“Come on, now, let’s go,” Bob cried as they reached the river, now filled with the floating logs. “Now Rex, you want to be careful,” he added. “You can’t slip with those boots on, but, if you step on a small log its apt to turn on you. Better stick to the big ones.”
They had been running rapidly from log to log while Bob was speaking. Rex had some trouble at first in keeping his balance, but he was quick to catch on to the knack and by the time they had reached the head of the drive, he insisted that he was as good as any of them.
“I’ll be an old stager in another day,” he laughed as he began to dance on a giant spruce.
Jean and his men with the exception of the cook, who had been sent back to follow the drive down in the big scow, were on the foremost of the logs.
“How do they tell which of these logs belong to who?” Rex laughed.
“That’s easy,” Bob replied. “If you’ll look you’ll see that each log is marked or rather cut with a certain brand See that X on the end of that log you’re standing on? Well, that means that the log belongs to Mr. Ben Donahue, better known as Big Ben.”
“Same’s they brand horses out West,” Rex said. “What’s your mark?”
“All our logs are marked with a T,” Bob explained. “You see it has to be a mark that can be easily made with an axe.”
“About how fast are we going?” Rex asked, eager to learn all he could.
“Between two and three miles an hour, I should judge,” Bob replied.
“Some,” Bob replied. “But you see there’s a lot of friction with the logs rubbing against each other and butting into the banks all the time and that slows them down so they never quite keep up with the water. I suppose a single log or two out in the middle would go as fast as the current, but a big lot together like these never do.”
“Look,” Jack cried at that moment. “Jean and Pierre are going to go ahead and get down beforehand.”
Rex looked as Jack pointed and saw the two men, one on each end, of what seemed to him a pretty small log to carry two heavy men, in the act of pushing the log ahead with their peaveys.
“Why, don’t they take a big one?” Rex asked.
“Because they can make a little one go faster,” Jack laughed.
Rex soon saw that what Bob had told him was true, for as soon as the single log was well away from the rest it began to forge ahead. True, its pace was increased by the fact that the two Frenchmen were using their peaveys for paddles, but he could see that their log had drawn away from the main drive even before they had began to paddle.