for home.

The Overlanders long since had turned in and the lumberjacks were in
their bunks, comfortable, and as happy as a lumberjack permits himself
to be, when suddenly their bunk-house seemed to be lifted free of the
ground. It swayed and trembled as a terrific crash rent the air. The
tepee toppled over at the same instant, leaving the Overland girls lying
in the open. Tom and Hippy, at the time asleep in their lean-to, which
was a few yards nearer the river, never were able to decide whether they
had been hurled from their beds or had leaped out before they were fully
awake. At least, they found themselves outdoors, and some yards from the
lean-to.

"For the love of Mike, what now?" gasped Hippy.

Hindenburg was running about in circles, uttering dismal howls, and the
pet bear was scrambling for the top of the highest tree in his vicinity.

"It's the dam!" shouted Tom Gray. "They've got us this time!" growled
Tom, starting down the bank, followed by Hippy and the yowling bull pup.
Hippy saw a figure running from the bank of the river a little further
upstream. It was a man, and he was running in short hops, as if he were
using a stick or cane to assist him in covering ground rapidly.

Behind the fleeing man Tom and Hippy discovered a second figure. It was
Willy Horse. The first figure, as the two Overlanders started for him at
a run, had dashed out over the broken and bent spiles of the dam,
hopping from one spile to another with remarkable agility, with Willy
Horse in close pursuit.

The hopping man, reaching the end of the spiles at the middle of the
dam, halted, hesitated, and the Indian was upon him.

"It's Peg Tatem!" cried Hippy. "He's the scoundrel who did this thing."

A knife in Peg's hand flashed in the moonlight, another appearing in the
hand of the Indian, and out there on their precarious footing the men
stood, thrusting and parrying, with their two-edged blades, watched with
breathless interest by the entire Overland party, who had rushed to the
river's edge.

A sudden uproar was heard in the direction of the bunk-house. The
lumberjacks having discovered that a fight was in progress were running
towards the river to see if they too could not get into the fray, for a
lumberjack loves nothing in the world so violently as he loves a fight.

"Keep out of it!" ordered Tom as he saw that the jacks were headed for
the path that Peg and Willy had taken.

"Tom! Do something!" begged Grace. "Don't l