"I yelled my head off! You must be deaf." "You saw me coming! Don't say you didn't. Fortunately I wasn't hurt." In a tone of command he added, "You'll have to stop blasting until I go through with my party." "Sorry! Every day counts with us." Appleton grinned. "You know how it is--short season, and all that." "Come, come! Don't be an idiot. I have no time to waste," "Then you'll have to go around," said Dan. "This isn't a public road, you know." Gordon had come to argue, to pacify, to gain his ends by lying, if necessary, but this impudent jackanapes infuriated him. His plans had gone smoothly so far, and the unexpected threat of resistance momentarily provoked him beyond restraint. "You scoundrel," he cried. "You'd have blown me into the river if you could. But I'll go through this canon--" "Go as far and as fast as you like," Dan interrupted with equal heat, "only take your own chances, and have a net spread at the lower end of the rapids to catch the remains." They eyed each other angrily; then Gordon said, more quietly: "This is ridiculous. You can't stop me." "Maybe I can't and maybe I can, I'm under orders to rush this work and I don't intend to knock off to please you. I've planted shots at various places along our right-of-way and I'll set 'em off when it suits me. If you're so anxious to go up-river, why don't you cross over to the moraine? There's a much better trail on that side. You'll find better walking a few miles farther up, and you'll run no danger of being hurt." "I intend to run a survey along this hillside." "There isn't room; we beat you to it." "The law provides--" "Law? Jove! I'd forgotten there is such a thing. Why don't you go to law and settle the question that way? We'll have our track laid by the time you get action, and I'm sure Mr. O'Neil wouldn't place any obstacles in the way of your free passage back and forth. He's awfully obliging about such things." Gordon ground his fine, white, even teeth. "Don't you understand that I'm entitled to a right-of-way through here under the law of common user?" he asked, with what patience he could command. "If you're trying to get a legal opinion on the matter why don't you see a lawyer? I'm not a lawyer, neither am I a public speaker nor a piano-tuner, nor anything like that--I'm an engineer." "Don't get funny. I can't send my men in here if you continue blasting." "So it seems to me, but you appear to be hell bent on trying it." Dan was enjoying himself and he deliberately added to the other's anger by inquiring, as if in the blinding light of a new idea: "Why don't you bridge over and go up the other side?" He pointed to the forbidding, broken country which faced them across the rapids. Gordon snorted. "How long do you intend to maintain this preposterous attitude?" he asked. "As long as the powder lasts--and there's a good deal of it." The promoter chewed his lip for a moment in perplexity, then said with a geniality he was far from feeling: