r still, primed to
vengeance by the bunch you'd kicked out. Ten years of it has taught me
not to gamble with the unknown because I hate the known. Never really
had so little trouble with a gang--at least, not till these last few
weeks. . . . What d'ye think's got into them, Adrian? Somebody's sure
at the bottom of all these things. That last bit of trestle didn't
undermine itself, and them spikes didn't loosen just to dump the
ballast train. What's the answer?"

"Sheer cussedness. What would you expect from such scum?"

As they passed inside, Torrance stooped to his foreman's face. "I hire
a foreman to stop such things--or cow the brutes."

"I suggested firing Koppy to-morrow. That's the best way."

"Why Koppy?"

Conrad's eyes fell away sullenly. "He had the impertinence to
imagine--" He stopped. "I could shoot him like a mad dog," he
exploded.

Torrance chuckled. "That's the spirit, lad. I was going to say that
there's only one way to handle the bohunk: beat him down. . . . D'ye
realise, Adrian, you haven't killed a single one yet? Sandy, who went
before you, did for five in his last season--"

"And 'went before' me," smiled Conrad, "with five knives in his ribs.
Thanks. I'm still alive--and I'm getting the work out of them. But
this is a new one about Sandy. You told the Police, of course?"

"Sh-sh! I couldn't swear to it in a court of law. I'm not sure an
unprejudiced jury wouldn't call it accidental death. The accidents
happened to be convenient to Sandy and me. If a bohunk or two dropped
out of the way now, d'ye think I'd try to fix it on you? I think too
much of you, Adrian, my lad."

Tressa came round the table and pressed them into their favourite
chairs. In Conrad's hand she thrust a lurid-backed novel. "And after
all this blood and murder, let's get to the more peaceful pursuits of
brigands and treasure-hunters. Sandy was a man after daddy's heart,
Adrian--and at the last a few hundred bohunks were after Sandy's heart."

"Sandy never was a hero," said Conrad. "The hero never dies."

CHAPTER V

BLUE PETE, FRIEND AND LOVER

Close to the waters of the Tepee River, now returned to its normal
sluggishness with the rapidity of mountain-fed streams, a man sat on
his heels in a clump of spruce. There, two miles above the
construction camp, the canyon fell away more gradually to the old river
bottom, and the trees, encouraged by a century of immunity from floods,
crep