Red Meekins

Contents

PAGE

I Fool’s Gold . 9

II Wild Oats . 167

Chapter I

The withering blight of pinched-out veins had fallen upon Silver City. Like skeleton monuments to buried hopes a dozen hoist derricks stood si¬ lently upon the bald, glaciated hills.

Upon the veranda of a low-crouching log build¬ ing, from which hung, at an angle, a board carrying the words, “Trout’s Hotel,” stood its owner gazing dejectedly down the deserted street.

The scheme of Peloo Trout’s physical architec¬ ture lent itself admirably to dejection. His huge, gaunt frame was topped by a headpiece that well might have been posed for a full-whiskered gargoyle. He spat a derisive jet of tobacco juice out to the roadway, and, dropping into a chair beside a heavy-shouldered man with an emblazoned crest, voiced his pessimistic deductions: “This town’s deader’n a doornail — do you sabe that, Mr. Red Meekins?”

“If I had the dough, I’d pull my freight for the

Badger gold fields,” Meekins declared. “Wish some sucker’d drop into town an’ grubstake me.”

“I’d stake you if I could sell this hash joint.”

“Advertise,” Meekins advised laconically.

“I did. I put a notice on a board, an’ Lucky Flynn shot it to smithereens. He allowed the name Peloo looked like a string of bull’s-eyes. Hello ! Here comes your sucker now, Red.”

A wagon was coming up the street. It stopped in front of the hotel, and two men descended. “One of ’em is that French half-breed, Felix Dubois,” Peloo said, “but the man in pantalettes is a new one on me.”

There was something pantherlike about the halfbreed’s movements as he lifted to the ground their travelling outfit. His slim, wiry frame moved with the subtle, undulating strength of a steel coil. His eyes were black — fiercely black, and as predatory as his thin, hawk nose. The useful prospector’s garb, khaki pants, brown leather shoe packs, and short Mackinaw coat contrasted with the elaborate tourist gear that his companion had evidently ac¬ quired of a London outfitter.

Peloo welcomed the half-breed when the two came up the veranda, saying: “Hope you’re well, M’sieu Felix.”

“I’m fine, me,” Dubois answered. “Dis is M’sieu St. John, from London; m’sieu is beeg man for buy mine. Dis is M’sieu Peloo Trout.” Meekins was swept into the introduction as he rose to depart.

The stranger tendered Peloo a card, and Trout threaded his way laboriously through the labyrinthian legend:

Mr. George Cawthra Sackville St. John.

Not to be outdone in courtesy, he plunged his huge hand into a capacious pocket and fished out a pasteboard which carried the concise announcement:

MR. PELOO TROUT,

Mining Broker.

“That’s my main bus’ness — brokerin’,’’ Peloo advised; “this hotel’s more on the side.”

Felix, all on the alert, asked: “Where dat minin’ engineer, Sam Wallace?”

“Lit out,” Peloo answered tersely.

“Dave Lane — he here?” Felix queried.

Peloo drew a massive hand down his whiskers, and delivered a comprehensive answer that took cognisance of questions to come: “There ain’t nobody here, an’ there’ll be fewer next week. This town’s closed for the season.”

“Really! What are we to do?” St. John asked.

The restless breed was shuffling his shoe packs on the floor with a rasping, restless impatience: “By gar, dat some minin’ town widout no minin’ man !”

“You see,” the placid voice of St. John took up, “I am on my way to inspect a property of Mr. Dubois’s, and I expected to get Mr. Wallace or Mr. Lane to go with us.”

“Why didn’t you bring an engineer from To¬ ronto?” Peloo asked.

1 2

“Non!” Felix declared contemptuously. “De good man he’s all at de mines; dere’s ’bout fifty t’ousand minin’ engineers lef ’ in Toronto don’ know gol’ from brass. M’sieu St. John he’s been intro¬ duce’ to me by frien’ who tol’ heem ’bout my gol’

mine. I show heem de speciman - ” Here

Dubois thrust into Peloo’s hand the specimen. It was the size of an egg, very beautiful, the yellow golden metal plastered between creamy white quartz. “Dat’s fine, eh, Peloo? I got forty acre of dat.”

