WHEN TITANS DRIVE
CHAPTER I. STRUCK IN THE NIGHT
With muscles tense and legs spread wide apart, Bob Bainbridge found himselfcrouching in the middle of the office shanty. It was yet dark, and in his earsstill seemed to sound the dull, rumbling detonation which had made him leap fromthe bunk before he was even half awake. For a second the stillness was absolute.Then from the other side of the small room came a hoarse, shaking whisper:
Bobby! What the dickens was that?
The young man drew a long breath, and an instant later the flame of a matchsplit the darkness.
Don’t know, John,
he answered, hastily lighting a candle. It sounded a lotlike—dynamite!
He set the candle down on a rough table, and, reaching for one high, spikedshoe, began swiftly to drag it on. From the bunk across the room came a stifledgasp of dismay, and a short, stout, middle-aged man with a heavy, square faceand deep-set blue eyes rolled forth into the uncertain, wavering light, and satfor an instant staring at his companion.
Dynamite!
he repeated, in a tone of consternation. You don’t meanto say——
I don’t mean to say anything,
was the crisp reply, as Bainbridge tied theleather lacings with a jerk, and reached for the other shoe. I only know itsounded like dynamite to me, and people don’t usually set that off at three inthe morning—for fun.
John Tweedy delayed no longer. With an agility surprising in one so bulky, hefairly flung himself at the pile of outer garments lying on a near-by box, andwhen Bainbridge, a couple of minutes later, jerked open the door to plunge forthinto the night, the stout man was close at his heels.
Quickly as they had acted, there were others equally swift. The windows ofthe big bunk house across the clearing glowed faintly, and they had no more thanreached the open before the door was flung wide to eject a crowd of men fullydressed in the garb of the lumber country. They were headed by Griggs, foremanof the drive. Tall, lean, with a tanned, impassive countenance which betrayednothing, he glanced for a second toward the approaching pair, and then fell intostep with Bainbridge.
Well?
queried the latter crisply. What is it, Harvey? The dam?
The foreman’s eyes narrowed, and, under the drooping lids, seemed to gleamdully.
I don’t know what else,
he said. Listen!
For a second Bainbridge stood still, head thrust slightly forward in thedirection of his foreman’s pointing finger. Behind him was the thud and clatterof men still pouring from the bunk house, mingled with the bustle of thosealready in the open, chafing at the delay, and impatient to reach the scene ofaction. The wind was blowing half a gale from the north, but above it all couldbe heard—faintly, intermittently—the distant, ominous roar of rushingwater.
It brought Bob’s teeth together with a click, but not in time to cut off asavage exclamation. Then he turned and started down the slope toward the south,followed closely by the entire crowd.
The hillside was dotted thick with stumps and great piles of tops andslashings.
The resinous, green, unwithered masses of pine branches, as well asthe whiteness of stump ends and scattered chips, showed the cutting to have beenlately done. It had, in fact, been completed scarcely a month before; the lastload of timber had been sent down the short, narrow