ard and upward, thrusting the logs bristling against the horizon.

"She's going to break!" shouted Thorpe, starting on a run towards the
river. "A chain, quick!"

The men followed, strung high with excitement. Hamilton, the journalist,
paused long enough to glance up-stream. Then he, too, ran after them,
screaming that the river above was full of logs. By that they all knew
that Injin Charley's mission had failed, and that something under ten
million feet of logs were racing down the river like so many battering
rams.

At the boom the great jam was already a-tremble with eagerness to
spring. Indeed a miracle alone seemed to hold the timbers in their
place.

"It's death, certain death, to go out on that boom," muttered Billy
Mason.

Tim Shearer stepped forward coolly, ready as always to assume the
perilous duty. He was thrust back by Thorpe, who seized the chain,
cold-shut and hammer which Scotty Parsons brought, and ran lightly out
over the booms, shouting,

"Back! back! Don't follow me, on your lives! Keep 'em back, Tim!"

The swift water boiled from under the booms. BANG! SMASH! BANG! crashed
the logs, a mile upstream, but plainly audible above the waters and the
wind. Thorpe knelt, dropped the cold-shut through on either side of the
weakened link, and prepared to close it with his hammer. He intended
further to strengthen the connection with the other chain.

"Lem' me hold her for you. You can't close her alone," said an
unexpected voice next his elbow.

Thorpe looked up in surprise and anger. Over him leaned Big Junko. The
men had been unable to prevent his following. Animated by the blind
devotion of the animal for its master, and further stung to action by
that master's doubt of his fidelity, the giant had followed to assist as
he might.

"You damned fool," cried Thorpe exasperated, then held the hammer to
him, "strike while I keep the chain underneath," he commanded.

Big Junko leaned forward to obey, kicking strongly his caulks into the
barked surface of the boom log. The spikes, worn blunt by the river work
already accomplished, failed to grip. Big Junko slipped, caught himself
by an effort, overbalanced in the other direction, and fell into the
stream. The current at once swept him away, but fortunately in such a
direction that he was enabled to catch the slanting end of a "dead head"
log whose lower end was jammed in the crib. The dead head was slippery,
the current strong; Big Junko had no crev