“About the engineer - ’’ St. John suggested.

“Yes,” Felix, switching back, continued, “disfriend’, who is beeg man in Toronto, recommen’ M’sieu Wallace or Dave Lane.”

“This puts us in a hat, Mr. Trout. No doubt Mr. Dubois can show me, as he says, acres of gold, but Londoners are conservative — they’d insist on seeing a report.”

“That gold wouldn’t do ’em, eh, Mr. — er — ah?” Peloo queried.

“Not at all. Anybody having a five-pound share in the company couldn’t come all the way out here to look at the gold, could he?”

St. John’s query was punctuated by a squeal from Felix, upon whose toe Peloo had pressed an enor¬ mous boot. As he glared at Trout he saw the latter’s right eye close and then pop open, unshield¬ ing a look that conveyed something. The some¬ thing developed immediately.

“Well, mister, there ain’t a engineer that I’d

IS trust furder’n you’d sling a bull by the tail within a hundred miles of this sweet village except Mr. Meekins.”

If it had not been for the crushed toe and the little bead eye that was even now telegraphing, Felix would have rolled on the floor, convulsed with laughter. Inwardly he was muttering: “Nom du chien! Red Meekins — engineer!”

“The gentleman who has just left us?” St. John queried.

“ThaPs him, an’ he’s a hustler from ’way back. He’s got ’em all skinned when it comes to holdin’ his ear to the ground; he jus’ talks secrets to old earth.”

Peloo had a feeling that Felix was ready to ex¬ postulate, so he kept up his eulogy of Meekins. “Red is known from the Klondike to Mexico. Why, he staked the Pink Eye Mine an’ the Spotted Dog; I wouldn’t put a dollar into a prospect with¬ out Meekins see it first. He’s practical. Some of ’em School of Mines grafters comes up here with a ‘M. E.’ after their names an’ go out an’ give a stone quarry a diploma, till you’d think it was a drawin’- room with gold statues. They get the strike an’ the tip an’ the calcites an’ the quartzites all wrote in sweet an’ proper in the certif’cate, an’ down in Toronto the people fight for the shares. Over in Cobalt there was about a thousand comp’nies sold stock to the woolly public, an’ every one of ’em comp’nies had a jim-dandy report signed by some M. E., an’ about twenty mines made good. Now,

Meekins ain’ like that; he’s practical. He knows a mine from a moose yard, an’ there ain’t money enough in Silver City to bribe him.”

“My dear sir,” St. John offered, “I’m afraid that a strictly practical man, you know, would hardly be the proper person. I should require a report tech¬ nically convincing.”

“An’ that’s what you’ll get from Mr. Meekins — technically O. K. When I say he’s practical I don’t mean he’s got to quarry all the mineral out of a mine before he can tell you what’s there. No, siree, Mr. Meekins is a jim-dandy engineer — none bet¬ ter.”

St. John made no comment, and Peloo added briskly: “I’ll see him about it; I’m kind of feared he’s pretty busy.”

After supper Peloo, Meekins, and Dubois met in a little room while St. John smoked his pipe on the veranda.

“Show Red that chunk of metal, Felix,” Peloo commanded.

Dubois passed the gold quartz to Meekins, and Peloo added: “You ain’t no prospector, Felix, as I ever heerd of; how’d you come by this find?”

“I was killin’ fur — trappin’,” the Frenchman snapped.

“Do you think, Red, that Felix found that family plate while he was snarin’ rabbits?”

“What you mean?” Felix was angry.

“That specimen never come from the surface, Felix, an’ if you put that over on the Englisher - ”

Dubois spat in a catlike rage. “You t’ink I’m wan fool, m’sieu?”

