In the Rosemary the waiter was laying the plates for breakfast, and Bessie and the Reverend William were at the window, watching the stirring industry battle now in full swing on the opposite slope.
Virginia joined them.
"Isn"t it a shame!" she said. "Of course, I want our side to win; but it seems such a pity that we can"t fight fairly."
Calvert said, "Isn"t what a shame?" thereby eliciting a crisp explanation from Virginia in which she set well-founded suspicion in the light of fact.
The Reverend Billy shook his head.
"Such things may be within the law--of business; but they will surely breed bad blood--"
The interruption was the Rajah in his proper person, bustling out fiercely to a conference with his Myrmidons. By tacit consent the three at the window fell silent.
There was a hasty mustering of armed men under the windows of the Rosemary, and they heard Sheriff Deckert"s low-voiced instructions to his posse.
"Take it slow and easy, boys, and don"t get rattled. Now, then; guns to the front! Steady!"
The Reverend Billy rose.
"What are you going to do?" said Virginia.
"I"m going to give Winton a tip if it"s the last thing I ever do."
She shook her head and pointed eastward to the mouth of the lateral gulch. Under cover of a clump of evergreen-scrub a man in a wideflapped hat and leather breeches was climbing swiftly to the level of the new line, cautiously waving a handkerchief as a peace token.
"That is the man who arrested Mr. Winton yesterday. This time he is going to fight on the other side. He"ll carry the warning."
"Think so?" said Calvert.
"I am sure of it. Open the window, please. I want to see better."
As yet there was no sign of preparation on the embankment. For the moment the rifles of the track force were laid aside, and every man was plying pick or shovel.
Winton was in the thick of the pick-and-shovel melee, urging it on, when Biggin ran up.
"Hi!" he shouted. "Fixin" to take another play-day in Carbonate?
Lookee down yonder!"
Winton looked and became alive to the possibilities in the turning of a leaf.
"Guns!" he yelled; and at the word of command the tools were flung aside, and the track force, over two hundred strong, became an army.
"Mulcahey, take half the men and go up the grade till you can rake those fellows without hitting the car. Branagan, you take the other half and go down till you can cross-fire with Mulcahey. Aim low, both of you; and the man who fires before he gets the word from me will break his neck at a rope"s end. Fall in!"
"By Jove!" said Adams. "Are you going to resist? That spells felony, doesn"t it?"
Winton pointed to the waiting octopod.
"I"m going to order the Two-fifteen down out of the way: you may go with her if you like."
"I guess not!" quoth the a.s.sistant, calmly lighting a fresh cigarette.
And then to the water-boy, who was acting quartermaster: "Give me a rifle and a cartridge-belt, Chunky, and I"ll stay here with the boss."
"And where do I come in?" said Biggin to Winton reproachfully.
"You"ll stay out, if your head"s level. You"ve done enough already to send you to Canyon City."
"I ain"t a-forgettin" nothing," said Peter cheerfully, casting himself flat behind a heap of earth on the dump-edge.
While the sheriff"s posse was picking its way gingerly over the loose rock and earth dam formed by the landslide, the window went up in the Rosemary and Winton saw Virginia. Without meaning to, she gave him his battle-word.
"We are a dozen Winchesters to your one, Mr. Deckert, and we shall resist force with force. Order your men back or there will be trouble."
Winton stood out on the edge of the cutting, a solitary figure where a few minutes before the earth had been flying from a hundred shovels.
The sheriff"s reply was an order, but not for retreat.
"He"s one of the men we want; cover him!" he commanded.
Unless the public occasion appeals strongly to the sympathies or the pa.s.sions, a picked-up sheriff"s posse is not likely to have very good metal in it. Peter Biggin laughed.
"Don"t be no ways nervous," he said in an aside to Winton. "Them professional veniry chumps couldn"t hit the side o" Pacific Peak."
Winton held his ground, while the sheriff tried to drive his men up a bare slope commanded by two hundred rifles to right and left. The attempt was a humiliating failure. Being something less than soldiers trained to do or die, the deputies hung back to a man.
Virginia could not forbear a smile. The sheriff burst into caustic profanity. Whereupon Mr. Peter Biggin rose up and sent a bullet to plow a little furrow in the ice within an inch of Deckert"s heels.
"Ex-cuse _me_, Bart," he drawled, "but no cuss words don"t go."
The sheriff ignored Peter Biggin as a person who could be argued with at leisure and turned to Winton.
"Come down!" he bellowed.
Winton laughed.
"Let me return the invitation. Come up, and you may read your warrants to us all day."
Deckert withdrew his men, and at Winton"s signal the track-layers came in and the earth began to fly again.
Virginia sighed her relief, and Bessie plucked up courage to go to the window, which she had deserted in the moment of impending battle.
"Breakfast is served," announced the waiter as calmly as if the morning meal were the only matter of consequence in a world of happenings.
They gathered about the table, a silent trio made presently a quartet by the advent of Mrs. Carteret, who had neither seen nor heard anything of the warlike episode with which the day had begun.
Mr. Darrah was late, so late that when he came in, Virginia was the only one of the four who remained at table. She stayed to pour his coffee and to bespeak peace.
"Uncle Somerville, can"t we win without calling in these horrid men with their guns?"
A mere shadow of a grim smile came and went in the Rajah"s eyes.