u're going to bust this job up, you and your gang. I'm
telling you that before you succeed you'll wish you'd stayed in jail in
your own country. I don't know what you got against the trestle, but I
do know you're a hellish cuss I'm going to break to the halter. If you
count to bust things up here, I'll see that the busting falls on your
own head. Scat!"

CHAPTER IX

TORRANCE EVOLVES A PLAN

"Were they--real dead, daddy? Couldn't we--can't we do anything?"
Horror stared from Tressa's eyes; she was trembling from head to foot.
"I thought you or--or Adrian were under it, and I almost fell over.
I'd have fainted if I hadn't thought you might need me."

The big man laid his arm across the shaking shoulders and drew her to
him.

"I guess it was Adrian before your old dad."

"No--I don't think so." She continued naively: "Adrian's so quick; I
don't think he'd be caught like that. It was you I thought of--too."

He smiled a little wistfully. "That's right, little girl, be honest.
We all had it--once. When your mother was alive there was no one
counted but 'Jim.' God, if I could hear her say it now! . . . 'Jim.'"
He lingered over the word, repeating it in reverent whisper. "It was
'Jim' kept me straight them days. . . . Just the little word 'Jim.'
I've always thought if I could die with that in my ears, perhaps there
might--might open up a bit of a chance for the big rough fellow who
hasn't had much chance to get away from things that make men
rougher. . . . 'Jim.' Now I'll have to kick out without it."

The girl in his arms was frightened of him when he talked that way; and
it was happening more frequently in these days of worry. She had
scarcely known her mother, except through the lips of her daddy, but
the woman who touched only the fringes of her memory was to her, as to
him, a being not quite of this earth.

"'Jim,'" she whispered, scarce knowing she said it.

His arms closed convulsively, and she could feel his beating heart.

"Say it to me--sometimes--won't you, little girl?" he whispered.

But she was suddenly conscious of treading sacred ground.

"I don't think I can, daddy. It's mother's, mother's own. You're my
daddy, and there's nothing as good as that to me."

He smiled lovingly down on her, tossing aside his depression.

"And a daddy couldn't have anything better--no, not if he searched this
whole wide Canada through from terminal to terminal. I'm just about
the luckiest