“Me an’ Red wouldn’t be wastin’ time here if we thought that, Felix. But we’re goin’ to be honest; we ain’t goin’ to rob nobody but the stranger, an’ there’s no use totin’ the gent off into the woods if there’s no stuff like that on your claim. Me an’ Red ain’t got morals enough between the two of us to stake an ordinary preacher, but if you ain’t got the gold we’re not in on it even against an outsider.”

“Ver’ kind, M’sieu Peloo,” Dubois said sarcas¬ tically; “an’ if my mine is good wan, your engineer, M’sieu Meekins, will say so an’ get beeg fee, eh? Oh, nom de Dieu! Red Meekins is engineer for inspec’ my property!” And he leaned back in his chair and cackled.

Meekins turned to Trout, growling: “I ain’t no engineer; I never said I was.”

“Yes, you are,” Peloo declared. “It’s knowin’ things, not diplomas, that makes an engineer worth a hang. There ain’t a mineral-bearin’ rock that you don’t know the name of; there ain’t one of ’em that wouldn’t get up on its hind legs an’ say, ‘Hello, Red,’ if you was to meet. The kid rocks like Huronian an’ conglomerate, an’ the gran’pa rocks, diabase an’ granite — why, you’ve slept with ’em. An’ as to gold, the old saying’ goes, ‘Gold is where you find it.’ ”

“But when it come to writin’ the geol’gy of ’em rocks I’d be a laugh.”

Peloo leaned forward, and, shaking a long finger in the speaker’s face, said dramatically: “That’s where I come in, Red. You gather up the macadam on Felix’s gold farm an’ tell me what the chunks is an’ I’ll write out the family hist’ry of that mine.”

Red stared, and Felix clucked his tongue in his cheek. Peloo drew a large sheaf of papers from his pocket and spread them on the table. “It’s as easy as peelin’ onions,” he asserted. “That’s Pro¬ fessor Bluem’s report on the Badger Lake country, designed an’ executed all proper; an’ here is a re¬ port on the Fat Hog Lake gold field. Here’s five other mine reports that an engineer left in his room when he skipped out an’ left me his board bill to file. Here’s all ’em mineral rocks in their dress suits — schists, ankerites, dolomites” — Peloo was reading from a report. “How does it strike you now, Felix?”

“What you expec’ make out of dis?” Dubois asked suspiciously.

“Red’s fee’ll be five hundred plunks; the buyer’ll pay that as usual. My firm, Peloo Trout & Co. ,’11 look to you for the commission — ten per cent; the seller always pays that.”

Dubois gasped. “By gar! I don’ need no broker, me; I’ve sol’ de mine.”

“No mine ain’t never sold till you’ve got the cash, Felix. Don’t be in no hurry; just let that soak in,” and Peloo lighted his pipe and put the papers in his pocket.

It gradually soaked into Dubois’s mind, eager to sell his mine, that ninety per cent of the price would be better than perhaps losing it all. Smothering his anger, he said: “If M’sieu St. John is satisfy, I don’ care, me.”

“Then just put your autograph to this commis¬ sion letter.” And Peloo put in front of Dubois a document he had already prepared.

When they joined St. John on the veranda Trout explained in a charmingly offhand way that it was all settled. Mr. Meekins had agreed to go, and that, as he himself felt a kindly interest in the mat¬ ter, he was also going. “You just leave it to me an’ Meekins,” Peloo advised; “we'll put Felix’s claim in the witness box an’ convict it of bein’ a mine or its owner a four-flusher.”

Chapter II

St. John felt somewhat as Felix had, a state of helplessness; he must either go forward in the hands of these seemingly capable men or go back.

As to Peloo, he simply completed arrangements — hired two guides, two canoes which he stocked with steel, dynamite, food — all that was required. The second morning they were under way.

