On their way to Derrick\'s ranch house, Hilma and Mrs. Derrick heard the sounds of distant firing.

“Stop!” cried Hilma, laying her hand upon young Vacca\'s arm. “Stop the horses. Listen, what was that?”

The carry-all came to a halt and from far away across the rustling wheat came the faint rattle of rifles and revolvers.

“Say,” cried Vacca, rolling his eyes, “oh, say, they\'re fighting over there.”

Mrs. Derrick put her hands over her face.

“Fighting,” she cried, “oh, oh, it\'s terrible. Magnus is there—and Harran.”

“Where do you think it is?” demanded Hilma. “That\'s over toward Hooven\'s.”

“I\'m going. Turn back. Drive to Hooven\'s, quick.”

“Better not, Mrs. Annixter,” protested the young man. “Mr. Annixter said we were to go to Derrick\'s. Better keep away from Hooven\'s if there\'s trouble there. We wouldn\'t get there till it\'s all over, anyhow.”

“Yes, yes, let\'s go home,” cried Mrs. Derrick, “I\'m afraid. Oh, Hilma, I\'m afraid.”

“Come with me to Hooven\'s then.”

“There, where they are fighting? Oh, I couldn\'t. I—I can\'t. It would be all over before we got there as Vacca says.”

“Sure,” repeated young Vacca.

“Drive to Hooven\'s,” commanded Hilma. “If you won\'t, I\'ll walk there.” She threw off the lap-robes, preparing to descend. “And you,” she exclaimed, turning to Mrs. Derrick, “how CAN you—when Harran and your husband may be—may—are in danger.”

Grumbling, Vacca turned the carry-all about and drove across the open fields till he reached the road to Guadalajara, just below the Mission.

“Hurry!” cried Hilma.

The horses started forward under the touch of the whip. The ranch houses of Quien Sabe came in sight.

“Do you want to stop at the house?” inquired Vacca over his shoulder.

“No, no; oh, go faster—make the horses run.”

They dashed through the houses of the Home ranch.

“Oh, oh,” cried Hilma suddenly, “look, look there. Look what they have done.”

Vacca pulled the horses up, for the road in front of Annixter\'s house was blocked.

A vast, confused heap of household effects was there—chairs, sofas, pictures, fixtures, lamps. Hilma\'s little home had been gutted; everything had been taken from it and ruthlessly flung out upon the road, everything that she and her husband had bought during that wonderful week after their marriage. Here was the white enamelled “set” of the bedroom furniture, the three chairs, wash-stand and bureau,—the bureau drawers falling out, spilling their contents into the dust; there were the white wool rugs of the sitting-room, the flower stand, with its pots all broken, its flowers wilting; the cracked goldfish globe, the fishes already dead; the rocking chair, the sewing machine, the great round table of yellow oak, the lamp with its deep shade of crinkly red tissue paper, the pretty tinted photographs that had hung on the wall—the choir boys with beautiful eyes, the pensive young girls in pink gowns—the pieces of wood carving that represented quails and ducks, and, last of all, its curtains of crisp, clean muslin, cruelly torn and crushed—the bed, the wonderful canopied bed so brave and gay, of which Hilma had been so proud, thrust out there into the common road, torn from its place, from the discreet intimacy of her bridal chamber, violated, profaned, flung out into the dust and garish sunshine for all men to stare at, a mockery and a shame.

To Hilma it was as though something of herself, of her person, had been thus exposed and degraded; all that she held sacred pilloried, gibbeted, and exhibited to the world\'s derision. Tears of anguish sprang to her eyes, a red flame of outraged modesty overspread her face.

“Oh,” she cried, a sob catching her throat, “oh, how could they do it?” But other fears intruded; other greater terrors impended.

“Go on,” she cried to Vacca, “go on quickly.”

But Vacca would go no further. He had seen what had escaped Hilma\'s attention, two men, deputies, no doubt, on the porch of the ranch house. They held possession there, and the evidence of the presence of the enemy in this raid upon Quien Sabe had daunted him.

“No, SIR,” he declared, getting out of the carry-all, “I ain\'t going to take you anywhere where you\'re liable to get hurt. Besides, the road\'s blocked by all this stuff. You can\'t get the team by.”

Hilma sprang from the carry-all.

“Come,” she said to Mrs. Derrick.

The older woman, trembling, hesitating, faint with dread, obeyed, and Hilma, picking her way through and around the wreck of her home, set off by the trail towards the Long Trestle and Hooven\'s.

