"But I'm coming back! I won't sneak up on you. That isn't my style of fighting. You'll hear me on the way. I'll be coming down almighty hard on my heels. Remember that, Craig!" Lida was at his side when he marched away up the shore toward the Flagg camp at the deadwater, and his men trailed him, mumbling their comments on the situation and wondering by what sort of miracle he would be able to prevail over armed gangsters who were paid to kill. "I'm going to ask you all to excuse me for playing a lone hand from now on, boys," said the drive master, standing in front of them when they were gathered at the camping place. "If they weren't working a dirty trick with their guns, I'd have you along with me just as I intended in the past. But you have had your fun while I've been making a fool of myself! Give me my chance now!" He bowed to Lida and walked up the shore alone. No one stayed him. The girl locked together her trembling fingers, straining her eyes till he disappeared. He knew the resources and methods of the drive. Soon he came upon a bateau pulled high on the river bank. There were boxes in the bateau, covered by a tarpaulin whose stripings of red signaled danger. He found a sack in the craft. He pried open one of the boxes and out of the sawdust in which they were packed he drew brown cylinders and tucked them carefully into the sack. The cylinders were sticks of dynamite. The sack was capacious and he stuffed it full. The bag sagged heavily with the weight of the load when he swung it over his shoulder and started up the bank, away from the river. When Latisan walked away from Lida the mist again had lent its illusion, and he seemed to become of heroic size before the gray screen hid him from her sight. Vittum tried pathetically to relieve the stress of the silence. "The last peek at him made him look big enough to do 'most anything he sets out to do." "Yes! But how can he fight them all single-handed?" She was pale and trembling. "If I'm any judge, by the direction he took just now he has gone up and tapped our stock of canned thunder, miss. And if I ain't mistook about his notions, he is going to sound just about as big as he looked when we got that last peek!" The rivermen did not lounge on the ground, as they usually did when they were resting. They stood, tensely waiting for what Latisan's manner of resolution had promised. Lida asked no more questions; she was unable to control her tones. She had been given a hint of Ward's intentions by what the old man had said about the "canned thunder." She did not dare to be informed as to the probable details of those intentions; to know fully the nature of the risk he was running would have made the agony of her apprehensiveness unendurable.