt first, on the figure clinging to the boom-stick. His caulks bit far up the side of the log and the force of his impact started it rolling; yet even as he clawed his way to the top of the log and got it under control the iron head of his long pike pole drove into the boom-stick and fended The Laird out of harm's way; before the log the man rode could slip by, the iron had been released and the link of chain between the two boom-sticks had been snagged with the pike hook, and both men drifted side by side.
"Safe--o," his rescuer warned Old Hector quietly. "Hang on. I'll keep the logs away from you and when the field floats by I'll get you ashore. We're drifting gradually in toward the bank below the mill."
The Laird was too chilled, too exhausted and too lacking in breath to do more than gasp a brief word of thanks. It seemed a long, long time that he clung there, and it was quite dark when his rescuer spoke again. "I think the last log has floated out of the booming ground. I'll swim ashore with you now, as soon as I can shuck my boots and mackinaw." A few minutes later he cried reassuringly, "All set, old-timer," and slid into the water beside The Laird. "Relax yourself and do not struggle." His hands came up around old Hector's jaws from the rear. "Let go," he commanded, and the hard tow commenced. It was all footwork and their progress was very slow, but eventually they won through. As soon as he could stand erect in the mud the rescuer unceremoniously seized The Laird by the nape and dragged him high and dry up the bank.
"Now, then," he gasped, "I guess you can take care of yourself. Better go over to the mill and warm yourself in the furnace room. I've got to hurry away to 'phone the Tyee people to swing a dozen spare links of their log boom across the river and stop those runaways before they escape into the Bight and go to sea on the ebb."
He was gone on the instant, clambering up the bank through the bushes that grew to the water's edge; old Hector could hear his breath coming in great gasps as he ran.
"Must know that chap, whoever he is," The Laird soliloquized. "Think he's worked for me some time or other. His voice sounds mighty familiar. Well--I'll look him up in the morning."
He climbed after his rescuer and stumbled away through the murk toward Darrow's mill. Arrived here he found the fireman banking the fires in the furnace room and while he warmed himself one of them summoned Bert Darrow from the mill office.
"Bert," The Laird explained, "I'd be obliged if you'd run me home in more or less of a hurry in your closed car. I've been in the drink," and he related the tale of his recent adventures. "Your raftsman saved my life," he concluded. "Who is he? It was so dark before he got to me I couldn't see his face distinctly, but I think he's a young fellow who used to work for me. I know because his voice sounds so very familiar."
"He's a new hand, I believe. Lives in Port Agnew. I believe your man Daney can tell you his name," Darrow replied evasively.
"I'll ask Daney. The man was gone before I could recover enough breath to thank him for my life. Sorry to have messed up your boom, Bert, but we'll stop the runaways at my boom and I'll have them towed back in the morning. And I'll have a man put in a new boom-stick and connect it up again."
Bert Darrow set him down at the Tyee Lumber Company's office, and wet and chilled as he was, The Laird went at once to Mr. Daney's office. The latter was just leaving it for the day when The Laird appeared.
"Andrew," the latter began briskly. "I drove that fast motor-boat at full speed into Darrow's boom on my way down river this evening; I've had a ducking and only for Darrow's raftsman you'd be closing down the mill to-morrow out of respect to my memory. Bert Darrow says their raftsman used to work for us; he's a new man with them and Bert says you know who he is."
"I think I know the man," Mr. Daney replied thoughtfully. "He's been with them about three weeks; resigned our employ a couple of weeks before that. I was sorry to lose him. He's a good man."
"I grant it, Andrew. He's the fastest, coolest hand that ever balanced a pike pole or rode a log. We cannot afford to let men like that fellow get away from us for the sake of a little extra pay. Get him back on the pay-roll, Andrew, and don't be small with him. I'll remember him handsomely at Christmas, and see that I do not forget this, Andrew. What is his name?"
"Let me think." Mr. Daney bent his head, tipped back his hat and massaged his brow before replying. "I think that when he worked for the Tyee Lumber Company he was known as Donald McKaye."
He looked up. The old Laird's face was ashen. "Thank you, Andrew," he managed to murmur presently. "Perhaps you'd better let Darrow keep him for a while. G--g--good-night!"
Outside, his chauffeur waited with his car. "Home--and be quick about it," he mumbled and crawled into the tonneau slowly and weakly. As the car rolled briskly up the high cliff road to The Dreamerie, the old man looked far below him to the little light that twinkled on the Sawdust Pile.
"She'll have his dinner cooked for him now and be waiting and watching for him," he thought.