"What are you going to do about it?" asked Denning at last.

"What would you do?" countered Orde.

"Well," said Denning slowly, and with a certain grim joy, "I don't bet
those Saginaw river-pigs are any more two-fisted than the boys on this
river. I'd go up and clean 'em out."

"Won't do," negatived Orde briefly. "In the first place, as you know
very well, we're short-handed now, and we can't spare the men from the
work. In the second place, we'd hang up sure, then; to go up in that
wilderness, fifty miles from civilisation, would mean a first-class row
of too big a size to handle. Won't do!"

"Suppose you get a lawyer," suggested Denning sarcastically.

Orde laughed with great good-humour

"Where'd our water be by the time he got an injunction for us?"

He fell into a brown study, during which his pipe went out.

"Jim," he said finally, "it isn't a fair game. I don't know what to do.
Delay will hang us; taking men off the work will hang us. I've just got
to go tip there myself and see what can be done by talking to them."

"Talking to them!" Denning snorted. "You might as well whistle down the
draught-pipe of hell! If they're just up there for a row, there'll be
whisky in camp; and you can bet McNeill's got some of 'em instructed on
YOUR account. They'll kill you, sure!"

"I agree with you it's risky," replied Orde. "I'm scared; I'm willing to
admit it. But I don't see what else to do. Of course he's got no rights,
but what the hell good does that do us after our water is gone? And Jim,
my son, if we hang this drive, I'll be buried so deep I never will dig
out. No; I've got to go. You can stay up here in charge of the rear
until I get back. Send word by Charlie who's to boss your division while
you're gone."

XXIII

Orde tramped back to Sawyer's early next morning, hitched into the light
buckboard the excellent team with which later, when the drive should
spread out, he would make his longest jumps, and drove to head-waters.
He arrived in sight of the dam about three o'clock. At the edge of the
clearing he pulled up to survey the scene.

A group of three small log-cabins marked the Johnson, and later the
Heinzman, camp. From the chimneys a smoke arose. Twenty or thirty
rivermen lounged about the sunny side of the largest structure. They
had evidently just arrived, for some of their "turkeys" were still piled
outside the door. Orde clucked to his horses, and the spidery wheels of
the buckboard