Creed was uneasy. Not since the evening the greener had walked into Hod Burrage's store at the very moment when he, Creed, was recounting to the interested listeners the circumstances attending his demise, had he been entirely free from a haunting, nameless fear. True, as he told Blood River Jack, he had afterward seen with his own eyes, the greener go down under the rushing jam where no man could possibly go down and live. But, nevertheless, deep in his heart was the _terror_--nameless, unreasoning, haunting,--that clung to him night and day. So that a hundred times a day, alone in the timber, he would start and cast quick, jerky glances over his shoulder and jump, white-faced and trembling, at the snapping of a twig. As the days went by the nameless terror grew, dogging his footsteps, phantomlike by day, and haunting him at night, as he lay shaking in his bunk in the double-locked little office. With the single exception of Blood River Jack, he had seen no human being since the drive, and his frenzied desire for companionship would have been pitiful, had it been less craven. He slept fitfully with his rifle loaded and often cocked in his bunk beside him, while during the day it was never out of reach of his hand. In his daily excursions to the bird's-eye rollway he never took the same route twice, but skulked, peering fearfully about in the underbrush, avoiding even the game trails. And always he detoured widely the place where he had seen the greener disappear beneath the muddy, log-ridden waters. And so it was that upon this particular morning Creed sat close against the pyramid of logs--waiting. At a sound from the river he jerked his rifle into readiness for immediate action and sat nervously alert, his thumb twitching on the hammer. Approaching down-stream came a canoe. Creed leaped to his feet with a maudlin grin of relief as he recognized the three occupants. Apparently they had not seen him, and he stepped to the bank fearful lest they pass. "Hey! You, Jack!" he called, waving his cap. The bow-man ceased paddling and gazed shoreward in evident surprise; the man on the bank was motioning them in with wide sweeps of the arm. The half-breed called a few hasty words over his shoulder and the canoe shot toward shore. "Where y' goin'?" asked Creed, as the three stepped onto the bank. Blood River Jack replied with an indefinite sweep of his arm to the southward. "Well, y' ain't in no hurry. Never seen a Injun yet cudn't stop long 'nough to take a drink o' licker. Har, har, har!" He laughed foolishly, with an exaggerated wink toward the old Indian. "How 'bout it, Wabishke; leetle fire-water make yer belt fit better? 'Tain't a goin' to cost y' nawthin'." The Indian grinned and grunted acquiescence, and Creed inserted his arm between two logs and withdrew a squat, black bottle.