ared that he would come down
heavy on his heels when he started.

The brooding opacity which wrapped the scene made the location of the
sound uncertain; but it was up somewhere among the hills. The echoes
battered to and fro between the cliffs.

Before those echoes died the sound was repeated.

"He's coming slow, but he's come sure!" Vittum voiced their thoughts.
"Them's the footsteps of Latisan!"

On they came! And as they thrust their force upon the upper ledges there
was a little jump of the earth under the feet of those who stood and
waited.

There was something indescribably grim and bodeful in those isochronal
batterings of the solid ground. The echoes distracted the thoughts--made
the ominous center of the sounds a matter of doubt. That uncertainty
intensified the threat of what was approaching the dam of Skulltree.

There were other sounds, after a few moments. Rifles were cracking
persistently; but it was manifestly random firing.

The old man stepped to Lida and grasped her hand and held it. "Don't be
'feared for him, miss. They're only guessing! He'll be knowing the
ledges--every lift of 'em that's betwixt him and them. They'll never get
him with their popguns. But he'll get _them_!" he declared, with venom.
"I wonder what Craig is thinking now, with his old bug eyes poking into
that fog and doing him as much good as if he was stabbing a mill pond
with his finger!"

The rifle fire died away, after a desultory patter of shots.

"They're running!" said one of the crew. "They must be on the run!"

"You bet they're running," agreed the old man. "The Three C's hasn't got
money enough to hire men, to stand up in front of what's tromping down
toward Skulltree! Heavier and heavier on his heels!"

Measuredly slow, inexorably persistent, progressed the footsteps of the
giant blasts.

Latisan's men needed no eye-proof in order to understand the method.

The drive master was hurling the dynamite sticks far in advance of
himself and to right and to left, making his own location a puzzling
matter. The men had seen him bomb incipient jams in that fashion,
lighting short fuses and heaving the explosive to a safe distance.

The blasts were nearer and still nearer, and more frequent; the ground
quaked under their feet; in the intervening silences they heard the
whine and the rustle of upthrown litter in the air, the patterings and
plops of debris raining into the spaces of the deadwater.

Behind the attack wa