“Sure!  But he’s all right.”

“They say—­there’s danger.”

“Happy Tom’s” round visage puckered into a doubtful smile.  “Oh, he’ll take care of himself.”

Mellen turned to the girl and said briefly: 

“There’s no danger whatever.”

But Eliza’s fear was not to be so easily quieted.

“Then why did he go out alone?  What are you men doing here?”

“It’s his orders,” Tom told her.

Mellen was staring at the jam below, over which the Salmon was hurling a flood of ice and foaming waters.  The stream was swelling and rising steadily; already it had nearly reached the level of the timberline on the left bank; the blockade was extending up-stream almost to the bridge itself.  Mellen said something to Parker, who shook his head silently.

Dan Appleton shouldered his way out of the crowd, with Natalie at his heels.  She had dressed herself in haste:  her hair was loose, her jacket was buttoned awry; on one foot was a shoe, on the other a bedroom slipper muddy and sodden.  Her dark eyes were big with excitement.

“Why don’t you make Murray come in?” Dan demanded sharply.

“He won’t do it,” muttered Slater.

“The jam is growing.  Nobody knows what’ll happen if it holds much longer.  If the bridge should go—­”

Mellen whirled, crying savagely:  “It won’t go!  All hell couldn’t take it out.”

From the ranks of the workmen came a bellow of triumph, as an unusually heavy ice-floe was swept against the breakers and rent asunder.  The tumult of the imprisoned waters below was growing louder every moment:  across the lake came a stentorian rumble as a huge mass was loosened from the front of Garfield.  The channel of the Salmon where the onlookers stood was a heaving, churning caldron over which the slim bridge flung itself defiantly.

Eliza plucked at her brother’s sleeve imploringly, and he saw her for the first time.

“Hello, Sis,” he cried.  “How did you get here?”

“Is he in—­danger, Danny?”

“Yes—­no!  Mellen says it’s all right, so it must be, but—­that dam—­”

At that moment Natalie began to sob hysterically, and Dan turned his attention to her.

But his sister was not of the hysterical kind.  Seizing Tom Slater by the arm, she tried to shake him, demanding fiercely: 

“Suppose the jam doesn’t give way!  What will happen?” “Happy Tom” stared at her uncomprehendingly.  Her voice was shrill and insistent.  “Suppose the water rises higher.  Won’t the ice sweep down on the bridge itself?  Won’t it wreck everything if it goes out suddenly?  Tell me—­”

“It can’t hold.  Mellen says so.”  Slater, like the others, found it impossible to keep his eyes from the river where those immeasurable forces were at play; then in his peculiar irascible manner he complained:  “I told ’em we was crazy to try this.  It ain’t a white man’s country; it ain’t a safe place for a bridge.  There’s just one God-awful thing after another—­” He broke into a shout, for Eliza had slipped past him and was speeding like a shadow out across the irregularly spaced ties upon which the bridge track was laid.