"Don't you make any mistake this time, Mern! I want a dozen or fifteen men--gunmen. Can you furnish 'em?" "Sure thing! Within an hour." "I have promised results to my folks this season. I've got to deliver. My job depends on it, after all the talk I've made at headquarters." "Will your headquarters back up my operatives?" "I'll do that! I'm playing this game on my own hook. There'll be no fight. The bluff will be enough, if I have the men. And if I have to--well, there's a fight between lumberjacks every season on that river, and there's a big wall of woods between Skulltree dam and New York, Mern! I'll take my chances up behind that wall. Get the men for me." "When are you leaving?" "One o'clock this afternoon--Grand Central." "I'll deliver the men to you there." Craig stamped away across the glass-littered floor and disappeared. "Well," averred the chief when Latisan came out from behind the partition, "it looks as if somebody had been attending to your job for you, son! Also looks as if there might be considerable more doing right away!" "So that's more of your devilish business, is it, sending gunmen to fight honest workers?" demanded the drive master, with venom. "Business is still business with me in spite of the looks of this office," returned Mern, unruffled. "Latisan, you can't beef about not getting a square deal--and I've put you in the way of getting a tip. It looks to me----" "Just the same as it looks to me!" cried the young man. "We're fully agreed as to all the looks! Good day!" He stood very straight and shot Mern through with a stare from hard gray eyes. There was no longer any of the faltering uncertainty that he had displayed. Grim determination radiated from him. "Good day to you, also!" Mern called after Latisan when he strode toward the door, then adding suggestively. "If any mail happens to come here for you, I'm to forward it along to that Skulltree dam, so I take it!" The irony did not provoke any retort from the drive master. He went away with a rush, but his demeanor showed that he was not running away from anything or anybody. He was hastening toward something. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Latisan was on that one o'clock train when it left Grand Central station. From the gallery of the concourse he had seen Craig march to the gate and give a packet into the hands of one of a group of men waiting there. Then Craig had gone on quickly with the air of a cautious performer who did not care to be identified with the persons for whom he had provided transportation. The drive master rode in a coach and felt safe from detection; he guessed that Craig would hide his battered face in the privacy of a drawing room. Latisan had trailed the operatives and saw them enter the smoking car.