BREAKING THE JAM

Waikato Independent, Volume V, Issue 319, 3 January 1907, Page 3

BREAKING THE JAM

By FRANK T. MANN

WILL do it! ” Tom Harding turned I from the door, where he stood hesitating, and a look of resolution, that visited his blue eyes only at rare intervals, mingled with the misery in fchem. "When a man’s wife tells him to his teeth that he is a shiftless, drunk*n creature, and that she regrets the day she first laid eyes on him, then, I take it, that man has little to live for and nothing to lose. Anyway, I shall accept Squire Johnson’s offer, let come what may.” He reached into the pocket of his faded, threadbare coat, and drew forth a crumpled sheet of paper. Slowly, for the fifth time, he went over the words printed in large, flaring letters, the ink not yet dry:

’. ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS RE- ! WARD. . To the person who will break the Jam . . collecting in Au Sable river two miles . . above Curtis before damage is done to . . the lumber mills at that rvdnt I will . . pay one thou»».<-. dollars. AII risks of . . life and limb to be borne by the one un- . . dertaking the work. . • W. L. JOHNSON. . President Curtis Lumber Company. .

Thrusting the paper into his pocket, Tom strode hurriedly down the sloppy sidewalk, and in a few mjnutes stood before the large brick building which contained President Johnson’s office. A wave of indecision swept across his face as he scraped the mud and snow from his well-worn shoes. It was a perilous undertaking, and none knew the danger of it better than he. Then the recollection • of his wife’s bitter words returned with < full force, and he hesitated no longer. “Maggie is a good woman, in most things,” he said to himself, and the blue eyes glistened, "and maybe I haven’t done by her what I might. For her sake and the baby’s I’ll try it.” “Well, Tom, my man, you will undertake to cut the Jam and save the mills?” said President Johnson a moment later, as Tom, hat in hand, stood before his desk. “Do you know that it is a dangerous piece of work? There is probably not another man in Alcona county who would run the risk for twice the sum named. Indeed, it was not so much with , the hope of saving the mills as it was a formality to secure our that the reward was offered. However, If your mind is made up it is not my place to dissuade you. If you are successful the money is yours, and I will add another hundred from my own private purse.” “And if anything happens ,to me, the money will be paid to Mag—my wife?” “If the Jam is broken, yes.” William Johnson was a kind-hearted man, and as he watched the big, childish lumberman move toward the door a suspicious film blurred his vision for a moment, and there was just the least huskiness in his tones as he bade him Godspeed. “Poor fellow,” he murmured, as he turned to his work, “life has notbeen all smooth with him lately, and he is in a great measure f responsible for his own misfortunes, but I should greatly regret If any evil were to befall him at this work.” In the smaller of scantily furnished apartments that constituted their home, Margaret Harding busied herself in the preparation of dinner. Glancing at the cracked porcelain clock on the. mantel, she quit her work for the twelfth time, and going to the door, looked uneasily down the long, muddy street. It was deserted save for one solitary figure that came bounding along as fast as his short legs could carry him, regardless alike of the slush of mud and snow beneath his feet and the gusts of wind and rain which came near ‘upsetting him at intervals. “Say, you beam?” he gasped, as he dashed up'to where Margaret stood. “What do you mean, Bobbie Carson? Have I heard what?” “About Tom. He’s undertook to cut the jam above the mill, an’ mos’ ever’body says he’ll be killed. S’posed you knew about it.” And swelling over the importance of his message, the thoughtless urchin galloped on his way. For a minute or more Margaret stood looking blankly across the street through the dashing rain.' Every bitter word she had uttered that morning recurred to her mind in all its cruel strength, and seemed to burn itself in on her very soul in great red letters of fire. The look, half of anger, half of sad reproach, with which he had turned from r and kissed the baby sleeping quietly in m crib—every incident of their quarrel returned with a significance magnified a thousandfold by her fears. “.I called him’worthless and drunken,” she said, with dry eyes and pale, trembling lips, ‘‘and he is neither. Poor Tom! Though he does drink sometimes, it is through discouragement and disappointment q,t his hard lot, and he is always kind to' me. Oh, God, if I could recall ajy words! But is it too late? I may save him yet?” • The Curtis Lumber company’s mills ■stood on the level bottom adjacent to the river and about 100 yards from it. Half ■.a mile above .the mills the railroad . crossed the river over a long iron bridge,

nnd from a point just below the southern end of the bridge an artificial ditch had been cut to float the logs into the mill at high water. It was this bridge and the ditch that were responsible for the trouble which now prevailed. Au Sable river was a roaring, booming, yellow flood. All day the great sawlogs, broken from their moorings above, had been rushing by in thousands. But now immense pine trees, torn up by their roots, were borne upon the bosom of the raging torrent. One of these monarchs of the forest had caught between the two middle piers of the bridge, and formed the nucleus of a rapidly growing mass of timber and debris, the long stems of the great pines writhing and rolling together like the hideous forms of gigantic serpents. Not only was the bridge threatened with momentary destruction, but the dam thus formed caught the waters up and hurled them and their ponderous armature down the ditch and against the mills below, with a violence that must soon accomplish their destruction.

To get at the pine trunk and cut it Would release the straining, tumbling mass, restore the raging waters to'their natural channel, and save the bridge and the mills. But woe to him who cut it! When Tom Harding, ax in hand, stepped upon the bridge and started on his mission, not one of the group who stood looking on in breathless silence but felt that he was witnessing a tragedy-

“The man is committing sheer, downright suicide,” said an old lumberman who had spent his life in the forest and on the river. “It oughtn’t to be allowed.” But Tom had already reached the middle of the long structure, and was feeling his way down over the tumbling, grindr ing pile as only a lumberman can. Now he stood with careful footing upon the huge pine stem, bending under the awful strain, and now he plied his ax with telling vigor, making the chips fly at each powerful stroke. To an eye not cognizant of his terrible danger the sturdy lumberman might have been following his daily vocation for anything in his look or manner that denoted the 1 contrary.

But the woman, wild-eyed and panting, with, hair disheveled and hanging in rain-soaked tresses down her back, who just now joined the group on the bank, realized his danger, and a piercing shriek mingled with the roar of the waters. “Oh, Tom, dear Tom, come back to me! Forgive my cruel words, and come back —for. baby’s sake and mine!” and she held the little, wet, shivering thing up in full view of its parent out on the river. He beard not her words, but he saw his child, and every feeling vanished before the paternal. He turned and looked at the towering mass above him, and for a moment those on shore hoped he might escape. But the next! A terrible grinding crash, as the great tree parted, an '’awful, muffled roar, and for a single instant the lumberman’s form stood poised on the broken tree. He kissed his hand once,' and above the din came the words, “It was for you Maggie; you and the baby.” and then he went down, and was borne away by the rushing swirl of waters.

Half an hour later searchers found a limp, unconscious body suspended to the branches of a tree where it had been left by the now receding waters. It was at first thought that the man was dead, but closer examination revealed the fact that he breathed, and a liberal draught from a lumberman’s flask forced down his throat partly restored him to consciousness. That night Tom Harding was carried home to his wife, terribly maimed and bruised, it Is true, but still alkve. Under her tender and happy ministrations he filially recovered, and from his terrible experie. ;e he gleaned a lesson that will last him all his life. To-day not a happier trio lives than Tom and Margaret and their baby.—Farm and Fireside.