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CHAPTER 1
UNDER THE LOGS
THE YOUNG CANADIAN, WHO COULD NOT HAVE BEEN MORE than fifteen, had hesitated too long For a frozen s in the basin above the river bend; he'd slipped entirely underwater before anyone could grab his outstretched hand One of the loggers had reached for the youth's long hair--the older id water, which was thick, als collided hard on the would-be rescuer's ars had co Canadian, who never surfaced; not even a hand or one of his boots broke out of the broater
Out on a logja was pried loose, the river drivers had to move quickly and continually; if they paused for even a second or two, they would be pitched into the torrent In a river drive, death a injury, before you had a chance to drown--but drowning was more common
From the riverbank, where the cook and his twelve-year-old son could hear the cursing of the logger whose wrist had been broken, it was immediately apparent that someone was in more serious trouble than the would-be rescuer, who'd freed his injured ars His fellow river drivers ignored hi out the lost boy's naers ceaselessly prodded with their pike poles, directing the floating logs ahead of the the safest way ashore, but to the cook's hopeful son it seeap of sufficient width for the young Canadian to eaps between the logs The boy who'd told theone
"Is it Angel?" the twelve-year-old asked his father This boy, with his dark-brown eyes and intensely serious expression, could have been er brother, but there was nothe family resemblance that the twelve-year-old bore to his ever-watchful father The cook had an aura of controlled apprehension about him, as if he routinely anticipated theabout his son's seriousness that reflected this; in fact, the boy looked so much like his father that several of the woodsmen had expressed their surprise that the son didn't also ith his dad's pronounced limp
The cook knew too well that indeed it was the young Canadian who had fallen under the logs It was the cook who'd warned the loggers that Angel was too green for the river drivers' work; the youth should not have been trying to free a logjaer to please, and maybe the rivermen hadn't noticed him at first
In the cook's opinion, Angel Pope had also been too green (and too clu in the vicinity of the main blade in a sawhly skilled position in the mills The planer operator was a relatively skilled position, too, though not particularly dangerous
Theon the log deck, where logs were rolled into the s fros were unloaded by releasing trip bunks on the sides of the trucks--this allowed an entire load to roll off a truck at once But the trip bunks soht under a cascade of logs while they were trying to free a bunk
As far as the cook was concerned, Angel shouldn't have been in any position that put the boy in close proxis But the lu Canadian as the cook and his son had been, and Angel had said he was bored working in the kitchen The youth had wanted more physical labor, and he liked the outdoors
The repeated thunk-thunk of the pike poles, poking the logs, was briefly interrupted by the shouts of the riverel's pike pole--more than fifty yards from where the boy had vanished The fifteen-foot pole was floating free of the log drive, out where the river currents had carried it away fros
The cook could see that the river driver with the broken wrist had coood hand First by the faer's led beard, did the cook realize that the injureddrive
It was April--not long after the last snowmelt and the start of mud season--but the ice had only recently broken up in the river basin, the first logs falling through the ice upstream of the basin, on the Dummer ponds The river was ice-cold and swollen, andhair, which would afford them some scant protection from the blackflies in mid-May
Ketchum lay on his back on the riverbank like a beached bear Thedrive were a life raft, and the loggers ere still out on the river seemed like castaways at sea--except that the sea, froreenish brown to bluish black The water in Twisted River was richly dyed with tannins
"Shit, Angel!" Ketchuel You have to keepyour feet!' Oh, shit"