There was a week of canoe travel; first upstream for four days to the height of land — the divide on the watershed, and then two days of swift glide down rushing waters. There were portages and rapids to run, and many things new to the Londoner. At Beaver Landing, they left the canoes, and, led by Big Little Joe, the guide, packed their outfit over a trail that led across a wilderness of muskeg.

On the second day they came flat up against a rock, and when they had climbed to its top, Felix, with a whoop of joy, pointed to an old log shack, proudly announcing that that was his claim.

After they had eaten, Felix showed them his dis¬ covery vein. Originally it had shown in one small exposure, but where they stood now, as Meekins stepped it off, it was twenty-two feet in width. It was a vein of ankerite schist cut by stringers of quartz, and in these quartz stringers little beads of gold like shirt studs showed.

Felix took St. John along the outcrop of the vein, and Meekins sent Big Little Joe and his mate to bring sledges and steel to drill a row of popholes across the vein.

“There’s somethin’ wrong about this find of gold, Peloo,” Red said. “In the first place, Felix didn’t strip this vein; he’s lived too long in the bush to dig a duck pond when all he’d got to do is run a smaller trench at right angles to these stringers. An’ that gold specimen never come off this outcrop.”

“It never come off this claim,” Peloo declared.

“I believe it did. The feller that hog-rooted that earth up found a rich outcrop somewhere, an’ p’raps he wouldn’t tell Felix, an’ I wouldn’t put it past the breed to knock him on the head to steal the whole thing.”

“When we was cornin’ over the trail,” Peloo commented, “an’ I was askin’ Felix where we was, he ups an’ says that he didn’t come in this way be¬ fore; that he hadn’t no canoe, an’ had to go way round the other way.”

Little Joe had brought the sledges and steel, and Meekins drilled a number of shallow holes across the vein, blew them out with dynamite, ground a collection of rock in a mortar he had brought, and, panning the powder in the fry pan, showed St. John a fairy-like thread of gold lying along the edge of the white grit.

“She’s a rich one if she only goes down deep enough,” was Red’s comment.

After supper Peloo built a couple of smudge fires to keep off the mosquitoes, and accompanied Meekins to the shack to help the latter with his field notes. It was an old shack that had probably been built by some trapper.

“Wonder what English had in his crop when he asked me to-day if I’d ever see a feller as looked like him out in these parts,” Meekins said as he pulled inside the string that lifted the wooden latch.

“What’d you tell him?”

“I told him I’d seen a slew of ’em — dozens; an’ he never give a cackle. Don’t you s’pose he never catches on?”

“He’s huntin’ for somebody that’s got lost out here, Red. Do you remember Lord Happy, that boozin’ Englishman at Haileybury?”

“Yes”

“Well, from what St. John says an’ asks, I be¬ lieve that’s the man he’s after. But I ain’t goin’ to give nobody away till I know what’s the game.”

Peloo had spread his literature on the table, and Meekins, sitting opposite, had his rock samples ready.

“I can’t just make out whether this is diabase or Keewatin.” Red rubbed his thumb over the texture. “It’s greenish gray, Peloo.”

“Here she am,” Peloo answered gleefully, flat¬ tening the leaves of the mining journal at a page of colored rocks. “One’d think they was twins,” and, clearing his throat, he read:

“In the Badger Area some of the Keewatin rocks have escaped dynamic metamorphic agencies suf¬ ficient to show their original character; certain basalts still retain quite perfectly their amygdaloidal texture and ellipsoidal structure. Most of the Keewatin in the Badger Area consists of darkcolored or greenish massive or schistose rocks of basic or intermediate composition.

“That means the rock you’ve got in your paw, ain’t it?”

“Yes, I guess she’s Keewatin all right; we’ll label her.”

Peloo wrote out Keewatin, and it was pasted on the rock. He numbered it “I,” with a correspond¬ ing number on that section of the report. “It’s goin’ to be easy, Red,” he advised. “Besides it’s on the level.” He put his big paw confidently on the mining manual. “I’ll bet there’s a description in this here catalogue of every kind of rock this forty acres can cough up.”

