he canoe out into the current.

Creed had been left in the woods by Moncrossen, ostensibly to guard the
Blood River camp against pilfering Indians and chance forest fires, but
his real mission was to keep watch on the bird's-eye until it could be
safely rafted to the railway.

Moncrossen promised to return about the middle of June, and ten
mornings Creed had skulked the three miles from the lumber camp to the
logs, and ten evenings he had skulked fearfully back again, muttering
futile curses at the boss's delay.

Creed was uneasy. Not since the evening the greener had walked into Hod
Burrage's store at the very moment when he, Creed, was recounting to
the interested listeners the circumstances attending his demise, had he
been entirely free from a haunting, nameless fear.

True, as he told Blood River Jack, he had afterward seen with his own
eyes, the greener go down under the rushing jam where no man could
possibly go down and live.

But, nevertheless, deep in his heart was the _terror_--nameless,
unreasoning, haunting,--that clung to him night and day. So that a
hundred times a day, alone in the timber, he would start and cast
quick, jerky glances over his shoulder and jump, white-faced and
trembling, at the snapping of a twig.

As the days went by the nameless terror grew, dogging his footsteps,
phantomlike by day, and haunting him at night, as he lay shaking in his
bunk in the double-locked little office.

With the single exception of Blood River Jack, he had seen no human
being since the drive, and his frenzied desire for companionship would
have been pitiful, had it been less craven.

He slept fitfully with his rifle loaded and often cocked in his bunk
beside him, while during the day it was never out of reach of his hand.

In his daily excursions to the bird's-eye rollway he never took the
same route twice, but skulked, peering fearfully about in the
underbrush, avoiding even the game trails.

And always he detoured widely the place where he had seen the greener
disappear beneath the muddy, log-ridden waters.

And so it was that upon this particular morning Creed sat close against
the pyramid of logs--waiting.

At a sound from the river he jerked his rifle into readiness for
immediate action and sat nervously alert, his thumb twitching on the
hammer. Approaching down-stream came a canoe.

Creed leaped to his feet with a maudlin grin of relief as he recognized
the three occupants. Apparently they h