doxy on his knee. Where's your pay coming from when Eck
Flagg goes broke?"

Kyle waded in the shallows where men were rolling logs, shouting to be
heard above the roar of the waters.

"We hired for a fight," said the men who hated the Comas. "But it
doesn't look like one is going to be made."

"We've always stood behind Eck Flagg," said the old stand-bys of the
crew. "But we ain't getting a square chance for honest work."

It was plain that the spirit was being beaten out of them under the
hammer of Kyle's harangue--whether it was the adventurous spirit which
craved fight or the honest spirit which had sent them north to the job.

When the night came down, after they had cleaned their pannikins of
food, steaming hot, from the cook's kettles, while they smoked around
the fire which drove away the evening chill, Kyle paced to and fro among
the groups, declaiming, detracting, and urging. He knew that he was
prevailing, though slowly. Woodsmen in shifting their allegiance are not
swayed by sudden impulse. His voice rang among the trees in the silence
of the evening.

"Latisan is a sneak--Latisan is a runaway! Eck Flagg is next to a dead
man!" Over and over he made those declarations, battering discouragement
into their slow comprehension in order to win them to the Comas company.
"And Latisan has thrown down real men for the sake of a girl! Do you
want to get the Big Laugh when you show yourselves downriver?"

Voyagers who came from the southward, leaving their canoes below the
falls, moved silently, after the fashion of the Tarratines. They halted
on a shadowed slope within the range of Kyle's raucous voice, and Lida
stepped forward to listen. The red flames lighted a circle among the
trees, and she beheld the seated groups and saw the swaggering
malcontent who paced to and fro.

"I'm with the Three C's now, first, last, and all the time! Their money
is waiting for you, men. Come, with the real folks, I tell you!"

And again, with even more fantastic trimmings, he set forth the story of
Latisan's flight with a girl who had seduced him from his duty in the
north.

Lida snatched the Flagg cant dog from the hands of Felix; he had been
the bearer of her scepter. He blinked when he looked at her. The
far-flung light of the camp fire, reflected in her eyes, had set
veritable torches there. Her lips were apart and her white teeth were
clenched and her face was ridged with resolution.

There was no mistaking the inte