Meekins pushed two fragments across the table, and after a long search Peloo read the following:

“Quartz-porphyry is, however, a rather common rock in the Badger Area. While it occurs charac¬ teristically in dikes cutting green schists, it is also found in larger masses. Certain quartz-porphyry dikes have been subjected to pressure and broken up and now resemble conglomerate. The metamorphic action has produced a dark-greenish base through which are set fragments of the porphyry.”

“That’s the piece that looks like head-cheese, ain’t it, Red? That’s quartz-porphyry.”

It was duly labelled quartz-porphyry. Meekins leaned back in his chair with a tired sigh. “If you hadn’t read ’em jawbreakers out of that there book, I'd ’a’ called it diabase.

“Diabase — diabase?” muttered Peloo reflec¬ tively. “I see something on a back page about diabase. Here she is! Say, Red, this game’s as easy as gettin’ measles. Listen:

“Olivine Diabase: Several dikes of olivine dia¬ base cutting the Keewatin have been found in this area. The olivine diabase in the Badger area is considered to be of post-middle Huronian age.

“Got some of the Olivine stuff, Red, ’cause here’s its name?”

“That’s diabase.” Meekins rubbed his thumb over a rather smooth, greenish piece.

RED MEEIvINS

“We got him dead to rights, age an’ all,” Peloo added.

“That Olivine’s new to me,” Red admitted. “They call it greenstone an’ let it go at that in Cobalt.”

“No. 3,” Peloo declared as he thumped the label on.

“I’d rather be drillin’ holes out in the rock,” said Red mournfully.

“You wouldn’t get five hundred for it. You stick to me an’ you’ll be travellin’ ’round the country in a flivver.”

Meekins was examining with his glass a piece of rock that on one side had a rusted-iron finish, while the reverse was creamy white, with little touches of blue and green.

“What’s that?” Trout asked.

“ ’Bout an hour ago Pd’ve called it gold-bearin’ quartz, but since I stacked up against that book I wouldn’t argue that it wasn’t a doorknob off the pearly gates.”

Peloo held out his hand. “Let me have it; here’s a cut that looks kinder similar. I guess it’s quartz all right, but we’re writin’ a scientific report. There you be, as good a fit as you ever see.” He placed the rock beside a coloured plate for comparison. “There’s her name, too, as the professors have christened her — jaspilyte. Read it, Red.”

Peloo filled his pipe while Meekins waded through the following:

“Associated with the Keewatin is much iron

formation. This iron formation is what is com¬ monly called jaspilyte, and consists of thin bands of magnetite and silica, the latter being frequently red in colour.”

“That piece has got ‘jaspilyte’ stamped on its features, ain’t it, Red?”

“Hanged if I know! What’s the matter with this as a finger print:

“Many of the Keewatin rocks contain consid¬ erable carbonate calcite, dolomite, or a ferruginous carbonate, giving rise to crystalline limestone which is usually rusty-weathered.”

“That’s kind of evidence from the other side, ain’t it?” Peloo admitted.

“Yes, this ’s got the rusty weatherin’, an’ it’s crystallized all right. Seems to me that book tries to prove too much, Peloo; it gets mixed.”

Meekins applied the magnifying glass to the rock in dispute. “It might be a glass eye out of a dead mummy accordin’ to that book, but it carries free gold,” he declared. “I guess we’ll just tag this pebble gold-bearin’ quartz.”

“ ’Taint official enough,” Peloo objected deci¬ sively. “That’s what every trail musher says when he brings in a find, ‘gold-bearin’ quartz.’ ”

“I know what this four-flushin’ at book minin’ ’ll run into — that English’d cable me from London wantin’ to know if I ain’t got the names mixed. I’m like that bank clerk that come into Haileybury as a bartender, an’ the first cocktail he slung together for Smooth Pud Wilson won him a black eye.”

