limbs fly when a two-hundred-foot fir smashed a dead cedar that stood in
the way of its downward swoop. They could hear the pieces strike against
brush and trees like the patter of shot on a tin wall.

The donkey engineer gazed calmly enough.

"Them flyin' chunks raise the dickens sometimes," he observed. "Oh, yes,
now an' then a man gets laid out. There's some things you got to take a
chance on. Maybe you get cut with an axe, or a limb drops on you, or you
get in the way of a breakin' line,--though a man ain't got any business
in the bight of a line. A man don't stand much show when the end of a
inch 'n' a quarter cable snaps at him like a whiplash. I seen a feller
on Howe Sound cut square in two with a cable-end once. A broken block's
the worst, though. That generally gets the riggin' slinger, but a piece
of it's liable to hit anybody. You see them big iron pulley blocks the
haul-back cable works in? Well, sometimes they have to anchor a snatch
block to a stump an' run the main line through it at an angle to get a
log out the way you want. Suppose the block breaks when I'm givin' it to
her? Chunks uh that broken cast iron'll fly like bullets. Yes, sir,
broken blocks is bad business. Maybe you noticed the boys used the
snatch block two or three times this afternoon? We've been lucky in this
camp all spring. Nobody so much as nicked himself with an axe. Breaks
in the gear don't come very often, anyway, with an outfit in first-class
shape. We got good gear an' a good crew--about as _skookum_ a bunch as I
ever saw in the woods."

Two hundred yards distant Charlie Benton rose on a stump and semaphored
with his arms. The engineer whistled answer and stood to his levers; the
main line began to spool slowly in on the drum. Another signal, and he
shut off. Another signal, after a brief wait, and the drum rolled