[Pppehrserver-legal-us] Ue of the property had proved

[Curless]

Ummer day were the deserted streets. The landlord knew me, and after I
had washed and eaten approached me with a suggestion. "You got all day
in front of you," said he; "why don't you take a horse and buggy and
make a visit to the big jam? Everybody's up there more or less." In
response to my inquiry, he replied: "They've jammed at the upper bend,
jammed bad. The crew's been picking at her for near a week now, and last
night Darrell was down to see about some more dynamite. It's worth
seein'. The breast of her is near thirty foot high, and lots of water in
the river." "Darrell?" said I, catching at the name. "Yes. He's rear
boss this year. Do you think you'd like to take a look at her?" "I think
I should," I assented. The horse and I jogged slowly along a deep sand
road, through wastes of pine stumps and belts of hardwood beautiful with
the early spring, until finally we arrived at a clearing in which stood
two huge tents, a mammoth kettle slung over a fire of logs, and drying
racks about the timbers of another fire. A fat cook in the inevitable
battered derby hat, two bare-armed cookees, and a chore "boy" of
seventy-odd summers were the only human beings in sight. One of the
cookees agreed to keep an eye on my horse. I picked my way down a
well-worn trail toward the regular _clank, clank, click_ of the peavies.
I emerged finally to a plateau elevated some fifty or sixty feet above
the river. A half-dozen spectators were already gathered. Among them I
could not but notice a tall, spare, broad-shouldered young fellow
dressed in a quiet business suit, somewhat wrinkled, whose square,
strong, clean-cut face and muscular hands were tanned by the weather to
a dark umber-brown. In another moment I looked down on the jam. The
breast, as my landlord had told me, rose sheer from the water to the
height of at least twenty-five feet, bristling and formidable. Back of
it pressed the volume of logs packed closely in an apparently
inextricable tangle as far as the eye could reach. A man near informed
me that the tail was a good three miles up stream. From beneath this
wonderful _chevaux de frise_ foamed the current of the river,
irresistible to any force less mighty than the statics of such a mass. A
crew of forty or fifty men were at
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