Steps approached the door. One…two…and the door slowly opened to reveal Jake wobbling on two rubbery legs. There was a welt growing under his left eye, a bruise on his right cheek, and he was hugging his torso like a couple of ribs had been broken.

The crowd gasped.

Jake’s buddies were speechless for a moment, until one of them said, “First or last out of the room, it don’t matter. Let’s see what the other one looks like.”

The door swung open a moment later to reveal Harlan standing there without a scratch on him. His hair looked a little disheveled and his clothes were a bit out of place, but other than that he looked just as good as when he’d stepped into the room. He straightened his jacket, looked over at Jake’s gang, and said, “If any of you want some of that, you know where to find me!”

Noble shook Harlan’s hand and patted his brother on the back. “Good job. There isn’t a cut on him,” he said, referring to the danger of wounding MacKinnon and turning the bully into one of them.

“No,” said Harlan. “I was careful.”

Argus gave his brother a hug. “You did good.”

Noble gathered Argus and Harlan together and said, “We’ll celebrate later. Right now, we’ve got to get out of here.”

They hurried out through the rear doors of the school.

Behind them they could hear Principal Terashita coming down the hallway. “What’s going on here?” he asked. Then, “Jake MacKinnon. I might have known. What happened? Pick on the wrong person this time? This was bound to happen…”

The principal kept on talking, and the longer he did, the more it sounded like justice.

Chapter 18

The protesters outnumbered the loggers four to one now, and it was obvious to everyone in the area that Conservco wasn’t going to win this fight. Donna Hughson’s efforts had been seriously underestimated by the company and her band of seemingly harmless old ladies had thrown up a wall of protest that captured the attention of the nation. Spearheaded by members of the Writers’ Union of Canada, articles appeared in every major magazine and newspaper in the country. Maclean’s did a cover story on the protest, and the National Post, The Globe and Mail, even the Toronto Star ran feature articles in their Saturday editions. There had been several television reporters on site since the second day of the protest, and they’d fed the networks raw footage and news reports all week long.