," she called, "what is it? You look as you do when playing
chess with Kid."

"Afraid it's something that'll annoy Mr. Blake," replied the cowman.

"What is it?" asked Blake, who was handing his wife from the
buckboard.

As the engineer faced Knowles, Gowan sauntered around the far corner
of the house. At sight of the ladies he paused to adjust his
neckerchief.

"Can't understand it, Mr. Blake," said the cowman. "Somebody has
pulled out that spike you drove in here this morning."

"Pulled the spike?" repeated Gowan, coming forward to stare at the
post. "That shore is a joke. The Jap's building a new henhouse. Must
be short of nails."

"That's so," said Knowles. "I forgot to order them for him. I'm mighty
sorry, Mr. Blake. But of course the little brown cuss didn't know what
he was meddling with."

"Jumping Jehosaphat!" ejaculated Gowan. "That shore is mighty hard
luck! I reckon pulling that spike turns your line of levels adrift
like knocking out the picket-pin of an uneasy hawss."

Blake burst into a hearty laugh. "That's a fine metaphor, Mr. Gowan.
But it does not happen to fit the case. It would not matter if the
spike-hole had been pulled out and the post along with it, so far as
concerns this line of levels."

"It wouldn't?" muttered Gowan, his lean jaw dropping slack. He
glowered as if chagrined at the engineer's laughter at his mistake.

Without heeding the puncher's look, Blake began to tell Knowles the
result of his day's work. While he was speaking, they went into the
house after his wife and the girl, leaving Gowan and Ashton alone.
Equally sullen and resentful, the rivals exchanged stares of open
hostility. Ashton pointed a derisive finger at the spike-hole in the
post.

"'Hole ... and the post along with it!'" he repeated Blake's words.
"On bridge work it might have caused some trouble. But a preliminary
line of levels--_Mon Dieu_! A Jap should have known better--or even a
yap!" With a supercilious shrug, he swung back into the buckboard and
drove up to the corral.

Gowan's right hand had dropped to his hip. Slowly it came up and
joined the other hand in rolling a thick Mexican cigarette. But the
puncher did not light his "smoke." He looked at the spike-hole in the
post, scowled, and went back around the house.

CHAPTER XVI

METAL AND METTLE

At dawn Blake and Ashton drove up to the waterhole on Dry Fork with
their camp equipment. There they left the outfit in the buckboard and