“You’ve took the wrong trail, Red; you’re just as far in right as the mahogany-desk engineers. Listen to this:

“Conglomerates and grey whacks of Huronian age occur sparingly on these properties, at times altered to schists, and thus making it difficult and impossible to distinguish them from Keewatin schists.

“See, Red, this feller owns up that it ain’t no cinch to address these rocks by their proper names every time.”

“That don’t help me get the name of this pock¬ faced cuss!” And Meekins banged a crystallized rock on the table.

“I got it!” Peloo read from the book:

“On the Fish Tail properties a vein has a width at one point of twenty-two feet and consists of ankerite which is cut by numerous strings of quartz-porphyry.

“Our vein is about twenty-two feet wide, so just soak down that piece as quartz-porphyry in anker¬ ite.”

“I was guessin’ when I started, an’ that book has got me talkin’ to myself,” Meekins growled as he pasted this name on the exhibit.

“Just to prove there ain’t no one goin’ to call you, listen to this:

“The Huronian in this area has been subjected to intense dynamic metamorphism, and it is difficult to distinguish Huronian schist or other highly meta¬ morphosed rocks of this age from the Keewatin, so the pre-Cambrian geologist may be excused if he makes a mistake.

“Now what do you think?” Trout queried.

“I ain’t thinkin’. You ain’t got a headache powder in your stockin’, have you, Peloo?” Then he roused and asked angrily: “Have I got to go to school to that cussed book all the time I’m up here ?”

A knock caused Trout to hurriedly shove the book in his canvas bag; then he opened the door. “You kind of jumped me; I been havin’ a little snooze while Meekins writ his notes,” Peloo said as St. John entered.

There was no more work that night, for St. John talked till they turned in.

The next day St. John, wandering about, saw some partridges. Out of curiosity he followed them down off the rock into a cedar-studded muskeg. A few twistings in and out and he was lost; like a flash it came to him that the direction in which the rock island lay was unknown.

His walk grew faster as he travelled and came to nothing familiar; it had increased to a run when a root caught his toe and he landed on the head in the black ooze.

Above him a rasping voice jeered: “Aw-w-w! He-he !”

Wiping the mud from his eyes, St. John saw a blue-grey bird, with head cocked to one side, wink a black, beady eye. “You’re right, my friend; I’m a bally ass to run,” he admitted.

He sat down, through his mind flashing memories of stories he had read of men being lost in the great forests. Suddenly the booming note of a voice singing came floating through the whispering leaves. St. John sprang to his feet. The voice sounded in the very opposite direction from that in which his friends should be. However, he hur¬ ried toward the music, and in five minutes came to a rock that rose out of the swamp just as did Felix’s.

The song had ceased, but as he came to the very edge of the big stone St. John heard a voice saying:

“Johnnie Bull pays me to look after his interests, Felix; that’s why I’m goin’ to sink a test pit on this vein. It don’t mean everything, but it’ll show whether this is just a grass-root flash in the pan or a body of ore. It’ll be worth more than fifty sheets of writin’ in a report.”

“Dat’ll take ’bout a week, an’ he don’ ask for no tes’ pit.”

“He gives me five hundred to do the best I know; that’s enough for me.”

“M’sieu Red” — Dubois’s voice had taken on an oily softness — “if M’sieu St. John buy de mine, I give you five hun’red, too.”

There was a minute’s silence, then Red’s voice, full of repression, answered: “If I had about seven Scotches in me, Felix, there’d be a bad, smashed-up breed lyin’ round here in a holy minute. You’d best get out or I might think I had ’em drinks in me.”

St. John, possessed of a mixed feeling of delight in Red’s honesty, and self-condemnation at playing the eavesdropper, made his way, by a circuit, to the top of the rock.

Meekins started in at his test pit with steel drills, lifting out the rock segments with the brown candles of dynamite. It took four days to sink a shaft of about ten feet, the gold showing richer at the bot¬ tom than the top. Each evening Trout and Meekins laboured over their guiding manual and the rock fragments, Meekins always a prey to mis¬ givings.

