Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/105

Rh Taylor. He watched the girl closely, with a growing humility, which, strangely, he did not resent. He saw her those first days, among the men in the ravine where teams snaked the logs from their jumble to the river's edge, where they were caught in a boom and dogged into rafts. She was sparing of words, untiring, always alert, and she knew what was going on. He heard her challenge the method of a teamster whose horses were stuck when the log they skidded jammed between two great stumps.

"Back now, and swing in gee," she said sharply. "Don't yell at them! You've got your team up in the air. Try it again—Haw, now!"

The log was obstinate, the teamster flushing as others looked on to see her directions sting his pride.

"If you don't like my way, why don't you try it yourself?" he asked.

She dropped from the log on which she stood, took the reins from him, tried and failed; let the team rest, rubbed their noses, eased the collars, and started them again—They strained together, skin wrinkling over their broad rumps, they grunted, swung, and the log started forward.

"Now you take them," she said, returning the lines. "You'll go farther with a low voice."

She had been right. The man grinned himself because he had been wrong and shown up fairly.

Taylor saw her rebuke a youth for carelessly driving in the dog-wedge.

"That won't hold," she said, kicking the wedge with her boot toe. "If that raft goes to pieces and that one log dead-heads, we're losing as much as we're paying you for a day's work. Knock it out and put it in right!"

The boy did. In the vernacular of the men, she got