, and he snapped his whip over the heads of the horses.

"What is this, a singing school or a driving crew?" he demanded,
raucously.

"The sleds have just come, sir," explained Latisan, who had been
marshaling the conveyances.

"Listen, all ye!" shouted Flagg. "Nothing but dunnage bags go on those
sleds till the runners hit the woods tote road and there's good slipping
on the snow. The man who doesn't hoof it till then hears from me."

He ordered Latisan to get onto the jumper seat beside him, slashed his
horses with the whip, and led the way toward the north.

There was no word between the two for many a mile.

Near noon they arrived at a wayside baiting place, a log house in a
clearing. They ate there and the horses were fed. There was plenty of
snow in the woods and the first rains of April had iced the surface so
that the slipping had been good.

As if the chewing of food had unlocked Flagg's close-set jaws, he talked
a bit to Latisan after the meal and while the horses were put to the
jumper.

"I'm going to swing off here and ride down to Skulltree dam. I'm hearing
reports of something going on there."

They heard something very definite in the way of reports before they
reached Skulltree. The sound of explosions came booming through the
trees. It was dynamite. Its down-thrusting thud on the frozen ground was
unmistakable.

"I knew that all those boxes of canned thunder that have been going
through Adonia, with the Three C's on the lid, weren't intended to blow
up log jams," vouchsafed Flagg, after a few oaths to spice his opinion
of the Comas company.

Latisan knew something about the lay of the land at Skulltree, himself.
When he was a young chap the Latisans had operated in a small way as a
side-line on the Noda waters. There was a rift in the watershed near
Skulltree. There was a canon leading down to the Tomah end, and the
waters of the gorge were fed by a chain of ponds whose master source was
near the Noda. The Latisans had hauled over to the pond from the Noda
Valley.

When Flagg pulled his horses to a halt on the edge of a cliff which
commanded a view of the Skulltree and its purlieus, he sat in silence
for five minutes until he had taken in every detail of what was going on
there.

Every little while there was an explosion across the river among the
trees, and clotted frozen earth and rocks shot up into the air. When the
horses leaped in fright Flagg slashed them and swore. It was plain t