When the night came down, after they had cleaned their pannikins of food, steaming hot, from the cook's kettles, while they smoked around the fire which drove away the evening chill, Kyle paced to and fro among the groups, declaiming, detracting, and urging. He knew that he was prevailing, though slowly. Woodsmen in shifting their allegiance are not swayed by sudden impulse. His voice rang among the trees in the silence of the evening. "Latisan is a sneak--Latisan is a runaway! Eck Flagg is next to a dead man!" Over and over he made those declarations, battering discouragement into their slow comprehension in order to win them to the Comas company. "And Latisan has thrown down real men for the sake of a girl! Do you want to get the Big Laugh when you show yourselves downriver?" Voyagers who came from the southward, leaving their canoes below the falls, moved silently, after the fashion of the Tarratines. They halted on a shadowed slope within the range of Kyle's raucous voice, and Lida stepped forward to listen. The red flames lighted a circle among the trees, and she beheld the seated groups and saw the swaggering malcontent who paced to and fro. "I'm with the Three C's now, first, last, and all the time! Their money is waiting for you, men. Come, with the real folks, I tell you!" And again, with even more fantastic trimmings, he set forth the story of Latisan's flight with a girl who had seduced him from his duty in the north. Lida snatched the Flagg cant dog from the hands of Felix; he had been the bearer of her scepter. He blinked when he looked at her. The far-flung light of the camp fire, reflected in her eyes, had set veritable torches there. Her lips were apart and her white teeth were clenched and her face was ridged with resolution. There was no mistaking the intention which righteous anger had stirred in her, but when she started down the slope Felix leaped and ventured to restrain her with a touch on her arm. "Is it well to let the Comas know that you are here or what you are going to do? Pardon, mam'selle, but think!" "The lies! The lies!" "Yes, mam'selle, but you can tell them the truth when he is not there to hear." "But now he is there, and I cannot go to the men." "In a little while you may go; he will not be there. And if he does not know what is going on up here, after his back is turned, maybe we shall have day after day to push our logs in ahead of all the others," explained the riverman. "They will be days worth much." Then with the imagery of his race he added, "Those days will be gold beads on our rosary, mam'selle!" He smiled into her eyes, from which the fires were departing. "Please wait here with the the others." He whispered to several of the Indians; when he sauntered down the slope the four summoned Tarratines stole to right and left, masking themselves in the shadows, flanking the champion who was going alone.