“The place to argue this thing is before Judge Stillman,” said Struve—­but with little notion of the conflict going on within Glenister.  The youth yearned to fight—­not with words nor quibbles nor legal phrases, but with steel and blows.  And he felt that the impulse was as righteous as it was natural, for he knew this process was unjust, an outrage.  Mexico Mullins’s warning recurred to him.  And yet—.  He shifted slowly as he talked till his back was to the door of the big tent.  They were watching him carefully, for all their apparent languor and looseness in saddle; then as he started to leap within and rally his henchmen, his mind went back to the words of Judge Stillman and his niece.  Surely that old man was on the square.  He couldn’t be otherwise with her beside him, believing in him; and a suspicion of deeper plots behind these actions was groundless.  So far, all was legal, he supposed, with his scant knowledge of law; though the methods seemed unreasonable.  The men might be doing what they thought to be right.  Why be the first to resist?  The men on the mines below had not done so.  The title to this ground was capable of such easy proof that he and Dex need have no uneasiness.  Courts do not rob honest people nowadays, he argued, and moreover, perhaps the girl’s words were true, perhaps she would think more of him if he gave up the old fighting ways for her sake.  Certainly armed resistance to her uncle’s first edict would not please her.  She had said he was too violent, so he would show her he could lay his savagery aside.  She might smile on him approvingly, and that was worth taking a chance for—­anyway it would mean but a few days’ delay in the mine’s run.  As he reasoned he heard a low voice speaking within the open door.  It was Slapjack Simms.

“Step aside, lad.  I’ve got the big un covered.”

Glenister saw the men on horseback snatch at their holsters, and, just in time, leaped at his foreman, for the old man had moved out into the open, a Winchester at shoulder, his cheek cuddling the stock, his eyes cold and narrow.  The young man flung the barrel up and wrenched the weapon from his hands.

“None of that, Hank!” he cried, sharply.  “I’ll say when to shoot.”  He turned to look into the muzzles of guns held in the hands of every horseman—­every horseman save one, for Alec McNamara sat unmoved, his handsome features, nonchalant and amused, nodding approval.  It was at him that Hank’s weapon had been levelled.

“This is bad enough at the best.  Don’t let’s make it any worse,” said he.

Slapjack inhaled deeply, spat with disgust, and looked over his boss incredulously.

“Well, of all the different kinds of damn fools,” he snorted, “you are the kindest.”  He marched past the marshal and his deputies down to the cut, put on his coat, and vanished down the trail towards town, not deigning a backward glance either at the mine or at the man unfit to fight for.