Thence it disappeared, moved always by steam-driven hooks, for these great logs could not be managed by hand implements.  The sawyers, at their levers, controlled the various activities.  When the time came the smooth, deadly steel ribbon of the modern bandsaws hummed hungrily into the great pines; the automatic roller hurried the new-sawn boards to the edgers; little cars piled high with them shot out from the cool dimness into the dazzling sunlight; men armed with heavy canvas or leather stacked them in the yards; and then——­

That was the trouble; and then, nothing!

From this point they should have gone farther.  Clamped in rectangular bundles, pushing the raging white water before their blunt noses, as strange craft they should have been flashing at regular intervals down the twisting, turning and plunging course of the flume.  Arrived safely at the bottom, the eight-and twelve-horse teams should have taken them in charge, dragging them by the double wagon load to the waiting yards of Marshall & Harding.  Nothing of the sort was happening.  Welton did not dare go ahead with the water for fear of prejudicing his own case.  The lumber accumulated.  And, as the mill’s capacity was great and that of the yards small, the accumulation soon threatened to become embarrassing.

Bob acted as Welton’s lieutenant.  As the older lumberman was at first occupied in testing out his sawyers, and otherwise supervising the finished product, Bob was necessarily much in the woods.  This suited him perfectly.  Every morning at six he and the men tramped to the scene of operations.  There a dozen crews scattered to as many tasks.  Far in the van the fellers plied their implements.  First of all they determined which way a tree could be made to fall, estimating long and carefully on the weight of limbs, the slant of the trunk, the slope of ground, all the elements having to do with the centre of gravity.  This having been determined, the men next chopped notches of the right depth for the insertion of short boards to afford footholds high enough to enable them to nick the tree above the swell of the roots.  Standing on these springy and uncertain boards, they began their real work, swinging their axes alternately, with untiring patience and incomparable accuracy.  Slowly, very slowly, the “nick” grew, a mouth gaping ever wider in the brown tree.  When it had gaped wide enough the men hopped down from their springboards, laid aside their axes, and betook themselves to the saw.  And when, at last, the wedges inserted in the saw-crack started the mighty top, the men calmly withdrew the long ribbon of steel and stood to one side.

[Illustration:  The men calmly withdrew the long ribbon of steel and stood to one side]