ously. He arose with
great deliberation, picked up his strange weapon, and advanced out over
the logs.

In the meantime the opposing army had gathered about the disputed clump
of piles, to the full strength of its three shotguns and the single
rifle. Bob paid absolutely no attention to them. When within a short
distance he stopped and, quite oblivious to warnings and threats from
the army, set himself to watching painstakingly the sputtering progress
of the fire up the fuse, exactly as a small boy watches his giant
cracker which he hopes to explode in mid-air. At what he considered the
proper moment he straightened his powerful young body, and cast the
sapling from him, javelin-wise.

"Scat!" he shouted, and scrambled madly for cover.

The army decamped in haste. Of its armament it lost near fifty per
cent., for one shotgun and the rifle remained where they had fallen.
Like Abou Ben Adam, Murdock led all the rest.

Now Bob had hurled his weapon as hard as he knew how, and had scampered
for safety without looking to see where it had fallen. As a matter of
fact, by one of those very lucky accidents, that often attend a star in
the ascendent, the sapling dove head on into a cavern in the jam above
the clump of piles. The detonation of the twelve full sticks of giant
powder was terrific. Half the river leaped into the air in a beautiful
column of water and spray that seemed to hang motionless for appreciable
moments. Dark fragments of timbers were hurled in all directions. When
the row had died the clump of piles was seen to have disappeared. Bob's
chance shot had actually cleared the river!

The rivermen glanced at each other amazedly.

"Did you _mean_ to place that charge, bub?" one asked.

Bob was too good a field general not to welcome the gifts of chance.

"Certainly," he snapped. "Now get out on that river, every mother's son
of you. Get that drive going and keep it going. I've cleared the river
for you; and if you'd any one of you had the nerve of my poor old fat
sub-centre, you'd have done it for yourselves. Get busy! Hop!"

The men jumped for their peavies. Bob raged up and down the bank. For
the moment he had forgotten the husk of the situation, and saw it only
in essential. Here was a squad to lick into shape, to fashion into a
team. It mattered little that they wore spikes in their boots instead of
cleats; that they sported little felt hats instead of head guards. The
principle was the same. The team h