"How soon can you replace those booms, Mr. Ide?" Wade edged the words through his teeth, as a man stricken with lockjaw might have spoken. And without waiting for reply, he hurried on. "Put 'em in, Mr. Ide, because you're going to need 'em. And put along this shore all the men in Castonia who can handle guns. Winchesters and dynamite, with 'Hell on law' for a battle-cry! That's what he's given us. It's good enough for me. Will you put those booms in, Mr. Ide?" "I'll put 'em in, and I'll protect 'em after they're put in," declared the little man, stoutly. The fighting spirit was in him again. They looked at each other a moment, and turned and hurried back towards the settlement. Neither man seemed to feel that words could help that situation nor emphasize determination. Prophet Eli was in front of Ide's store with his little white stallion when the two arrived there. The old man surveyed Wade shrewdly when he hastened to Nina Ide, who was waiting for a word with him. "Boy! boy!" whispered the girl, clasping his tanned hand in both of hers, "I don't like to see your eyes shine so! They're hard. But I know how to soften them. I have a letter for you from the one woman of all the world. Come with me and get it." "Keep it for me," he muttered--"keep it until I come for it. I'm not fit to touch it now. It might make a decent man of me, and--and--I don't want to be--not just yet, Miss Nina." He whirled away, climbed upon his jumper, and lashed his horse back along the trail towards Enchanted. The words of that half-jeering ditty of Prophet Eli's followed him, as they had on that memorable first day at Castonia, and grotesque as the lilt was, it seemed to express the young man's flaming resolution: "Oh, the little brown bull came down from the mountains, Shang, ro-ango, whango-whey! And as he was feelin' salutatious, Chased old Pratt a mile, by gracious, Licked old Shep and two dog Towsers, Then marched back home with old Pratt's trousers." CHAPTER XXVIII "'TWAS DONE BY TOMMY THUNDER" "Twenty a month for daring death--or fighting from dawn to dark-- Twenty and grub and a place to sleep in God's great public park. We roofless go, with the cook's bateau to follow our hungry crew-- A billion of spruce and hell turned loose when the Allegash drive goes through." --Ballad of the Drive. Wade's poor beast was staggering when at last he topped the horseback overlooking Enchanted valley. He himself plodded behind the jumper, clinging to it, walking to keep awake. He had started in the dusk, he had been nearly twenty-four hours on the road from Castonia, and it was growing dusk again. He was too utterly weary to be surprised when Tommy Eye came hurrying down from a knoll that commanded a long view of the tote road. The light of a little camp-fire glowed on the knoll, and he saw that a horse was tethered there.