Loyola University Maryland - Evergreen / Green and Gray Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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THE LOYOLA ANNUAL 23 thunderin’ around you — then’s the time you show what-fer kind of man you are. “ Well, after a bit, the river struck. Then the fun came, and what between the noise of the river and the breaking skids, a man couldn’t hear his conscience. “ Billy was jumping ’round like a flea on a griddle — bossin’, cussin’, swearin’, rarin’, tarin’, all in one breath. He made the boys hump. “ After awhile they got all the logs in the river and on their way; Billy up in front keepin’ ’em together to prevent jammin’ ; Charlie and a crew in the rear, rolling logs off shore, that had stopped ; big Vincent following in his bateau, dynamit- ing those that had sunk. Altogether they bid fair to bring this drive through without a hitch. “ The logs were about ten miles from town at Hell’s Jump, when the business between Billy and his rival came to a head, and it was time too, for I believe with a little more festering Billy would ’a knocked the top of Charlie’s head clean off with a pike pole. “Have you ever seen Hell’s Jump? Well, it’s the most God-forsaken place on the whole river. There is a long stretch of rapids that hurl themselves down on a ledge of rocks, stick- ing clear out in the middle of the stream. There is three heads in all; the two up-stream is sights; the water hits the first one- — that, is when the freshet ' s up,— and rises in a wall twenty feet in the air, and comes down on the second one with a roar that shakes your back teeth. The third rock is about as big as a good-sized table, three hundred yards from either bank, with the water going by at a rate that makes you dizzy to watch, with a four-foot drop at the end of the stretch. That’s the place ; and the Lord help anyone that gets marooned on that rock out there; he’ll either go crazy and jump in and swim, or starve. “ Well, the head of the drive had got here and Billy had

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22 THE LOYOLA ANNUAL carried back all that two hundred miles, in a bateau, crushed from all semblance of themselves by those terrors of the lumberjacks — the tops of trees. “ Billy knew his business. He had been on the river ever since he had been old enough, to handle a miniature peavey that his father had made for him. So by Spring he had about three million feet of lumber piled up on the skidways, all ready for breaking out at the sign of the first freshet. “ Charlie and he had been getting along fair-to-middlin considerin’ there was no love lost between them. Everyone expected him to make life sorter hard for Charlie, him being in his power to complete. “ Well, one morning early, Billy walked into the quarters in his driving costume, an’ lemme tell you, a finer lookin’ man never walked than Billy Lacaque, when he got rigged out in that same costume. He wasn’t handsome — his jaw was too square and set for that- — but he was fine. With a bright, silk handkerchief knotted ’round his brown neck, his chestnut hair peepin’ out in curls from under his hat; his stagged-off pants showin’ just a touch of bone and muscle, where they joined his caulkers; his broad shoulders and thin race-horse flanks, all made a picture that, seen once is never forgotten. “Well, sir! He walked in there and told the boys to ‘ allons,’ for she sure was comin.-’ The boys jumped, for a freshet aint agoin’ to wait for no one. As they stepped outside the shanty they heard her roaring. There had been an un- usual heavy snow that winter and there was going to be extry strong water now. “ The boys stood by to break out the skidways when it struck. It’s no easy job to break out a skidway forty feet high and a mile long with the power of an avalanche back of it. When they stick, and you have to walk right up under this wall, and pry and jerk with your peavy until they start, and then make your get-a-way with a thousand tons of board

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24 THE LOYOLA ANNUAL jostled them in order to shunt through, for there wasn’t any man dars’t ride through there. That is what we thought any- way. “Well, of course, bein’ so near town, all the folks turned out to see us make this last fight. Of course, she was there, and was certainly good to see. Her hair, all piled up on that pretty little head, blowing and dancing, looking, on the whole, like spun moonbeams; her blue eyes, as dark as the northern skies, laughing and peeping out from under long, silky eye- lashes ; that little mouth, now pouting, now bent in repose with a color that leaped and frolicked, tinging her cheeks and neck, made up a picture that I’d walk a long way to see. I under- stood then why them men were so tangled up and caught; I would ’a been too, if there had been any chance for me. “ My feelins sort of got the better of me. So, as I was sayin’, that Hell’s Leap certainly did look its part. “ Bein’ as all the girls was there, the boys had to show off. So it was first, ‘ I dare you do this,’ and ‘ I dare you do that,’ while all the time they was getting recklesser and recklesser ’till finally some young scamps tying logs together started to go through Hell’s Leap. “ Now, people had gone through on a crib, but it was mighty dangerous business. Well, these fellers started through — there were three of them, and Charlie was one. They went down that stretch like greased lightnin’, then they struck the rocks. I don’t know to this day how it was, but Charlie was thrown plum upon that table rock, and the other poor lads haven’t been seen since. Ground to pieces, I reckon, by the rocks on the last shoot of water. “We tried our durndest to get him off, but it was no go. We tried to float logs with ropes on ’em, to him but — ‘ nothin’ doin’. The men was clean scared to try it on a crib. He was too knocked around to jump a log, as it came through, and take his chances. Well, sir, we was plum stumped. All this time