When she arrived, she found the road in front of the German\'s house, and, indeed, all the surrounding yard, crowded with people. An overturned buggy lay on the side of the road in the distance, its horses in a tangle of harness, held by two or three men. She saw Caraher\'s buckboard under the live oak and near it a second buggy which she recognised as belonging to a doctor in Guadalajara.

“Oh, what has happened; oh, what has happened?” moaned Mrs. Derrick.

“Come,” repeated Hilma. The young girl took her by the hand and together they pushed their way through the crowd of men and women and entered the yard.

The throng gave way before the two women, parting to right and left without a word.

“Presley,” cried Mrs. Derrick, as she caught sight of him in the doorway of the house, “oh, Presley, what has happened? Is Harran safe? Is Magnus safe? Where are they?”

“Don\'t go in, Mrs. Derrick,” said Presley, coming forward, “don\'t go in.”

“Where is my husband?” demanded Hilma.

Presley turned away and steadied himself against the jamb of the door.

Hilma, leaving Mrs. Derrick, entered the house. The front room was full of men. She was dimly conscious of Cyrus Ruggles and S. Behrman, both deadly pale, talking earnestly and in whispers to Cutter and Phelps. There was a strange, acrid odour of an unfamiliar drug in the air. On the table before her was a satchel, surgical instruments, rolls of bandages, and a blue, oblong paper box full of cotton. But above the hushed noises of voices and footsteps, one terrible sound made itself heard—the prolonged, rasping sound of breathing, half choked, laboured, agonised.

“Where is my husband?” she cried. She pushed the men aside. She saw Magnus, bareheaded, three or four men lying on the floor, one half naked, his body swathed in white bandages; the doctor in shirt sleeves, on one knee beside a figure of a man stretched out beside him.

Garnett turned a white face to her.

“Where is my husband?”

The other did not reply, but stepped aside and Hilma saw the dead body of her husband lying upon the bed. She did not cry out. She said no word. She went to the bed, and sitting upon it, took Annixter\'s head in her lap, holding it gently between her hands. Thereafter she did not move, but sat holding her dead husband\'s head in her lap, looking vaguely about from face to face of those in the room, while, without a sob, without a cry, the great tears filled her wide-opened eyes and rolled slowly down upon her cheeks.

On hearing that his wife was outside, Magnus came quickly forward. She threw herself into his arms.

“Tell me, tell me,” she cried, “is Harran—is——”

“We don\'t know yet,” he answered. “Oh, Annie——”

Then suddenly the Governor checked himself. He, the indomitable, could not break down now.

“The doctor is with him,” he said; “we are doing all we can. Try and be brave, Annie. There is always hope. This is a terrible day\'s work. God forgive us all.”

She pressed forward, but he held her back.

“No, don\'t see him now. Go into the next room. Garnett, take care of her.”

But she would not be denied. She pushed by Magnus, and, breaking through the group that surrounded her son, sank on her knees beside him, moaning, in compassion and terror.

Harran lay straight and rigid upon the floor, his head propped by a pillow, his coat that had been taken off spread over his chest. One leg of his trousers was soaked through and through with blood. His eyes were half-closed, and with the regularity of a machine, the eyeballs twitched and twitched. His face was so white that it made his yellow hair look brown, while from his opened mouth, there issued that loud and terrible sound of guttering, rasping, laboured breathing that gagged and choked and gurgled with every inhalation.

“Oh, Harrie, Harrie,” called Mrs. Derrick, catching at one of his hands.

The doctor shook his head.

“He is unconscious, Mrs. Derrick.”

“Where was he—where is—the—the——”

“Through the lungs.”

“Will he get well? Tell me the truth.”

“I don\'t know. Mrs. Derrick.”

She had all but fainted, and the old rancher, Garnett, half-carrying, half-leading her, took her to the one adjoining room—Minna Hooven\'s bedchamber. Dazed, numb with fear, she sat down on the edge of the bed, rocking herself back and forth, murmuring:

“Harrie, Harrie, oh, my son, my little boy.”

In the outside room, Presley came and went, doing what he could to be of service, sick with horror, trembling from head to foot.

The surviving members of both Leaguers and deputies—the warring factions of the Railroad and the People—mingled together now with no thought of hostility. Presley helped the doctor to cover Christian\'s body. S. Behrman and Ruggles held bowls of water while Osterman was attended to. The horror of that dreadful business had driven all other considerations from the mind. The sworn foes of the last hour had no thought of anything but to care for those whom, in their fury, they had shot down. The marshal, abandoning for that day the attempt to serve the writs, departed for San Francisco.

