dvisability of seeking immediately an informal interview with Dexter
Allison, such as the latter himself had so genially suggested.

But Fat Joe, squinting at his chief's broad back, misread the signs that
morning. From where he stood in the doorway he could see the men of the
upper camp already swarming out over the works, some of them mere dots
across the expanse of swamp-land. The rhythmic beat of pile-drivers
thudded in his ears; raucous echoes of shouted orders floated up from the
nearest gang-bosses, and punctuating it all came the intermittent boom of
dynamite explosions from far north in the deep cut alongside the river
edge.

The construction camp had been nearly two hours awake; the race against a
well-nigh impossible time limit which would brook neither mistake nor
miscalculation had been picked up automatically at daybreak, where it had
hesitated at nightfall the day before. While he stared down at this
activity, a realization of the months of bitter toil which stood between
them and ultimate, uncertain success, crept over Fat Joe. Little by
little his features took on that look of hard and dangerous setness which
always seemed so doubly threatening upon his placidly round countenance.
And as casually as he was able he elected to go upon that errand of which
his chief must have lost sight, in a dulled and moody contemplation of an
entirely different matter.

"Maybe," Joe suggested vaguely, "maybe I'll just ask you to watch these
things on the stove a while, Steve. I've got the fire to drawin' and
some coffee set on, because I knew we'd need 'em before that cook-boy got
his eyes open wide enough to see his way up here. It ain't exactly a
fancy repast, neither, so it won't tax your culinary skill none to tend
it. I--there's something I'd like to look into a little--something I
sort of lost sight of while we were soothing our mutual friend in yonder.
But I'll be back in a minute. I'll just run down and see if everybody's
onto his job."

Hard on the heels of that explanation he started rapidly down the long
bare slope and Steve watched his departure without comment. While Joe
was gone he tethered the black horse at the door frame, found a nose-bag
and methodically presented the grateful beast with his breakfast. And
when Fat Joe returned he had finished preparing the meal which the former
had begun; in absent-minded inattention that resulted in more than one
perilously close call, with one hand he w