The Rules of the Game

rely puffing little engine to move on. An hour later they descended at Marion. The journey had been made in an almost absolute silence. Tally stared straight ahead, and sucked at his little pipe.

en the train pulled into the station, Tally im

t and most ramshackle frame "joints"; of wide side streets flanked by small, painted houses in yards, some very neat indeed. Tally walked rapidly by the respectable business blocks, but pushed into the first of the unkempt frame saloons

tered in a "lick" across his forehead. He pushed back his chair and ducked behind the bar, whence he greeted the newcomers. Tally proffered a question. The barkeep

same sawdust-strewn floors; same pictures on the walls; same obscure, back rooms; same sleepy card games by the same burly but sodden type of men. This was the off season. Profits were now as slig

id Tally; "but the

away?"

s the

preserved up the middle. Men armed with long pike-poles were moving here and there over the booms and the logs themselves, pushing, pulling, shoving a big log into this pocket, another into that, gradually segregating the different brands belonging to the different owners of the mills below. From the quite considerable height of the bridge all this lay spread out mapwise up and down the perspective of the stream. The smooth, oil

d the directi

rculars there. Two hundred thousand a day"; wi

to be a smaller edition of the other

his feet elevated, read a pink paper behind the bar. A figure slept at the round

s an almost exact inverted pyramid, the base formed by a mop of red-brown hair, and the apex represented by a very pointed chin. Two level, oblong patches of hair made eyebr

ky Darrell,

ing over the chair, and laid both ha

. "Good ole Jim! Glad t

Bob's surprise, took

rrell. "God! I'm glad to

ically; "but let's go across th

en and palms to the front. Suddenly Darrell became for the first time aware of his presence. The riverman whirled on him, and Bob became conscious of something as distinct as a physical shoc

his!" demanded

ne," said Tal

ent longer. "All rig

he bridge Tally argu

n the Cedar Branch, Dick," he

e. With consummate diplomacy Tally led his mind from sullen obstinac

pleaded Darrell, almost tearfully

ing up the flames of hell for four days

d no rig yet,"

ooked p

ash your rig and get d

said Darrell

ather uncertain gait led them, to the wide-open door of a frame livery

rig," he

sleeves lounged out from the office

our days," said he,

pulled off his boot from which he extracted a pulpy mass of greenback

ter straightened them out, counted them, thrust a porti

He shouted an order into t

intest expression of interest in anything evident on their immobile countenances

old side-bar buggy Bob had ever beheld. Darrell, after several vain attempts, managed to clamber

The horse, startled, bounded forward. The buggy jerked. Darrell sat down violently, but was at once on his feet, plying the whip. The crazed man and the cr

cket and took out the wad of greenbacks, contemplated them for a moment, and thrust the

lar?" inquire

ry y

is breath

t'll happen to him! H

arrell! He'll smash up good, and will crawl out of the wre

the horse

iled colt, anyway-and we'll patch up the buggy if she

the amusement was over. Bob owned a boyish desire to follow the wake of the cycl

st his head open," said the liv

k you'd rent him

" yawned

for a coat, which he put on. This indicated that he contempla

said he. "This may be the t

s comment; "can't affo

painfully down the middle of the road. His hat was gone and

aporated with his good spirits. As answer to the liveryman's question as to the whereabouts of the smash

hell do I care where it is? It's mine, isn't it? I paid

ith his red-brown hair tumbled over his white, nervous countenance of t

if you don't watch out," Bo

s head. From long exper

room, where he promptly slept. Tally sat down beside him and withdrew into himself. The twilight fell. After an apparently interminable interval a train rumbled in. Tally sh

usurped all space, crowding the world down. Against the sky the outlines stood significant in what they suggested and concealed-slumbering roof-tops, the satiated mill glowing vaguely somewhere from her banked fires, the blackness and mass of silent lumber yards, the mysterious, hushing fingers of the ships' masts, and then low and vague, like a narrow strip of ve