A sudden gust of laughter swept Lost Chief.

“Well, Scott,” asked Peter, “what have you got to say?”

“Me?” asked Scott.  “I’m not a preacher or a Mormon.  I haven’t got the gift of gab.  Charleton is a good talker.  Let him say something.”

“All right, old trapper,” said Charleton obligingly.  He grinned at Inez and began: 

“Yet, ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose, That Youth’s sweet-scented manuscript should close,—­”

Elijah Nelson interrupted.  “Is this the way you are going to answer a decent protest against injustice?  Is this—­”

“Wait now!” cried Grandma Brown.  “Don’t get all prodded up.  Scott, you give this man a straight answer.”

“Very well, Grandma; I’ll do that little thing for you,” drawled Scott.  “Nelson, you and the rest of you Mormons and Jack-Mormons go plumb to hell, but leave my bull behind.”

One of Nelson’s neighbors rose in his stirrups and shook his fist at Scott.  “You dogy-faced Gentile!  I’ve got you marked!  You are the one who ran our cattle off Lost Peak five years ago, and we know who helped you.”

“Well, I think you Mormons had better get back to your plural wives!” cried John Spencer.  “We’ve had about enough of this.”

“Judith,” said Douglas, “you take your mother and go home.”

Judith turned bright eyes toward him.  “Think I’m going to run away?  No sir!”

Elijah’s neighbor laid his gun across his own arm.  “Say that again, Spencer,” he suggested, “unless you aren’t willing to fight for your daughter!”

Mr. Fowler sprang up beside Nelson on the doorstep.  “I beg of you all to disperse to your homes and don’t desecrate the Sabbath by such a scene as this.”

“O, don’t talk like a fool, Fowler!” exclaimed Grandma Brown.  At this moment her little grandson came roaring lustily up the trail.  He was covered with muck and snow.

“Judith’s bull has got away from us kids and he’s headed this way!”

“What were you doing with him?” shrieked Grandma,

“We was going to bring him up here and put him in the church like Scott paid us for.  And he said—­”

But what the child intended to divulge was not to be known, for there was a bellow from the thickest of blue spruce and Sioux, with various chains and ropes dangling from his neck and legs, charged into the clearing.  There was a sudden wild scattering of human beings.  Judith whistled shrilly, but Sioux had been goaded beyond her control.

“Let me get my rope!” she cried.

“Hold up!” shouted Charleton.  “Something’s going to happen!”

The Mormon’s bull had broken his halter and had turned to meet the on-coming Sioux.  Sioux’s bloodshot eyes fell on the stranger, and instantly the battle was joined.  Snow flew.  The buck fence crashed.  The bulls bellowed, locked horns, retreated, charged, slipped, fell, rose again with a rapidity only equalled by the ferocity of the attack.