he pile. His assistant's end caught on a sliver,
ground for a second, and slipped back. Thus the log ran slanting across
the skids instead of perpendicular to them. To rectify the fault, Thorpe
dug his cant-hook into the timber and threw his weight on the stock. He
hoped in this manner to check correspondingly the ascent of his end. In
other words, he took the place, on his side, of the preventing sliver,
so equalizing the pressure and forcing the timber to its proper
position. Instead of rolling, the log slid. The stock of the cant-hook
was jerked from his hands. He fell back, and the cant-hook, after
clinging for a moment to the rough bark, snapped down and hit him a
crushing blow on the top of the head.

Had a less experienced man than Jim Gladys been stationed at the other
end, Thorpe's life would have ended there. A shout of surprise or horror
would have stopped the horse pulling on the decking chain; the heavy
stick would have slid back on the prostrate young man, who would have
thereupon been ground to atoms as he lay. With the utmost coolness
Gladys swarmed the slanting face of the load; interposed the length of
his cant-hook stock between the log and it; held it exactly long enough
to straighten the timber, but not so long as to crush his own head and
arm; and ducked, just as the great piece of wood rumbled over the end of
the skids and dropped with a thud into the place Norton, the "top" man,
had prepared for it.

It was a fine deed, quickly thought, quickly dared. No one saw it. Jim
Gladys was a hero, but a hero without an audience.

They took Thorpe up and carried him in, just as they had carried Hank
Paul before. Men who had not spoken a dozen words to him in as many days
gathered his few belongings and stuffed them awkwardly into his satchel.
Jackson Hines prepared the bed of straw and warm blankets in the bottom
of the sleigh that was to take him out.

"He would have made a good boss," said the old fellow. "He's a hard man
to nick."

Thorpe was carried in from the front, and the battle went on without
him.

Chapter XII

Thorpe never knew how carefully he was carried to camp, nor how tenderly
the tote teamster drove his hay-couched burden to Beeson Lake. He had no
consciousness of the jolting train, in the baggage car of which Jimmy,
the little brakeman, and Bud, and the baggage man spread blankets, and
altogether put themselves to a great deal of trouble. When finally he
came to himself, he