daily work compels them under penalty to pay close and undeviating
attention to their surroundings. This is true of sailors, hunters,
plainsmen, cowboys, and tugboat captains. It was especially true of
the old-fashioned river-driver, for a misstep, a miscalculation, a
moment's forgetfulness of the sullen forces shifting and changing
about him could mean for him maiming or destruction. So, finally,
to one of an imaginative bent, these eyes, like the "cork boots,"
grew to seem part of the uniform, one of the marks of their caste,
the outward symbol of their calling.

"Blow, you son of a gun!" cried disgustedly one young fellow with a
red bandana, apostrophising the wind. "I wonder if there's ANY side
of this fire that ain't smoky!"

"Keep your hair on, bub," advised a calm and grizzled old-timer.
"There's never no smoke on the OTHER side of the fire--whichever
that happens to be. And as for wind--she just makes holiday for the
river-hogs."

"Holiday, hell!" snorted the younger man. "We ought to be down to
Bull's Dam before now--"

"And Bull's Dam is half-way to Redding," mocked a reptilian and red-
headed giant on the log, "and Redding is the happy childhood home
of--"

The young man leaped to his feet and seized from a pile of tools a
peavy--a dangerous weapon, like a heavy cant-hook, but armed at the
end with a sharp steel shoe.