The bodies had been brought in from the road where they fell. Annixter\'s corpse had been laid upon the bed; those of Dabney and Hooven, whose wounds had all been in the face and head, were covered with a tablecloth. Upon the floor, places were made for the others. Cutter and Ruggles rode into Guadalajara to bring out the doctor there, and to telephone to Bonneville for others.

Osterman had not at any time since the shooting, lost consciousness. He lay upon the floor of Hooven\'s house, bare to the waist, bandages of adhesive tape reeved about his abdomen and shoulder. His eyes were half-closed. Presley, who looked after him, pending the arrival of a hack from Bonneville that was to take him home, knew that he was in agony.

But this poser, this silly fellow, this cracker of jokes, whom no one had ever taken very seriously, at the last redeemed himself. When at length, the doctor had arrived, he had, for the first time, opened his eyes.

“I can wait,” he said. “Take Harran first.” And when at length, his turn had come, and while the sweat rolled from his forehead as the doctor began probing for the bullet, he had reached out his free arm and taken Presley\'s hand in his, gripping it harder and harder, as the probe entered the wound. His breath came short through his nostrils; his face, the face of a comic actor, with its high cheek bones, bald forehead, and salient ears, grew paler and paler, his great slit of a mouth shut tight, but he uttered no groan.

When the worst anguish was over and he could find breath to speak, his first words had been:

“Were any of the others badly hurt?”

As Presley stood by the door of the house after bringing in a pail of water for the doctor, he was aware of a party of men who had struck off from the road on the other side of the irrigating ditch and were advancing cautiously into the field of wheat. He wondered what it meant and Cutter, coming up at that moment, Presley asked him if he knew.

“It\'s Delaney,” said Cutter. “It seems that when he was shot he crawled off into the wheat. They are looking for him there.”

Presley had forgotten all about the buster and had only a vague recollection of seeing him slide from his horse at the beginning of the fight. Anxious to know what had become of him, he hurried up and joined the party of searchers.

“We better look out,” said one of the young men, “how we go fooling around in here. If he\'s alive yet he\'s just as liable as not to think we\'re after him and take a shot at us.”

“I guess there ain\'t much fight left in him,” another answered. “Look at the wheat here.”

“Lord! He\'s bled like a stuck pig.”

“Here\'s his hat,” abruptly exclaimed the leader of the party. “He can\'t be far off. Let\'s call him.”

They called repeatedly without getting any answer, then proceeded cautiously. All at once the men in advance stopped so suddenly that those following carromed against them. There was an outburst of exclamation.

“Here he is!”

“Good Lord! Sure, that\'s him.”

“Poor fellow, poor fellow.”

The cow-puncher lay on his back, deep in the wheat, his knees drawn up, his eyes wide open, his lips brown. Rigidly gripped in one hand was his empty revolver.

The men, farm hands from the neighbouring ranches, young fellows from Guadalajara, drew back in instinctive repulsion. One at length ventured near, peering down into the face.

“Is he dead?” inquired those in the rear.

“I don\'t know.”

“Well, put your hand on his heart.” “No! I—I don\'t want to.”

“What you afraid of?”

“Well, I just don\'t want to touch him, that\'s all. It\'s bad luck. YOU feel his heart.”

“You can\'t always tell by that.”

“How can you tell, then? Pshaw, you fellows make me sick. Here, let me get there. I\'ll do it.”

There was a long pause, as the other bent down and laid his hand on the cow-puncher\'s breast.

“Well?”

“I can\'t tell. Sometimes I think I feel it beat and sometimes I don\'t. I never saw a dead man before.”

“Well, you can\'t tell by the heart.”

“What\'s the good of talking so blame much. Dead or not, let\'s carry him back to the house.”

Two or three ran back to the road for planks from the broken bridge. When they returned with these a litter was improvised, and throwing their coats over the body, the party carried it back to the road. The doctor was summoned and declared the cow-puncher to have been dead over half an hour.

“What did I tell you?” exclaimed one of the group.

“Well, I never said he wasn\'t dead,” protested the other. “I only said you couldn\'t always tell by whether his heart beat or not.”

But all at once there was a commotion. The wagon containing Mrs. Hooven, Minna, and little Hilda drove up.

“Eh, den, my men,” cried Mrs. Hooven, wildly interrogating the faces of the crowd. “Whadt has happun? Sey, den, dose vellers, hev dey hurdt my men, eh, whadt?”

