dig at them with his knife, to squint and
stare, to shin a few feet up a trunk now and then, examining every
protuberance, every round, bulbous scar. At last he shouted, and
Houston hurried to him, to find the giant digging excitedly at a
lodgepole. "I have foun' another!"

The knife, deep in the tree, had scratched on metal. Five minutes more
and they had discovered a third one, farther away. Then a fourth, a
fifth; soon the number had run to a score, all within a small radius.
Ba'tiste, more excited than ever, ranged off into the woods, leaving
Barry to dig at the trees about him and to discover even more metal
buried in the hearts of the standing lumber. For an hour he was gone,
to return at last and stand staring about him.

"The spike, they are all in this little section," he said finally. "I
have cruise' all about here--there are no more."

"But why should trees grow spikes?"

"Ah, why? So that saws will break at the right time! Eet is easy for
the iron hunter at the mill to look the other way--eef he knows what
the boss want. Eet is easy for the sawyer to step out of the way while
the blade, he hit a spike!"

A long whistle traveled over Houston's lips. This was the explanation
of broken saws, just at the crucial moment!

"Simple, isn't it?" he asked caustically. "Whenever it's necessary for
an 'accident' to happen, merely send out into the woods for a load of
timber from a certain place."

"Then the iron hunter--the man who look for metal in the wood--he look
some other place. Beside," and Ba'tiste looked almost admiringly at a
spike-filled tree. "Eet is a good job. The spike, they are driven
deep in the wood, they are punched away in, so the bark, eet will close
over them. If the iron hunter is not, what-you-say, full of pepper,
and if he is lazy, then he not find heem, whether he want to or not.
M'sieu Thayer, he have a head on him."

"Then Thayer--"

"Why not?"

"But why? He was the only man on the job out here. He didn't have to
fill a whole section of a forest full of spikes when he wanted to break
a saw or cause me trouble."

"Ah, no. But M'sieu--that is, whoever did eet--maybe he figure on the
time when you yourself try to run the mill. Eh?"

"Well, if he did," came sharply, "he's figured on this exact moment.
I've seen enough, Ba'tiste. I'm going to Denver and contract myself an
entirely new crew. Then I'm coming back to drop this masquerade I've
been carrying on--an