Down, Scuffy!" he cried, looking for a stick
to throw at his pet.

Bucks surveyed the company of men. They were a sorry-looking lot. The
foreman explained that he had dragged them out of the dens at
Sellersville to go back to work. When remonstrated with for the poor
showing the contractors were making, the foreman pointed to the
plague-spot on the bottoms.

"There's the reason you are not getting any ties," said he lazily.
"We've got five hundred men at work up here; that is, they are
supposed to be at work. These whiskey dives and faro joints get them
the minute they are paid, and for ten days after pay-day we can't get
a hundred men back to camp."

The foreman as he spoke looked philosophically toward the canvas
shanties below. "I spend half my time chasing back and forth, but I
can't do much. They hold my men until they have robbed them, and then
if they show fight they chuck them into the river. It's the same with
the flatboat men." He turned, as he continued, to indicate two
particularly wretched specimens. "These fellows were drugged and
robbed of every dollar they brought here before they got to work at
all."

Stanley likewise gazed thoughtfully upon the cluster of tents and
shacks along the river landing. He turned after a moment to Scott.
"Bob," said he, looking back again toward the river, "what gang do you
suppose this is?"

Scott shook his head. "That I couldn't say, Colonel Stanley."

"Suppose," continued Stanley, still regarding the offending
settlement, "you and Dancing reconnoitre them a little and tell me who
they are. We will wait for you."

Scott and the lineman swung into their saddles and started down the
trail that led to the landing. Stanley spoke again to the foreman.
"Can those men use an axe?" he demanded, indicating the two men that
the foreman asserted had been robbed.

"They are both old choppers--but this gang at Sellersville stole even
their axes."

"Leave these two men here with me," directed Stanley as he watched
Scott and Dancing ride down toward Sellersville. "I may have something
for them to chop after a while."

The foreman assented. "I don't like the bunch," he murmured; "but
nobody at our camp wants to tackle them. What can we do?"

While the foreman continued to talk, Stanley again looked over the
human wrecks that he had rounded up and brought out of Sellersville.
"What can we do?" echoed Stanley, repeating the last question tartly.
"Well, I'll tell you one thin