Following the river trail, and being welcomed freely to the temporary camps of the gangs of “brow-breakers,” at a little past noon of the second day, Ed and his companions of the winter’s logging camp came to the head of the drive on North Fork.
The heavy rains had set in, and the river, swollen by the floods of melted snow, was already a torrent of crashing, grinding ice cakes. As the ice went out, the river would be filled with the booming logs, which floated loosely, often banks full for miles, from the disintegrating “brows” along the stream.
Instead of meeting his brother, as he had hoped, Ed was informed that Rob had been sent over to the wangan above Big Bull, where the drive on the main stream was already in motion. The boss, looking over the small stature of Ed, remarked, “They’re wanting polers over there, and we don’t want any more here. As a sacker you wouldn’t be any more account than a muskrat, anyhow.”
Although Ed was stockily built, he was quick with his feet, and practice had gained him confidence upon the floating logs, so poling would be just what he would desire.
Ten miles across the country of forest and swamp,
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 where the land was a “saturated solution” and every little creek aspiring to be a river, was not a pleasing prospect for a boy, but there was no other way open. That journey lived in Ed’s memory for years as a hideous nightmare. Plashing in mud, tearing through thickets of briers and underbrush, wading shallow, icy creeks—and swimming one that was too deep to wade—losing himself in the darkness, stumbling along blindly, by chance—or, we had better say, by the guiding hand of good Providence—Ed finally came to the brink of the river, and knew by the depth of the overflow that he had reached the stream above Big Bull dam.
Again Providence guided his choice, and he turned downstream and soon came in view of the campfires of the drive. Too utterly exhausted to do aught else, Ed stretched himself by a big log fire among the sleeping men, to get what rest he might, in the short space of the night that remained.
It was yet dark when the voice of the boss aroused him, and he followed with the men to their early breakfast of pork and beans, biscuit and syrup, and strong, black coffee.
There he soon found Rob, and the meeting compensated Ed for the hardship of the journey. Rob told him that Bally Tarbox had arrived the night before, and had taken charge of the drive, and he had looked for Ed to come over and join the polers.
While the work of the polers was more dangerous than that of the sackers, it was much more agreeable,
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 and, too, the wages were three dollars a day, while the pay of the sackers was but a dollar and a quarter to a dollar and a half.
By the time a dim twilight told that another cloudy day had begun, Rob and Ed, with their long ash poles to balance themselves, were upon the river, riding the logs as they floated along with the rapid current. The water had been held back by the big dam until a great drive of logs had gathered, and then the gates were opened for the logs to rush through and on down the river with the falling waters. It was the work of the polers to see that none of the logs lodged in the mouths of the little creeks, and to keep them moving while they were in the river.
It was inevitable that some of the logs should remain stranded upon the banks as the water receded, and this brought in the work of the sackers. Their implements were not long poles, such as the log riders used, but stout staves about five feet in length. Upon one side of each was a steel hook, and in the end a long, sharp spike. These were called “peaveys.” Where the stranded log was small and at some distance from the water, a row of men would approach it upon either side, and, picking it up bodily with their hooks, would carry it to the river. Where the log was too large to carry, it would be rolled over and over at a rapid rate until it went splashing into the water.
It not infrequently happened that a big log would be found in such a position that the sackers would be
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 obliged to wade out into the icy water waist deep before the great trunk would float free.
Many a time Ed and Rob had been thankful for their good fortune as polers when they would hear the boss roll out a torrent of curses upon the sackers as they hesitated upon the icy plunge on some particularly cold morning.
While the sackers might count on being wet every day, and nearly all day of every day, the polers were by no means exempt from that source of discomfort. Frequently, in making the jump from one log to another, a foot would slip, or, the distance miscalculated, a sudden bath be provided among the crashing logs.
Again, a moment of careless inattention would deliver the log rider to the tender mercies of a “sweep,” or an unsettling blow from another log. Sometimes, when the river must needs be crossed, a log would be selected as the ferrying raft which would prove too light to sustain the weight of the rider, and the sackers would howl their derision at the poler being “bucked” into the water by his “steed.”
Rob never forgot one such experience he had on Easter Sunday of that year. It was just after the gates had been lifted at Jennie Bull dam, and the crew of an hundred and fifty men were striving with all their might to hurry all the logs through before the water should go down. The day had opened bleak and dreary. A raw wind swept down the river from the north, cutting faces like a saw, and the poor sackers, wet to the waist, were in the depths of misery.
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 Then, shortly after noon, the leaden skies began to spit snow, and a little scum of ice appeared along the edges of the stream. What an Easter Day! Rob and Ed, to whom memories of other Resurrection Sabbaths in the city came, with their lilies and joy and song, could be thankful that, so far, they were on the logs, dry, and compared with the sackers, warm.
The polers were stationed on the booms—long logs fastened together—and by throwing their poles with the sharp, steel spikes into the floating logs would pull them along and so hasten their exit through the gate of the dam.
At four o’clock it was already dark, and it would be impossible to see clearly enough to work more than an hour longer—but the drive must be taken through; there could be no waiting until tomorrow. Hurry! hurry! were the orders. Rob, in his hurry, as he threw his weight upon a backward pull with his pick pole, suddenly felt his hold give way, and over he went backward into the river. Luckily, the logs were not running thickly where he came to the surface hatless, and that he was a strong swimmer, for a few strokes brought him to the boom and to possession again of his pole.
Oh, if he might go to the wangan camp, there before the logheap fire to wring out his streaming, freezing clothing and get back a little warmth into his stiffening limbs. But no! The logs must be run through the dam, and that at once. Every man was needed,
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 and nothing short of death itself would be recognized by the boss as an excuse for failure to stay by the job. During the next hour Rob many times wondered if he would not be able to give that excuse and so escape from the misery of his position, as he labored clumsily in his freezing clothes.
Day by day the cooking outfit, with the sleeping blankets—one for each man—went down river ahead of the drivers as far as the day’s work would probably land them. It can be imagined that stores necessary for nearly two hundred men, to be carried by boats, would be of the............