But in the entrance of Curtis Gordon into the field O’Neil recognized danger.  Gordon was swayed by no such business scruples as the Heidlemanns; he was evidently making a desperate effort to secure a footing at any cost.  In purchasing the McDermott holdings he had executed a coup of considerable importance, for he had placed himself on equal footing with the Trust and in position to profit by its efforts at harbor-building without expense to himself.  If, therefore, he succeeded in wresting from O’Neil the key to that upper passageway, he would be able to block his personal enemy and to command the consideration of his more powerful rival.

No one, not even the Trust, had taken the McDermott enterprise seriously, but with Curtis Gordon in control the “wildcat” suddenly became a tiger.

In view of all this, it was with no easy mind that O’Neil despatched Appleton to the front, and it was with no small responsibility upon his shoulders that the young engineer set out in charge of those wooden boxes of dynamite.  Murray had told him frankly what hung upon his success, and Dan had vowed to hold the survey at any cost.

Steam was up and the locomotive was puffing restlessly when he returned from his farewell to Eliza.  A moment later and the single flat car carrying his party and its dangerous freight was being whirled along the shores of Omar Lake.  On it rushed, shrieking through the night, out from the gloomy hills and upon the tangent that led across the delta.  Ten minutes after it had rolled forth upon the trestle at the “lower crossing” the giant powder had been transferred to poling-boats and the long pull against the current had begun.

O’Neil had picked a crew for Dan, men upon whom he could depend.  They were on double pay, and as they had worked upon the North Pass & Yukon, Appleton had no doubt of their loyalty.

The events of that trip were etched upon the engineer’s mind with extraordinary vividness, for they surpassed in peril and excitement all his previous experiences.  The journey resembled nothing but the mad scramble of a gold stampede.  The stubborn boats with their cargoes which had to be so gently handled, the ever-increasing fury of the river, the growing menace of those ghastly, racing icebergs, the taut-hauled towing-lines, and the straining, sweating men in the loops, all made a picture hard to forget.  Then, too, the uncertainty of the enterprise, the crying need of haste, the knowledge of those other men converging upon the same goal, lent a gnawing suspense to every hour.  It was infinitely more terrible than that first expedition when he and Tom Slater and O’Neil had braved the unknown.  It was vastly more trying than any of the trips which had followed, even with the winter hurricane streaming out of the north as from the mouth of a giant funnel.

Dan had faced death in various forms upon this delta during the past year and a half.  He had seen his flesh harden to marble whiteness under the raging north wind; his eyes and lungs had been drifted full of sand in summer storms which rivaled those of the Sahara.  With transit on his back he had come face to face with the huge brown grizzly.  He had slept in mud, he had made his bed on moss which ran water like a sponge; he had taken danger and hardship as they came—­yet never had he punished himself as on this dash.