his person had been displaying more or
less interest in him. In the dining room at breakfast, in the office
among the loafers, and now at the railroad station the stranger kept his
eyes on Latisan.

The drive master was just as ugly as he had been when he went to sleep.
He was keeping his temper on a wire edge for the purposes of the job of
that day, as he had planned the affair. He did not go up to the
impertinent drummer and cuff his ears, but the stranger did not know how
narrowly he escaped that visitation of resentment.

The fellow remained on the platform when the train pulled out; it
occurred to Latisan that the fresh individual maybe wished to make sure
of a clear field in order to pursue his crude tactics with the lady of
the parlor.

After the arrival at the junction Latisan had matters which gave him no
time to ponder on the possible plight of the lady.

As he had ascertained by cautious inquiry, the crew of the narrow-gauge
train left it on its spur track unattended while they ate at a boarding
house. There were workmen in the yard of a lumber mill near the station,
loafing after they had eaten their lunches from their pails. The Flagg
dynamite was in a side-tracked freight car of the standard gauge.
Latisan promptly learned that the lumber-yard chaps were ready and
willing to earn a bit of change during their nooning. He grabbed in with
them; the boxes of dynamite were soon transferred to the freight car of
the narrow-gauge and stacked in one end of the car. Latisan paid off his
crew and posted himself on top of the dynamite. In one hand he held a
coupling pin; prominently displayed in the other hand was a fuse.

"I'm in here--the dynamite is here," he informed the conductor when that
official appeared at the door of the car, red-faced after hearing the
news of the transfer. "I'm only demanding the same deal you have given
the Three C's. You know you're wrong. Damn the law! I'm riding to Adonia
with this freight. What's that? Go ahead and bring on your train crew."
He brandished coupling pin and fuse. "If you push me too far you'll have
a week's job picking up the splinters of this train."

Bravado was not doing all the work for Latisan in that emergency. The
conductor's conscience was not entirely easy; he had made an exception
in the case of the Three C's--and Craig, attending to the matter before
he went to New York, had borne down hard on the need of soft-pedal
tactics. The conductor was not prepa