the job of logging.'
'Yes, ma'am, that's true enough,' agreed Longarm. He put his hands flat on the table and pushed himself to his feet. 'Sounds to me like the first thing I need to do is make sure Kinsman's really to blame for that sabotage. If he is, he'll answer for it.'
Aurora stood up as well and went to the door of the cabin with him. As they stepped out onto the porch, she said, 'Kinsman has to be behind it. No one else has any reason, even a mistaken one, to hate us that much.' Longarm nodded. What she said made sense, all right, but there was still a little matter of proof. He took a cheroot from his vest pocket and slid it unlit into his mouth. Around it he said, 'I'll try to ride back out here tomorrow, let you know what I've found out-'
He broke off as a startled yell came from near the mess hall. As Longarm looked up, he saw the bald-headed old cook start to run toward them. The man was waving toward the creek and yelling something, but Longarm couldn't make out the words over the rumble of the sawmill's engine and the screech of the saw as it bit through the timber being fed to it. He muttered, 'What in blazes?'
'Boom!' shouted the cook, coming closer. 'Look out... boom!'
Longarm glanced over at Aurora Mcentire and saw her eyes widening in fear.
Then the loudest crash he had ever heard in his life sounded right behind them.
CHAPTER 3
Longarm was moving almost before the thunderous roar of destruction began to assault his ears. His hand shot out and clamped around Aurora Mcentire's arm, and he dove forward off the porch, taking her with him. He barely heard her scream over the noise, which was now taking on a grinding quality. When the two of them hit the ground, Longarm wrapped his arms around her and kept rolling.
He came to a stop some ten feet away from the spot where they had landed. When he lifted his head and looked back at that spot, he saw several beams from the ceiling that had been over the porch now lying there. The porch had collapsed, like the cabin behind it. Through the rubble, Longarm could see the ends of several huge logs jutting up out of the creek. It was those logs, tied together into a boom, that had been carried along the fast- moving stream to crash into the cabin.
As Longarm sat up, Aurora pushed herself onto her elbows beside him and stared in horror at what remained of the cabin. 'M-my God!' she exclaimed. 'What happened?'
Before Longarm could answer, the cook pounded up to them and yelped, 'Miz Mcentire! Miz Mcentire! Are you all right?'
'I'm fine, Eli,' she assured him as she sat up and ran her fingers through her hair, which had come loose from its bun and was now dotted with splinters and sawdust. 'Thanks to Marshal Long, the porch roof didn't fall on us.'
'Pure dumb luck,' Longarm told her. 'I heard all hell breaking loose behind us and just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could.'
'Don't be modest, Marshal. You saved my life as well as your own.'
Aurora's chin trembled a little, but that was the only outward sign of what she had to be feeling. She had nearly been killed and had lost her headquarters building, as well as the place where she had been living. Longarm admired her control.
He got to his feet, brushed off his clothes, then offered her a hand. The cook was already helping her up, however, and the men who had come boiling out of the sawmill after the crash were gathering around her as well, shouting anxious, excited questions.
The rattle of hoofbeats caught Longarm's attention, and he looked upstream to see Jared Flint galloping back toward them along the creek bank. 'Miz Mcentire!' he called before he even brought the horse to a halt. 'Are you all right?'
Aurora nodded as Flint reined in, dismounted, and strode quickly toward her. The sawmill workers gathered around her parted to let the foreman through. 'I'm fine, Mr. Flint,' she told him, 'just shaken up a little. Marshal Long's quick action saved my life.'
Flint looked at Longarm and gave him a curt nod. 'Much obliged, Marshal. We couldn't keep going around here without Miz Mcentire.'
'I want to know how this happened,' Aurora said sharply. 'That boom wasn't supposed to be floating loose like that.'
The cook spoke up. 'I seen it comin' lickety-split down the creek, Miz Mcentire, and it looked like it was headin' either for your cabin or for the mill. That's why I come a-runnin' like that, tryin' to warn you.'
Aurora smiled at him. 'Thank you, Eli. You did all you could.' She glanced over at the ruined cabin and shook her head sadly. 'I'm glad we escaped with our lives, but this is still quite a blow.'
Flint walked around the rubble and moved out onto the boom, which looked like a mighty precarious perch to Longarm. The timberman was evidently used to stepping from log to log, though, and he quickly made his way to the back of the crude raft. Some of the ropes that had been used to bind the logs together had snapped under the impact of the crash, and the timber shifted with a series of groanings and scrapings. Aurora watched what Flint was doing, and anxiously caught her lower lip between her teeth as the foreman balanced himself carefully and reached down to haul a thick rope out of the water.
'Cut!' he yelled harshly as he turned toward the bank and waved the end of the rope. 'Just like that pulley rope! Somebody sawed through it and let the boom get away early.'
Longarm picked up his hat and slapped it against his leg to knock the dust off. As he settled the Stetson on his head, he said, 'How could anybody cut that boom loose and know that it would wreck the headquarters building?'
'They couldn't,' replied Aurora, 'not for sure. But they could be pretty sure that it would do some damage to something, as fast as the creek is running. A small boom like that, released prematurely before more logs could be fastened to it, would be carried along so quickly that it was bound to get out of control.'
Seemed like sort of a haphazard way to foul things up, Longarm thought with a frown, but he couldn't argue with the result. Even though chance had played a part in it, this latest act had had serious, almost lethal,
