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

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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

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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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THE LOYOLA ANNUAL 25 Billy had been doin’ a heap of thinkin’. There was the man that he would have done anything to get rid of, gotten rid of for him, as you might say, by Providence, and he didn’t know whether to get him off, or thank his stars that he hadn’t had to kill him. “ Well, it had been three days and we was still loafln around, trying to get up some means to rescue him without onnecessarily exposin’ ourselves. Charlie was about ‘ all in ;’ he had just enough life to stand up, and that was all. He tried to holler once or twice, but the water was too loud. ‘‘ Well, on the third day she came down. To tell the truth, she had been there most all the time, except when her people forced her to take some rest, and it was easy seen that she was clean gone on ‘ handsome ’ Charlie Morris, now more a skeleton than the good lookin’, reckless Irishman he had been a week before. There was Charlie a-layin’ there, more dead than alive, and the girl near crazy. She came down to where the men were settin’, her face white and drawn. She spoke, and her voice sounded like a rasp on iron. “ ‘What are you goin’ to do for Charlie? ’ she asks for the eleven hundredth time. They looks down and says nothing; they don’t like the fix. ‘ Aint you goin’ to get him? ’ she asks terse and quiet. No answer. “ ‘ Men, for God’s sake get him. Don’t let him die out there. Get him for me, for me. Oh, I love him and I’ll go crazy if you don’t get him off.’ “We don ' t like it, for when she asks for anything they generally go after it. Then, becomin’ scornful, she rips ' em up the back. “‘You call yourselves lumberjacks, but you aint; they don’t act like this when their chum is dying. Where’s Mr. Lacaque? He’ll go. Won’t you? As Bill come up from where he’s been down by the river, studying a whole lot. ‘ Y es,’ he says slow. ‘ I’ll go, but I got to have my price.’