JACK BOYD: MASTER RIVERMAN BY STEWART EDWARD WHITE PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR AND LOUISE DAVENPORT HE old-fashioned riverman, as he used to flourish in the pine woods of Michigan and Wisconsin, is rapdily becoming extinct. He was a product of environment; and the environment has passed. Fiction has dealt extensively with his brother pioneers, the trappers, cowboys and gold miners, but has almost completely passed him by. Yet for dash, courage, skill and sheer picturesqueness his calling is fully the equal of any of these. My own boyhood happened to be contemporaneous with the palmy days of the "drive," and so, by personal acquaintance, I came to know a great many of the celebrated "white water birlers. The answer was generally, "Jack Boyd," and if it were not, Boyd was always mentioned as the second best. I heard tales of his mildness of manner, the rapidity of his work, his skill at riding logs, his coolness, his quickness, his unwavering courage. This from his mates in the craft. One day I spoke of these things to a lumberman who employed men. "Oh, yes," said he, "that is all very well. But I have forty men who can ride a log; and a hundred more who can do all the rest of it. A man isn't a riverman unless he can do these things. But what makes Jack Boyd great is that he understands the river. He can get the logs out. His drive is never hung by lack of water nor scattered by the freshet. He knows." One evening in the depth of winter I was seated before a round, red-hot stove thawing out. The red-hot stove was in the center of a small log cabin containing two bunks, a short counter backed by shelves piled with clothes, tobacco and patent medicines, a home-made desk and a number of rough chairs. I had arrived at "Who is the best riverman you know?" camp Thirty-four that noon by way of the Copyrighted, 1907, by the OUTING Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Always, after I began to think about such things, I would ask of rivermen the question: tote team. The snow was five feet deep general over-foreman of the woods forces. and the mercury had disappeared. The outside door opened gently. A man deposited a pair of snowshoes in the corner, and turned to us, slowly drawing a pair of mittens from his hands. He wore a very high-crowned cap with a peaked visor, a short bright mackinaw jacket belted close, the usual kersey trousers stuffed into the felt-like German socks, and plain deerskin moccasins. As he advanced into the circle of illumination I saw a mild pair of blue eyes under bleached flaxen brows, a long bleached mustache, and thin features tanned like parchment. His large and gnarled hand was already fumbling with a pipe, which he shortly filled with rank "Peerless" tobacco. The scaler had sprung to his feet. "Why, Jack!" he cried. A moment later I was formally requested to shake the hand of Mr. Boyd. All that evening the mild blue eyes watched me attentively. I repaid the scrutiny in kind. This elderly, slightly bent, slow-moving, meek individual the Jack Boyd of whom I had heard so much! He had not much to say for himself—a little news about "Nine" and "Thirty-two," a comment or so on a kingbolt he had met that day. None of his remarks were addressed directly to me; but I must have impressed him favorably, for next morning -four hours before daylight, by the wayhe abruptly proposed that I should accompany him in a "little look 'round." With childlike innocence I put on my mackinaw and mittens and followed him. I did not see the inside of that cabin again for seven days-nor more clothes, ror a toothbrush, nor anything but what I wore on my person when I so confidingly stepped out into the cold of that winter morning. We investigated pine woods and slashings; hour after hour we stood on cold marshes where the wind blew, watching teams skid logs on little islands; we tramped through cedar thickets heavy with snow; we inspected rollways at distant rivers. At night we slept in lumber camps of various sorts. Sometimes we ate. Our conversation was succinct. But the adventure was worth while, for it brought me the lasting friendship of Jack Boyd. At this season of the year he was what is known as a "walking boss"-a sort of Later I had the opportunity of seeing him at the more spectacular work of riverdriving. There his quality, showed more clearly; though always except in an emergency he moved with the same deliberation, the same mild absence of haste. But he was the "river boss"; and it was easy to see that his wild subordinates looked up to him as to one whose position was assured beyond any question by even such white water birlers as themselves. Jack Boyd was the master riverman of them all. What this means it is impossible to comprehend unless you have become acquainted with the breed. The riverman is sometimes a woodsman as well; but not always. He has been brought up on running water. As a small boy he has walked logs in the great booms -and been fished out of the river a hundred times. At an early age he has taken naturally to the pike pole and peavy, working first in the still waters about the millbooms, later with the drive. His business is to conduct saw logs from the bank where they have been piled to the mill where they will be cut. He does this by means of the water courses. To them he sticks as closely as a railroad man to his right of way. They are known to him; they absorb his entire life. He grows to his environment. Certain qualities the river demands of him. They are developed early and markedly, for their presence spells not merely success, but life or death. Possessing them he survives; lacking them he surely perishes. So from the almost exaggerated demands on certain of the robuster virtues-which bring with them equally robust vices-a type comes into existence, distinct, marked, easily recognized; just as the exigencies of the cattle business have developed a being called the cowboy; just as the sea exhibits in correspondence the mariner, or the mountains produce hillmen. A riverman was more than merely one who works on the river. You could recognize him easily. He wore invariably a little round felt hat with a rosette of matches tucked neatly in its band; a thick flannel shirt; kersey trousers that had been chopped off at the knee; heavy woolen socks reaching almost to the trousers; and shoes armed with many long, sharp spikes. These latter were his most |