“Had to take it—­on a deal,” said Fox briefly.  “Why?  Is it hard driving?  I’ve never been up there.  Welton saw to all that.”

“It’s hell.  The pine’s way up at the headwaters.  You have to drive her the whole length of the stream, through a mixed hardwood and farm country.  Lots of partridges and mossbacks, but no improvements.  Not a dam the whole length of her.  Case of hit the freshet water or get hung.”

“Well, we’ve done that kind of a job before.”

“Yes, before!” Tally retorted.  “If I had a half-crew of good, old-fashioned white-water birlers, I’d rest easy.  But we don’t have no crews like we used to.  The old bully boys have all moved out west—­or died.”

“Getting old—­like us,” bantered Fox.  “Why haven’t you died off too, Jim?”

“I’m never going to die,” stated the old man, “I’m going to live to turn into a grindstone and wear out.  But it’s a fact.  There’s plenty left can ride a log all right, but they’re a tough lot.  It’s too close here to Marion.”

“That is too bad,” condoled Fox, “especially as I remember so well what a soft-spoken, lamb-like little tin angel you used to be, Jim.”

Fox, who had quite dropped his old office self, winked at Bob.  The latter felt encouraged to say: 

“I had a course in college on archaeology.  Don’t remember much about it, but one thing.  When they managed to decipher the oldest known piece of hieroglyphics on an Assyrian brick, what do you suppose it turned out to be?”

“Give it up, Brudder Bones,” said Tally, dryly, “what was it?”

Bob flushed at the old riverman’s tone, but went on.

“It was a letter from a man to his son away at school.  In it he lamented the good old times when he was young, and gave it as his opinion that the world was going to the dogs.”

Tally grinned slowly; and the others burst into a shout of laughter.

“All right, bub,” said the riverman good-humouredly.  “But that doesn’t get me a new foreman.”  He turned to Fox.  “Smith broke his leg; and I can’t find a man to take charge.  I can’t go.  The main drive’s got to be sorted.”

“There ought to be plenty of good men,” said Fox.

“There are, but they’re at work.”

“Dicky Darrell is over at Marion,” spoke up one of the scalers.

“Roaring Dick,” said Tally sarcastically, “—­but there’s no denying he’s a good man in the woods.  But if he’s at Marion, he’s drunk; and if he’s drunk, you can’t do nothing with him.”

“I heard it three days ago,” said the scaler.

Tally ruminated.  “Well,” he concluded, “maybe he’s about over with his bust.  I’ll run over this afternoon and see what I can do with him.  If Tom Welton would only tear himself apart from California, we’d get on all right.”

A scraping back of benches and a tramp of feet announced the nearly simultaneous finishing of feeding at the men’s tables.  At the boss’s table everyone seized an unabashed toothpick.  Collins addressed Bob.