led Tom.

"Wow-ow-ow! Whoop!" yelled a chorus of college boys.

It all took place in a very few seconds. Black, hesitating whether
or not to close with Reade, decided on flight. He turned and
fled.

Whizz-zz-zz! The sound was made by the captured revolver as Tom,
leaping to his feet, threw it as far from him as he could. It
sailed through space, next disappearing over the edge of a steep
precipice.

"What's your hurry, Peter?" drawled Reade, as, jerking Bad Pete
to his feet, he planted a kick that sent the bad man down the
trail a dozen feet.

Tom started after Pete, intent on another kick. Bad Pete sped
down the trail blindly. Like most of his gun-play kind, he had
little courage when deprived of his implement of murder.

"What's up, Tom?" demanded Harry Hazelton, leaping to the spot.

"What's the row, chief?" asked one of the university boys eagerly.
"Anyone you want us to catch? Whoop! Lead the way to the running
track while we show you our best time!"

"There's nothing to be done, I think," laughed Tom. "Do you all
know Black by sight?"

"Yes," came the answer from a score of throats.

"Well," Tom continued, "if any of you ever catch sight of him
in the camp again you are hereby authorized to run him out by
the use of any kind of tactics that won't result fatally."

On the way up the trail Tom told the rescue party something about
the late affair.

However, Reade referred to it only as a personal quarrel, refraining
from making any mention of the treachery of Black and of the plots
of which that treacherous engineer was a part.

"If you've many friends like that one, chief, you had better strap
a gun on to your belt."

"I don't like revolver carrying," Tom replied bluntly. "It always
makes a coward of a fellow."

Two mornings later the telegraph wire, one end of which now rested
in a tent in camp, brought word that President Newnham was at the
construction camp, and would be along in the course of the day.

Tom, Harry and the draughtsmen were the only engineers in camp
at the hour when the message arrived.

"Big doings coming our way!" announced Tom, after he had broken
the news to the others.

"Is Mr. Newnham likely to make much of a shake-up?" asked Watson,
one of the college-boy draughtsmen.

"I've never met him," Tom answered, "and I don't know. We're
going along at grand old speed, and Mr. Newnham had better let
things run just as they're going now, if he wants to see the