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"Let me up!" he begged. For answer Bruce shoved him closer to the dynamo. He fought with fresh desperation. "Don't do that, Burt! My God Don't do that!" "Then talk talk! She's going fast. You've got to tell the truth before she stops! Why did you burn out this plant?" Smaltz would not answer. Bruce lifted him bodily from the floor.
An over-sanguine pack-rat tried to scramble up the tar-paper covering on the outside and squeaked as he fell back with a thud, but the face of neither man relaxed. Smaltz took the full limit of the time. He saw Bruce's fingers work, then clinch. Suddenly he grinned a sheepish, unresentful grin. "I guess you're the best man," He slouched to the bench and sat down.
Bruce read it carefully and handed it to Banule: "Read this and witness it." Banule did as he was told, for once, apparently, too dumfounded for comment. "Now copy it," said Bruce, and Smaltz obeyed. When this was done, signed and witnessed Smaltz looked up inquiringly his expression said "What next?" Bruce stepped to the double doors and slid the bolt. "There's your trail now hit it!"
With a gesture Bruce stopped his belligerent advance. "Try the next one, Jennings," he said quietly. Once more the slack was taken up and the wire grew taut so taut it would have twanged like a fiddle-string if it had been struck. Jennings did not give Smaltz the sign to stop even when the cross-arm cracked. Without a word of protest Bruce watched the stout four-by-five splinter and drop off.
Porcupine Jim declared that the place was "hoodooed" and as evidence enumerated the many accidents and delays. Bruce himself wondered if the malignant spirit of Slim was lingering on the river to harry him as he had in life. Smaltz was now in the power-house doing at last the specific work for which he had been hired. To all Bruce's questions, he replied that the machinery there was "doing fine."
Smaltz looked startled scared. It was Toy, his skin a waxy yellow and his oblique eyes blazing with excitement and rage. "I savvy you, Smaltz! I savvy you!" His voice was a shrill squawk. "I savvy you!" His fingers with their long, sharp nails were opening and shutting like claws. Smaltz knew that he had seen him from the hill and, watching, had understood.
"Surest thing you know," Smaltz answered in the fresh tone that rasped Bruce. "An' much obliged. Anything to git a chanst to shoot them rapids. I'd do it if I wasn't gittin' nothin' out of it just for the fun of it." "It won't look like fun to me with all I'll have at stake," said Bruce soberly. "Aw don't worry we kin cut her."
The peculiar emphasis did not escape Bruce and he was still thinking of the look he had caught on Smaltz's face as he asked Banule: "Is this mica right? Is it the kind you need?" Smaltz looked at Banule from the corner of his eye. "'Taint exactly what I ought to have," Banule responded cheerfully. "I forgot to specify when I ordered, but I guess I can make it do it's good enough."
Smaltz was sitting astride the latter's chest. There were epithets and recriminations, accusations, counter-charges, oaths. The Swede was crying and a little stream of red was trickling toward his ear.
He was still writing when Banule came, breathing hard and still dripping from his frigid swim. He stopped short and his jaw dropped at seeing Smaltz. He was obviously disappointed at finding him alive. Smaltz handed Bruce the paper when he had finished and signed his name. Neither the writing or composition was that of an illiterate man.
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