Arrived at the bank of the river, Bob swung his burden to the ground, knelt by it, and lit a match.  The rivermen, gathering close, saw that the bundle around the end of the sapling consisted of a dozen rolls of giant powder from which dangled a short fuse.  Bob touched his match to the split outer end of the fuse.  It spluttered viciously.  He arose with great deliberation, picked up his strange weapon, and advanced out over the logs.

In the meantime the opposing army had gathered about the disputed clump of piles, to the full strength of its three shotguns and the single rifle.  Bob paid absolutely no attention to them.  When within a short distance he stopped and, quite oblivious to warnings and threats from the army, set himself to watching painstakingly the sputtering progress of the fire up the fuse, exactly as a small boy watches his giant cracker which he hopes to explode in mid-air.  At what he considered the proper moment he straightened his powerful young body, and cast the sapling from him, javelin-wise.

“Scat!” he shouted, and scrambled madly for cover.

The army decamped in haste.  Of its armament it lost near fifty per cent., for one shotgun and the rifle remained where they had fallen.  Like Abou Ben Adam, Murdock led all the rest.

Now Bob had hurled his weapon as hard as he knew how, and had scampered for safety without looking to see where it had fallen.  As a matter of fact, by one of those very lucky accidents, that often attend a star in the ascendent, the sapling dove head on into a cavern in the jam above the clump of piles.  The detonation of the twelve full sticks of giant powder was terrific.  Half the river leaped into the air in a beautiful column of water and spray that seemed to hang motionless for appreciable moments.  Dark fragments of timbers were hurled in all directions.  When the row had died the clump of piles was seen to have disappeared.  Bob’s chance shot had actually cleared the river!

The rivermen glanced at each other amazedly.

“Did you mean to place that charge, bub?” one asked.

Bob was too good a field general not to welcome the gifts of chance.

“Certainly,” he snapped.  “Now get out on that river, every mother’s son of you.  Get that drive going and keep it going.  I’ve cleared the river for you; and if you’d any one of you had the nerve of my poor old fat sub-centre, you’d have done it for yourselves.  Get busy!  Hop!”

The men jumped for their peavies.  Bob raged up and down the bank.  For the moment he had forgotten the husk of the situation, and saw it only in essential.  Here was a squad to lick into shape, to fashion into a team.  It mattered little that they wore spikes in their boots instead of cleats; that they sported little felt hats instead of head guards.  The principle was the same.  The team had gone to pieces in the face of a crisis; discipline was relaxed; grumblers were getting noisy.  Bob plunged joyously head