s the menace of the bodefully unseen--the
lawlessness of the fantastically unprecedented.

"I don't blame the fellers with the guns, if they have quit," commented
Vittum. "They might as well try to lick the lightning in a
thundercloud."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Mern's mercenaries were not cowards. They had served valiantly as guards
of strike breakers, had fought in many forays, had winged their
attackers, and had been winged in return. At mill gates they had
resisted mobs and had endured missiles; they had ridden on trucks,
protecting goods and drivers, through lanes of howling, hostile
humanity; they had thrown the cordon of their bodies around dock
workers.

But the gunmen's exploits in intrepidity had been, of and in the cities.

The environment at Skulltree was the Great Open.

They were not backed by solidity or barricaded behind walls. There was
not the reassurance of good, honest earth under their feet; they were
precariously perched in space, so it seemed--standing on the stringers
of the dam, peering into a void of shrouding mists and thunderous
waters, the wilderness all about them!

In their battles in past times they had been able to see the foe; now
they were called on to fight a noise--the bodeful detonations of blasts,
to right, to left--here and there.

There was a foe; he was on his way. They did not know what sort of ruin
he purposed to wreak as the climax of his performance. Craig himself did
not know, so he affirmed in reply to anxious queries, and the boss's
uncertainty and increasing consternation added to the peculiar
psychological menace of the thing.

"Give us orders, Mr. Craig!" pleaded the captain of the guards. "Show us
something to fight against. How many of 'em are there? Where are they?

"It's that damnable Latisan, working single-handed. I'm sure of it. Go
get him!"

"If you don't get him, he's going to blow up this dam," stated the
frightened lawyer.

A far-flung bomb of dynamite landed in the water and shot a geyser
spraying against the fog pall.

"I'm taking that guess for gospel," affirmed the chief gunman, wiping
spray from his face. "Mr. Craig, you can't expect us to hang on here,
facing a thing like what's coming!"

"Shoot him!" gasped the Comas director, but he was revolving on unsteady
feet and the aimlessness of his gaze revealed that he had no definite
idea of procedure; his incertitude wrecked all the courage of his
supporters.

"It can't be done, si