Casey stopped, puffing a little, I suppose.  He is not so young as when they called him the Fightin’ Stagedriver, and he had done his long day of travel.  The three did not know that he was there, they were so busy with their quarrel.  The woman’s voice was sharp with contempt, but it was not loud and there was not a tremble in any tone of it.  The gun she held was steady in her hand, but one man snarled at her and one man laughed.  It was the kind of laugh a woman would hate to hear from a man she was defying.

“Aw, puddown the popgun!  Nobody’s scared of it—­er you.  It ain’t loaded, and if it was loaded you couldn’t hit nothin’.  No need to be scared ’long’s a woman’s pointing a gun at yuh.  Crank ’er up, agin, Ole.  Don’t worry none about her. She can’t stop nothin’, not even her jawin’.  Go awn, start the damn Lizzie an’ let’s go.”

Ole bent to the cranking, then complained that the switch must be off.  His companion growled that it was nothing of the kind and kept his narrowed gaze fixed upon the woman.

She spied Casey standing there, a few rods beyond the car.  The gun dropped in her hand so that its aim was no longer direct.  The man who faced her jumped and caught her wrist, and the gun went off, the bullet singing ten feet above Casey’s head.

A little girl with flaxen curls and patched overalls on screamed and rushed up to the man, gripping him furiously around the legs just above the knees and trying her little best to shake him.  “You leave my mamma alone!” she cried shrilly.

Casey took a hand then,—­a hand with a rock in it, I must explain.  He managed to kick Ole harshly in the ribs, sending him doubled sidewise and yelping, as he passed him.  He laid the other man out senseless with the rock which landed precisely on the back of the head just under his hat.

The woman—­Casey had mistaken her for a man at first, because she wore bib overalls and had her hair bobbed and a man’s hat on—­dropped the gun and held her wrist that showed angry red finger prints.  She smiled at Casey exactly as if nothing much had happened.

“Thank you very much indeed.  I was beginning to wonder how I was going to manage the situation.  It was growing rather awkward, because I should have been compelled to shoot them both, I expect, before I was through.  And I dreaded a mess.  Wounded, I should have had them on my hands to take care of—­their great hulks!—­and dead I should have had to bury them, and I detest digging in this rocky soil.  You really did me a very great—­”

Her eyes ranged to something behind Casey and widened at what they saw.  Casey whirled about, ducked a hurtling monkey wrench and rushed Ole, who was getting up awkwardly, his eyes malevolent.  He made a very thorough job of thrashing Ole, and finished by knocking him belly down over the un-hooded engine of the Ford.

“I hope Jawn doesn’t suffer from that,” the little woman commented whimsically.  “Babe, run and get that rope over there and take it to the gentleman so he can tie Ole’s hands together.  Then he can’t be naughty any more.  Hurry, Baby Girl.”