e whiskey, and is
just walking round to cool himself."

In answer the foreman grasped the speaker's shoulder, and stretched out
a pointing hand. The moonlight touched one angle of the rock upon the
opposite shore which encroached upon the frothing water, and the dark
figure showed sharply against it. The figure vanished, reappeared, and
sank from sight again. When this had happened several times Gillow
remarked: "Perhaps we had better go over. The man's clean gone mad."

"No, sir!" objected Mattawa Tom. "No more mad than you. See what he's
after? No! You don't remember, either, how mighty hard it was to
wedge in the holdfasts for the chain guys stiffening the front of the
dam, or how the keys work loose? There wouldn't be much of the boring
machines or dam framing left if the chains pulled those wedges out.
Catch on to the idee?"

Gillow gasped. The huge timber framing, which held back the river so
that the costly boring machines could work upon the reef, cumbering
part of its bed, had been built only with the greatest difficulty, and
when finished Thurston had found it necessary to strengthen it by heavy
chains made fast in the rock above. The sockets to which these were
secured had been wedged into deep-sunk holes, but more than once some
of the hard wood keys had worked loose, and Gillow could guess what
would happen if many were partially set free at the same time.

"If he hammered three or four of those wedges clear it would only need
a bang on another one to give the river its way," Gillow said
excitedly. "Then it would take Thurston six months to fix up the
damage, if he ever did, and nobody would know how it happened. The
cold-blooded brute's in the maintenance gang?"

"Just so. A blame smart man, too!" asserted Mattawa Tom. "I guess the
boss wouldn't want everybody to know. Rustle back your hardest and
bring him along."

Fifteen minutes later Thurston took his place behind the boulder, and,
because the light was clearer now, he could dimly see the man swinging
a heavy hammer, against the rock. He knew that the miscreant, whose
business was to prevent the possibility of such accidents, need only
start a few more keys, which he would probably do when the dam was
clear of men, and many thousand dollars' worth of property and the
result of months of labor would be swallowed by the river. His face
paled with fierce anger when he recognized this fact.

"I want that man," he declared with shu