In the bottom of the test pit a small crevice had appeared in the rock. “I wonder if that opens up?” Peloo said reflectively. He took up a steel drill, inserted its chisel end in the crack, and, squatting down, said: “Hit this a few clouts, Red, same’s you was bustin’ into a keg of beer.”

Meekins swung the heavy sledge, and at the first drive the steel bar broke through so swiftly that it slipped through Peloo’s hands, its burred top nailing his thumb and fingers to the hard-faced rock. With a yell Peloo tore his hand loose, and, with fingers under his arm, pranced around in an Indian war dance.

It was too much for Meekins; he laughed.

“Yap, you dang red-headed fool!” yelled Peloo. “One’d think you was tryin’ to boost the hittin’ machine with a maul at a country fair, the way you hit that steel.”

“I can’t get that bar out again,” Meekins growled as he felt of the steel.

“It’ll stay there till hell freezes over before I’ll help you get it out,” Peloo asserted.

The result of a few more words was that the bar was left. And this incident later on had a big in¬ fluence on their lives.

The claim had been very practically examined; it was evident to all that it gave promise as a gold mine.

So they set their faces homeward.

Chapter III

On their way out St. John, Peloo, and Meekins were in one canoe, while Felix and the guides were in the other.

On the afternoon of the third day they were glid¬ ing swiftly downstream, having passed the height of land, when Peloo, whose canoe was well in the lead, made the mistake, where the stream forked, of taking the west branch. Turning a bend whose banks, covered with heavy spruce, hid the view down the river, the canoe suddenly shot ahead like a thoroughbred breaking from the barrier. There was the trembling, vibratory motion of terrific speed, the water racing with the placid velocity of a mill-race.

And the men sitting in that frail craft, looking appealingly at the abrupt-cut banks fifteen feet high, realized that they had no more control over their flight than if they had been suddenly dropped from Mars. Meekins, who had been sitting, half asleep, in the bow of the canoe, gently slipped a paddle over the racing craft’s side, possessed of a fugitive sense of protection against something of disaster.

Peloo’s great, bony hands grasped his paddle with a similar grip of defence; the sudden thrusting of him and those who were in his hands into an un¬ dreamed-of crisis brought to his forehead the dew of apprehension. “I kind of don’t know what’s doin’, mister,” he drawled, holding his voice to a slow measure of placid control, “but keep cool, an’ don’t get any kind of a move on till I say ‘Go!’ Me an’ Red could ’most shoot Niagara with a good canoe same’s this.”

St. John must have given a nervous laugh, for Peloo was saying in resentment: “It’s a joke on us, right enough, mister, but if there’s a jumpin’-off place straight ahead, I wouldn’t waste no breath laughin’ now.”

In fact, Peloo’s admonition was rendered abor¬ tive by fresh complications; there was neither time to laugh nor inclination to swear. A twist of the stream, still mad racing, and from its waters rose, like the dragon teeth of Jason’s perplexity, logs and stumps and tree roots. Sometimes a timely thrust of the paddle by Red’s strong arm and they missed, gliding by with arrowlike movement; sometimes from the Peterborough a hoarse moan rose as its side squeezed through the cushion of water and rasped a trunk.

St. John sat in the stillness with which men wait for unseen death. It could not go on, this escaping; the odds were against it; the fatal loss must come. In the nervous strain he found relief in counting the times they won against destruction; one, two, three — five times they had beaten out the seemingly impossible. No one spoke. Even the waters made little noise. It was like a river running at high speed through the holding banks of a brook; that was all. Six! The huge devil-fish arms of a pine stump, hiding behind a narrow point, had just missed the flying canoe; one long tentacle ripped St. John’s side, and from behind came the sharp crash of splintered wood. Then Peloo’s voice, in¬ tense, collected: “Slip me your paddle, Red; mine’s gone.”