business with me in spite of the looks of this
office," returned Mern, unruffled. "Latisan, you can't beef about not
getting a square deal--and I've put you in the way of getting a tip. It
looks to me----"

"Just the same as it looks to me!" cried the young man. "We're fully
agreed as to all the looks! Good day!"

He stood very straight and shot Mern through with a stare from hard gray
eyes. There was no longer any of the faltering uncertainty that he had
displayed. Grim determination radiated from him.

"Good day to you, also!" Mern called after Latisan when he strode toward
the door, then adding suggestively. "If any mail happens to come here
for you, I'm to forward it along to that Skulltree dam, so I take it!"

The irony did not provoke any retort from the drive master. He went away
with a rush, but his demeanor showed that he was not running away from
anything or anybody. He was hastening toward something.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Latisan was on that one o'clock train when it left Grand Central
station.

From the gallery of the concourse he had seen Craig march to the gate
and give a packet into the hands of one of a group of men waiting there.
Then Craig had gone on quickly with the air of a cautious performer who
did not care to be identified with the persons for whom he had provided
transportation.

The drive master rode in a coach and felt safe from detection; he
guessed that Craig would hide his battered face in the privacy of a
drawing room. Latisan had trailed the operatives and saw them enter the
smoking car.

In the late afternoon, at a stage in the journey, he crossed a city on
the heels of the party and again was an unobtrusive passenger in a
coach, avoiding the sleeping cars. He slept a bit, as best he could, but
mostly he pondered, fiercely awake, bitterly resolute. He fought away
his memory of the betrayal of a trust; he indulged in no fond hopes in
regard to one whom he now knew as Lida Kennard. He was concentrating on
his determination to go back to the drive, not as master, but as a
volunteer who would carry his cant dog with the rest of them, as humble
as the plainest toiler. He did not try at that time to plan a course of
action to be followed after he was back on the Flagg drive. He was
going, that was all!

It was a hideous threat, the menace that Craig was conveying into the
north country in the persons of those gunmen from the city! There had
been plenty of fights over rig