s of the
telegram in spite of his air of innocence and his question.

"Yes," he nodded briefly.

"Say,--me and Porcupine Jim been talkin' it over and wonderin' if we'd
pay our own way around so it wouldn't cost the Company nothin', if you'd
let us come down with a boat from Meadows?"

"Can you handle a sweep?"

"Can I?" Smaltz sniggered. "Try me!"

Bruce looked at him a moment before he answered. He was wondering why
the very sight of Smaltz irritated him. He was the only man of the crew
that he disliked thoroughly. His boastful speech, his swaggering walk, a
veiled insolence in his eyes and manner made Bruce itch to send him up
the hill for good, but since Smaltz was unquestionably the best
all-round man he had, he would not allow himself to be influenced by his
personal prejudices. While he boasted he had yet to fail to make good
his boastings and the tattered credentials he had displayed when he had
asked for work were of the best. When he asserted now that he could
handle a sweep it was fairly certain that he could not only handle one
but handle it well. Porcupine Jim, Bruce knew, had had some experience,
so there was no good reason why he should not let them go since they
were anxious.

"I've engaged the front sweepman for the other two boats," Bruce said
finally, "but if you and Jim want to take a hind sweep each and will
promise to obey orders I guess there's no objection."

"Surest thing you know," Smaltz answered in the fresh tone that rasped
Bruce. "An' much obliged. Anything to git a chanst to shoot them rapids.
I'd do it if I wasn't gittin' nothin' out of it just for the fun of it."

"It won't look like fun to me with all I'll have at stake," said Bruce
soberly.

"Aw--don't worry--we kin cut her." Smaltz tossed the assurance back
airily as he walked away, looking sharply to the right and left over his
shoulder. It was a habit he had, Bruce often had noticed it, along with
a fashion of stepping quickly around corners, peering and craning his
neck as if perpetually on the alert for something or somebody. "You act
like some feller that's 'done time'--or orter. I'll bet a hundred to one
you know how to make horsehair bridles," Woods, the carpenter, had once
told him pointedly, and the criticism had voiced Bruce's own thoughts.

In the mail which Smaltz had brought down from Ore City was a letter
from Helen Dunbar. It was the second he had had and he told himself as
he tore it open eagerly that it had