Quade was bolstered up on a stool, his back against the thin partition, when John Aldous sauntered in.  There was still a groggy look in his mottled face.  His thick bulk hung a bit limply.  In his heavy-lidded eyes, under-hung by watery pouches of sin and dissipation, there was a vengeful and beastlike glare.  He was surrounded by his friends.  One of them was taking a wet cloth from his head.  There were a dozen in the canvas-walled room, all with their backs to the door, their eyes upon their fallen and dishonoured chief.  For a moment John Aldous paused in the door.  The cool and insolent smile hovered about his lips again, and little crinkles had gathered at the corners of his eyes.

“Did I hit you pretty hard, Bill?” he asked.

Every head was turned toward him.  Bill Quade stared, his mouth open.  He staggered to his feet, and stood dizzily.

“You—­damn you!” he cried huskily.

Three or four of the men had already begun to move toward the stranger.  Their hands were knotted, their faces murderously dark.

“Wait a minute, boys,” warned Aldous coolly.  “I’ve got something to say to you—­and Bill.  Then eat me alive if you want to.  Do you want to be square enough to give me a word?”

Quade had settled back sickly on his stool.  The others had stopped, waiting.  The quiet and insolently confident smile had not left Aldous’ lips.

“You’ll feel better in a few minutes, Bill,” he consoled.  “A hard blow on the jaw always makes you sick at the pit of the stomach.  That dizziness will pass away shortly.  Meanwhile, I’m going to give you and your pals a little verbal and visual demonstration of what you’re up against, and warn you to bait no traps for a certain young woman whom you’ve lately seen.  She’s going on to Tete Jaune.  And I know how your partner plays his game up there.  I’m not particularly anxious to butt into your affairs and the business of this pretty bunch that’s gathered about you, but I’ve come to give you a friendly warning for all that.  If this young woman is embarrassed up at Tete Jaune you’re going to settle with me.”

Aldous had spoken without a tremor of excitement in his voice.  Not one of the men noticed his speaking lips, his slim hands, or his careless posture as he leaned in the door.  They were looking straight into his eyes, strangely scintillating and deadly earnest.  In such a man mere bulk did not count.

“That much—­for words,” he went on.  “Now I’m going to give you the visual demonstration.  I know your game, Bill.  You’re already planning what you’re going to do.  You won’t fight fair—­because you never have.  You’ve already decided that some morning I’ll turn up missing, or be dug out from under a fall of rock, or go peacefully floating down the Athabasca.  See!  There’s nothing in that hand, is there?”

He stretched out an empty hand toward them, palm up.

“And now!”

A twist of the wrist so swift their eyes could not follow, a metallic click, and the startled group were staring into the black muzzle of a menacing little automatic.