glancing from the water in a swift slit in the reflecting surface.

At the report the broncho broke into a gallop. The man and the woman swung swiftly toward the grade, and the next instant the woman had disappeared—somewhere; neither Torrance nor Tressa knew where. The man straightened and shaded his eyes toward them.

Tressa was struggling with her father. He must not shoot again. The man watched. Presently he slowly raised his rifle.

The thud of the bullet in the shack not two feet from Torrance's shoulder preceded the sound of the explosion. The rifle did not drop. A second tiny fleck of smoke, and a bullet sank into the logs only two feet on the other side of the doorway. Torrance heaved Tressa back within the shack. And as he came about, a third bullet from the mysterious stranger dug into the log not more than a foot above his head.

Torrance did not move—he scarcely even thought at that moment. The marksman above the rapids lowered his rifle and turned carelessly away. The woman and the dog joined him. The horses were lost in the trees.

The big contractor twisted himself from bullet hole to bullet hole, and one big hand pushed wonderingly through his heavy hair.

"It sure ain't me he wants," he muttered.

CHAPTER IV

IGNACE KOPPOWSKI APPEARS

The rifle fire, disturbing to Torrance, created a panic in the camp below. Men who used weapons on each other with the worst intent were the first to appreciate their menace. True, they seldom resorted to firearms, for the Pole, and the Russian, and the Hungarian, and the Italian and their kind on construction consider the knife more suited to their particular case, as being safer and more satisfying. But for a gun they have a proper respect.

Some of the groups of gamblers on the river bottom saw the raft while yet Torrance was wrapped in the evening picture, watching at first with the stupidity of their class, then with equally characteristic suspicion. From group to group the strange spectacle passed without spoken word; and some whose spotted lives had carried them through varied scenes realised the threat of the rapids. Here and there one, more sensitive to the struggle, rose to his feet in unconscious sympathy. The stable foreman, recognising the horses, stumbled away to where his charges were housed for the night. But for the most part these slow-witted men without a quiver saw death creeping on the raft. Until the horses leaped ashore each knew to a cent his position in the interrupted games.

But the rifle shot whipping out from the boss's shack up beside the grade electrified them. As if worked by a common spring, they rushed for the camp, heavy footed and panicky, drawing hidden weapons from shirt or trousers or bootleg to repel the danger they did not understand.

By the time the stranger across the river had replied twice only one face was visible about the camp.

From a shack part way up the bank toward the trestle a small man had bounded at the first report. In his right hand was a hairbrush, and a pair of mauve suspenders hung from his hips. Anxious but angry, he searched the camp with those firm eyes.

Adrian Conrad, Torrance's foreman, Tressa's lover—the latter first in sequence of time as in everything else—knew these men and hated them with an intensity born of enforced association. Their unorthodox but definitive methods of settling the smallest dispute were familiar to him by experience. Indeed, on his small wiry frame were sundry scars of knives, whose customarily decisive operations he had thus far escaped by an arrogance of manner and a promptness of action that disconcerted a bohunk's aim and riddled his nerve.

About the camp he saw only the panic of getting to cover. As he wondered, he caught the movement of the lifting rifle across the river. Ahead of the bullet his eye reached the shack beside the trestle, and Torrance's quick turn pointed out its course. Conrad, who kept no rifle at his shack, had to be satisfied with watching, mechanically completing his toilet where he stood. Mauve suspenders jerked to his shoulders—brush slashing across his hair—one hand to test the poise of his tie—Conrad was preparing for eventualities.

He marvelled at his own lack of concern. He could see Tressa's struggle with her father, and he suspected its cause. Also he had sufficient faith in her to feel that she was right. The stranger puzzled him. In the way he handled a rifle was the carelessness of complete confidence. Even before the third bullet directed Torrance's amazed eyes upward, Conrad knew that Tressa and her father were in no danger.

It was a fleeting glimpse of the horses disappearing among the trees that galvanised him into action. Running back into the shack, he satisfied himself with a hasty glance in the mirror, stuck a jaunty stiff hat askew on his head, and sped away up the path his feet had worn through the months straight to Tressa's door.

Torrance was still examining the bullet marks when Conrad dropped over the grade.

"There!" He placed a big finger tip importantly over one hole. "And there—and there!" He turned to Conrad with such a look of awe that the latter laughed.

"All you need care," Conrad said, digging a finger into Torrance's chest, "is that he didn't wish to put it there."

The contractor scratched his head.

"That fellow sure can shoot . . . but it ain't half as queer as the way he didn't want to."

Tressa, hearing Conrad's voice, tripped to the door, her eyes aglow with a shy eagerness.

"Evening, Tressa!" The foreman swept off his hat. "Fine evening for rifle practice."

"I know it don't matter about me," grunted Torrance, "but two feet at a range of twelve hundred yards is cutting it fine for Tressa."

But Conrad only smiled his unconcern.

"At least you might be interested in the horses," Torrance grumbled.
"Another bunch gone. That's your business."

"So that's the cuss who's been robbing us."

"Such a clever lad, he is!" sneered Torrance. "You could see through a pail with the bottom kicked out of it. He'll keep on robbing us, for all you're doing to stop him. Right before our eyes he gets away with it. What do you think I pay you a hundred a month for?"

"Because you can't get any one else to do half the work half as well at twice the price," grinned the foreman.

Torrance growled into his moustache. "Four more gone, that is. And I bet you stopped to brush your hat."

"I didn't hurry. Why should I? That chap knew he was safe. He's miles away now, and by the time we could get across the river after him he'd be in the next Province. He knows the prairie better than we do grade. We'd have about as much chance of getting him as you had of hitting him. Besides, we're track builders, not track finders. Your measly hundred a month don't half pay for my real job. Get the Police if you want to keep the excitement up."

"A hundred a month—and every evening in my shack," grumbled Torrance.
"I know lots of better men would think it good pay."

"It's every evening in your shack," gibed Conrad, "or you'd have to come and live with Tressa and me."

"Oh?" questioned Tressa.

"Sure!" confidently.

"If you two are going to quarrel over me, I'll go back East."

"Dad-in-law," pleaded Conrad, "don't you think we could stage a good rough-and-tumble here and now? I've been two years