e the weakened link.

"What have you against us, anyway, Dyer?" asked Wallace. His quick mind
had conceived a plan. At the moment, he was standing near the outermost
edge of the jam, but now as he spoke he stepped quietly to the boom log.

Dyer's black eyes gleamed at him suspiciously, but the movement appeared
wholly natural in view of the return to shore.

"Nothing," he replied. "I didn't like your gang particularly, but that's
nothing."

"Why do you take such nervy chances to injure us?" queried Carpenter.

"Because there's something in it," snapped the scaler. "Now about face;
mosey!"

Like a flash Wallace wheeled and dropped into the river, swimming as
fast as possible below water before his breath should give out. The
swift current hurried him away. When at last he rose for air, the spit
of Dyer's pistol caused him no uneasiness. A moment later he struck out
boldly for shore.

What Dyer's ultimate plan might be, he could not guess. He had stated
confidently that the jam would break "in an hour." He might intend
to start it with dynamite. Wallace dragged himself from the water and
commenced breathlessly to run toward the boarding-house.

Dyer had already reached the shore. Wallace raised what was left of his
voice in a despairing shout. The scaler mockingly waved his hat, then
turned and ran swiftly and easily toward the shelter of the woods. At
their border he paused again to bow in derision. Carpenter's cry brought
men to the boarding-house door. From the shadows of the forest two vivid
flashes cut the dusk. Dyer staggered, turned completely about, seemed
partially to recover, and disappeared. An instant later, across the open
space where the scaler had stood, with rifle a-trail, the Indian leaped
in pursuit.

Chapter LV

"What is it?" "What's the matter?" "What's happened?" burst on Wallace
in a volley.

"It's Dyer," gasped the young man. "I found him on the boom! He held me
up with a gun while he filed the boom chains between the center piers.
They're just ready to go. I got away by diving. Hurry and put in a new
chain; you haven't much time!"

"He's a gone-er now," interjected Solly grimly.--"Charley is on his
trail--and he is hit."

Thorpe's intelligence leaped promptly to the practical question.

"Injin Charley, where'd he come from? I sent him up Sadler & Smith's.
It's twenty miles, even through the woods."

As though by way of colossal answer the whole surface of the jam moved
inw