"That's what!" Mr. Kyle was receiving the plaudits and encouragement of all his friends who enjoyed a joke, and was certain in his mind that he had that bashful stutterer sized up as a quitter. Flagg folded his arms and narrowed his eyes--his was the air of one who was allowing fate to deal with a fool who tempted it. The candidate did not hurry matters. He spat meditatively into first one fist and then into the other. He grasped the goad in both hands. He looked calculatingly at Mr. Kyle, who was on his hands and knees, and was cocking an arch and provocative look upward, approving the grins of the men near him. When the teamster did snap into action his manner indicated that he knew how to handle balky oxen. First he cracked Mr. Kyle smartly over the bridge of the nose. "Wo haw up!" was a command which Kyle tried to obey in a flame of ire, but a swifter and more violent blow across the nose sent him back on his heels, his eyes shut in his agony. "Gee up into the yoke, you crumpled-horn hyampus!" The teamster welted the goad across Kyle's haunches and further encouraged the putative ox by a thrust of a full inch of the brad. When the boss came onto his feet with a berserker howl of fury and started to attack, the ox expert yelled, "Dat rat ye, don't ye try to hook your horns into me!" Then he flailed the stick once more across Kyle's nose with a force that knocked the boss flat on his back. Echford Flagg stepped forward and stood between the two men when Kyle struggled to his feet and started toward the teamster with the mania of blood lust in his red eyes. The master put forth a hand and thrust back the raging mate. Flagg said something, but for a time he could not be heard above the tempest of howling laughter. It was riotous abandonment to mirth. Men hung helplessly to other men or flapped their hands and staggered about, choking with their merriment. The savageness of the punishment administered to the boastful Kyle might have shocked persons with squeamish dispositions; it was wildly humorous in the estimation of those men o' the forest. They were used to having their jokes served raw. The roar that fairly put into the background the riot of the falling waters of the Noda was what all the region recognized as the ruination of a man's authority in the north country; it was the Big Laugh. Flagg, when he could make himself heard by his boss, holding Kyle in his mighty grip, made mention of the Big Laugh, too. "Kyle, you've got it at last by your damn folly. You're licked forever in these parts. I warned you. You went ahead against my word to you. You're no good to me after this." He yanked the list of names from Kyle's jacket pocket. "Let me loose! I'm going to kill that----"