She sprang from the wagon, followed by Minna with Hilda in her arms. The crowd bore back as they advanced, staring at them in silence.

“Eh, whadt has happun, whadt has happun?” wailed Mrs. Hooven, as she hurried on, her two hands out before her, the fingers spread wide. “Eh, Hooven, eh, my men, are you alle righdt?”

She burst into the house. Hooven\'s body had been removed to an adjoining room, the bedroom of the house, and to this room Mrs. Hooven—Minna still at her heels—proceeded, guided by an instinct born of the occasion. Those in the outside room, saying no word, made way for them. They entered, closing the door behind them, and through all the rest of that terrible day, no sound nor sight of them was had by those who crowded into and about that house of death. Of all the main actors of the tragedy of the fight in the ditch, they remained the least noted, obtruded themselves the least upon the world\'s observation. They were, for the moment, forgotten.

But by now Hooven\'s house was the centre of an enormous crowd. A vast concourse of people from Bonneville, from Guadalajara, from the ranches, swelled by the thousands who had that morning participated in the rabbit drive, surged about the place; men and women, young boys, young girls, farm hands, villagers, townspeople, ranchers, railroad employees, Mexicans, Spaniards, Portuguese. Presley, returning from the search for Delaney\'s body, had to fight his way to the house again.

And from all this multitude there rose an indefinable murmur. As yet, there was no menace in it, no anger. It was confusion merely, bewilderment, the first long-drawn “oh!” that greets the news of some great tragedy. The people had taken no thought as yet. Curiosity was their dominant impulse. Every one wanted to see what had been done; failing that, to hear of it, and failing that, to be near the scene of the affair. The crowd of people packed the road in front of the house for nearly a quarter of a mile in either direction. They balanced themselves upon the lower strands of the barbed wire fence in their effort to see over each others\' shoulders; they stood on the seats of their carts, buggies, and farm wagons, a few even upon the saddles of their riding horses. They crowded, pushed, struggled, surged forward and back without knowing why, converging incessantly upon Hooven\'s house.

When, at length, Presley got to the gate, he found a carry-all drawn up before it. Between the gate and the door of the house a lane had been formed, and as he paused there a moment, a group of Leaguers, among whom were Garnett and Gethings, came slowly from the door carrying old Broderson in their arms. The doctor, bareheaded and in his shirt sleeves, squinting in the sunlight, attended them, repeating at every step:

“Slow, slow, take it easy, gentlemen.”

Old Broderson was unconscious. His face was not pale, no bandages could be seen. With infinite precautions, the men bore him to the carry-all and deposited him on the back seat; the rain flaps were let down on one side to shut off the gaze of the multitude.

But at this point a moment of confusion ensued. Presley, because of half a dozen people who stood in his way, could not see what was going on. There were exclamations, hurried movements. The doctor uttered a sharp command and a man ran back to the house returning on the instant with the doctor\'s satchel. By this time, Presley was close to the wheels of the carry-all and could see the doctor inside the vehicle bending over old Broderson.

“Here it is, here it is,” exclaimed the man who had been sent to the house.

“I won\'t need it,” answered the doctor, “he\'s dying now.”

At the words a great hush widened throughout the throng near at hand. Some men took off their hats.

“Stand back,” protested the doctor quietly, “stand back, good people, please.”

The crowd bore back a little. In the silence, a woman began to sob. The seconds passed, then a minute. The horses of the carry-all shifted their feet and whisked their tails, driving off the flies. At length, the doctor got down from the carry-all, letting down the rain-flaps on that side as well.

“Will somebody go home with the body?” he asked. Gethings stepped forward and took his place by the driver. The carry-all drove away.

Presley reentered the house. During his absence it had been cleared of all but one or two of the Leaguers, who had taken part in the fight. Hilma still sat on the bed with Annixter\'s head in her lap. S. Behrman, Ruggles, and all the railroad party had gone. Osterman had been taken away in a hack and the tablecloth over Dabney\'s body replaced with a sheet. But still unabated, agonised, raucous, came the sounds of Harran\'s breathing. Everything possible had already been done. For the moment it was out of the question to attempt to move him. His mother and father were at his side, Magnus, with a face of stone, his look fixed on those persistently twitching eyes, Annie Derrick crouching at her son\'s side, one of his hands in hers, fanning his face continually with the crumpled sheet of an old newspaper.

Presley on tip-toes joined the group, looking on attentively. One of the surgeons who had been called from Bonneville stood close by, watching Harran\'s face, his arms folded.

“How is he?” