“Good,” said Ajax cheerfully.  “Nip back, Uncle; we can play this hand alone.”

“Sure?” The old man’s voice expressed doubt.

“Quite sure.  Shush-h-h!”

Uncle Jake slid off the verandah, but he retired—­so we discovered later—­no farther than the water-butt behind it.  Ajax and I went into the sitting-room.  From the bed-room beyond came no sound whatever.  Through the windows the pack was seen—­slowly advancing.

“Come in, gentlemen,” said Ajax loudly.

He stood in the doorway, an unarmed man confronting a dozen desperadoes.

“Wheer’s the Chinaman—­Quong?”

I recognised the voice of a cowboy whom we had employed:  a man known in the foothills as Cock-a-whoop Charlie.

“He’s here,” Ajax answered quietly.

A tall, gaunt Missourian, also well known to us as a daring bull-puncher, laughed derisively.

“Here—­is he?  Wal, we want him, but we don’t want no fuss with you, boys.  Yer—­white, but he’s yaller, and he must go.”

“He is going,” said Ajax.  “He’s going fast.”

“How’s that?”

“Come in,” retorted my brother impatiently.  “It’s cold out there and dark.  You’re not scared of two unarmed men—­are you?”

They filed into the house, looking very sheepish.

“I’m glad you’ve come, even at this late hour,” said Ajax, “for I want to have a quiet word with you.”

The psychological characteristics of a crowd are receiving attention at the hands of a French philosopher.  M. Gustave Le Bon tells us that the crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual of average brains.

“You have a nerve,” remarked Cock-a-whoop Charlie.

“You Coon Dogs,” continued my brother, “are making this county too hot for the Chinese—­eh?”

“You bet yer life!”

“But won’t you make it too hot for yourselves?”

The pack growled, inarticulate with astonishment and curiosity.

“Some of you,” said Ajax, “have wives and children.  What will they do when the Sheriff is hunting—­you?  You call this the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave.  So it is.  And do you think that the Free and the Brave will suffer you to destroy property and life without calling you to account?”

“We ain’t destroying life.”

“And a heathen Chinee ain’t a man.”

“Quong,” said Ajax, in his deep voice, “is hardly a man yet.  We call him Mary, because he looks like a girl.  You want him—­eh?  You are not satisfied with what you did yesterday?  You want him?  But—­do you want him dying?”

The pack cowered.

“He is dying,” said Ajax.  “No matter how they live, and a wiser Judge than any of us will pronounce on that, no matter how they live—­are your own lives clean?—­the meanest of these Chinese knows how to die.  One moment, please.”

He entered the room where Mary lay blind and deaf to the terror which had come at last.  When Ajax returned, he said quietly:  “Come and see the end of what you began.  What?  You hang back?  By God!—­you shall come.”