cks or a succession of dastardly outrages. His loyalty
and anger were both thoroughly aroused, and he plunged into his little
fights with entire whole-heartedness. As his side of the question meant
getting out the logs, the combination went far toward efficiency. When
the drive was down in the spring, Bob looked back on his mossback
campaign with a little grieved surprise that men could think it worth
their self-respect to try to take such contemptible advantage of
quibbles for the purpose of defeating what was certainly customary and
fair, even if it might not be technically legal. What the mossbacks
thought about it we can safely leave to the crossroad stores.

In other respects Bob had the good sense to depend absolutely on his
subordinates.

"How long do you think it ought to take to cut the rest of Eight?" he
would ask Tally.

"About two weeks."

Bob said nothing more, but next day he ruminated long in the snow-still
forest at Eight, trying to apportion in his own mind the twelve days'
work. If it did not go at a two weeks' gait, he speedily wanted to know
why.

When the sleighs failed to return up the ice road with expected
regularity, Bob tramped down to the "banks" to see what the trouble was.
When he returned, he remarked casually to Jim Tally:

"I fired Powell off the job as foreman, and put in Downy."

"Why?" asked Tally. "I put Powell in there because I thought he was an
almighty good worker."

"He is," said Bob; "too good. I found them a little short-handed down
there, and getting discouraged. The sleighs were coming in on them
faster than they could unload. The men couldn't see how they were going
to catch up, so they'd slacked down a little, which made it worse.
Powell had his jacket off and was working like the devil with a
canthook. He does about the quickest and hardest yank with a canthook I
ever saw," mused Bob.

"Well?" demanded Tally.

"Oh," said Bob, "I told him if that was the kind of a job he wanted, he
could have it. And I told Downy to take charge. I don't pay a foreman's
wages for canthook work; I hire him to keep the men busy, and he sure
can't do it if he occupies his time and attention rolling logs."

"He was doing his best to straighten things out," said Tally.

"Well, I'm now paying him for his best," replied Bob, philosophically.

But if it had been a question of how most quickly to skid the logs
brought in by the sleighs, Bob would never have dreamed of questioning
Pow