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Tatem declared that he had acted wholly under the orders of Hiram Dusenbery, of the Dusenbery Lumber Company; that it was his jacks who had turned the skidway loose on the Overland camp, and that it was Tatem himself, acting under orders, who had dynamited the big pine and tumbled it over on the Overlanders.
They changed their manner to one of acquiescence, but thought of her as a child just the same. After dinner they all went out to see the crew working. It was the biggest crew anywhere in the neighborhood, and they sat a long while and watched the men at work. Ridgeley got out and hitched the team to a tree, and took Field up to the skidway. Mrs. Field remained in the sleigh, however.
After going a few blocks, the detective hailed a hack, and pushing his prisoner before him, entered and ordered the driver to make all speed for the Union depot. "What does this mean?" demanded the prisoner, with assumed indignation. "It means that you will take a trip South for your health, my friend." "To St. Louis?" "You have guessed it, Skidway."
"What makes you think that the skidway was tampered with?" questioned Anne, after the exclamations following Tom's startling assertion had subsided. "Because the evidence is there. Even a novice could read the signs left there. In spots, I found the imprints of rubber boots. I also found four canthooks, used for rolling logs."
"You brute!" she cried, "what right had you? Why did you strike him?" The man regarded her gravely, lifting his cap politely as if answering a most commonplace question. "Because," he replied, "I wanted to," and, with a curt bow, stepped into the timber and disappeared, leaving her alone in the skidway with the bloody, unconscious form in the snow.
I'd like to catch one of my foremen out on the works some time I wouldn't know whether to fire him or double his wages!" Sheridan mouthed his cigar, and the two turned into a skidway. Appleton smiled. He raised a finger and touched his eyelid. "It's the eye," he said. "Look in a man's eye, Ross. I don't give a damn what a man's record is what he's done or what he hasn't done.
A saw log containing six hundred board feet weighs about one ton. This is the weight of an ordinary iron safe. When one of them rolls or falls from even a moderate height, its force is irresistible. But when twenty or thirty cascade down the bold front of a skidway, carrying a man or so with them, the affair becomes a catastrophe.
The day following he culled another of the same sort on still another skidway. He examined it closely, then sought the Rough Red. "It is useless, Jimmy Bourke," said he, "to be hauling of the same poor log from skidway to skidway. You can shift her to every travoy trail in th' Crother tract, but it will do ye little good.
Then, when the last pencil-mark had been made, and the tablets had been closed with a snap of finality, the Rough Red stepped forward. "Ye have finished with this skidway?" asked the foreman in soft cat-tones. "I have," answered FitzPatrick, briefly. "Yo' have forgot to scale one stick." "No." "There is a stick still not marked." "I culled it." "Why?" "It was not sawed straight."
Straightening to his full height after uttering the three terrible words, Martin Skidway snatched a heavy iron bolt from the ground, that had lain long beside the track, and raised it above the head of helpless Dyke Darrel. "Martin Skidway, hold!" The words of the detective came forth in a thrilling cry. An instant the would be assassin stayed his hand. "You agree to my terms?" "No; but "
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