Some he found asleep where they were posted to "card"[6] certain ledges. He beat them about the head with the flat of his hand, and they awoke and thanked him with wistful smiles that touched his heart. But brutal force had started the Enchanted drive, brutal force marked its rush, and it had to be brutal force that could keep it going. Brutal force took toll in the logs that were splintered by dynamite, but it was a toll that circumstances demanded. A man unwilling to take the chances that Tommy Eye took would have wasted thousands of feet instead of hundreds, and Wade knew it, and gulped words of gratitude when they met, hurrying on the shore. [Footnote 6: To disentangle and set free logs caught in the rocks.] Half-way to the Umcolcus, Lazy Tom Stream enters Blunder, and here Wade found Barnum Withee rushing in his logs and eager to accept an invitation to join drives. Withee was asking no questions. He did not need to. He understood. What had been done upstream was none of his business. He could declare that much when he got his drive down, and could defend himself from complicity. In the mean time he would take advantage of the situation. There were now one hundred and sixty herders of the wild flock, with Barnum Withee, one of the best men on the river, to take command of the rear. So Wade went to the front--to Castonia, sweeping down the swollen Umcolcus in one of Withee's bateaux with four men at the oars. He had played violence against violence in the big game. It was natural to suppose that Pulaski Britt by this time had his fists clinched ready to retaliate. On either side of his bateau as he hurried to Castonia the logs ran free. But they were all his own logs, this advance-guard, marked with the double diamond and cross. Had Rodburd Ide done his part, and were they being held at Castonia? He found the booms set again, Rodburd Ide in command at the sorting-gap, and various members of the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" sitting along the shore with guns across their knees. Every able-bodied man in Castonia was on the booms with a pick-pole, and already the double-diamond logs were swirling and herding in the logan. "It's done, and they'll have us into court, but, by ----, we'll have some ready money to fight 'em with!" screamed the little man, grasping Wade's hand as the bateau swung broadside to the sorting-gap platform. And when he had heard the story of "Tommy Thunder, outlaw," that his partner hurriedly related, his mouth parted in a grin, even though his forehead puckered with apprehension. "But will it let us out, Wade?" he asked. "The man took it on himself out of his grudge against Britt. But will it let us out?"