“You are sure Mr. Adair and Brissac are out of the way?”

“They got Gallagher to push them up to Frisbie’s track camp in Misther North’s car an hour before dark.”

“None of your men are likely to drift in from the other way up the line?”

“Not unless somebody carries the news av the gold sthrike—­and there’s nobody going that way to carry it.  The camp’s empty but for us.”

Eckstein rose and buttoned his coat.

“You have held your own strikers—­the men you can depend upon:  how many do we count, all told?”

“Thirteen, counting the five av us here, and the felly that runs the electhric light plant.”

“H’m; it’s a hell of a risk:  thirteen men knowing what only one should know—­and what that one should hurry to forget.  But your butter-fingered Mexican has left us no choice.  Ford knows enough now to send some of us over the road for life.  If he got into that car alive, he must never come out of it alive.”

Brian MacMorrogh had unlocked a cupboard in the corner of the room.  It was a well-filled gun-rack, and he was passing the Winchesters out to his brothers.

“’Tis so,” he said briefly.  Then:  “There’s the two naygurs in the car:  what av thim, Misther Eckstein?”

Eckstein took one of the guns and emptied the magazine to make sure of the loading.

“We are thirteen to one; the negroes don’t count,” he replied coldly.  “Call in your men and we’ll go and do what’s got to be done.”

XXV

THE SIEGE OF THE NADIA

With a horse that could have been handled Ford would not have run away when the charge upon the Mexican failed of its purpose.  So far from it, he tried to wheel and charge again while the man was reeling from his collision with the rearing mustang.

But the bronco from the Copah stable, with the flash and crash of the pistol-shot to madden it, took the bit between its teeth and bolted—­safely through the shallows of the stream crossing and up to the level of the railroad yard beyond, but swerving aside at the first of the car shadows to fling its rider out of the saddle.  Ford gathered himself quickly and rolled under a car.  His right arm had no feeling in it, whether from the shot or the fall he could not determine.

The numbness had become a prickling agony when he heard the Mexican splashing through the river to begin his search.  Ford’s field of vision was limited by the car trucks, but he kept the man in sight as he could.  It filled him with sudden and fiery rage to be hunted thus like a defenseless animal, and more than once he was tempted to make a dash for the engineers’ quarters on the hillside above the commissary—­a rifle being the thing for which he hungered and thirsted.

But to show himself under the lights was to invite the fate he had so narrowly escaped.  He knew Mattacheco’s skill as a marksman:  the Mexican would not be rattled twice in the same half-hour.  Ford gripped the benumbed arm in impotent writhings.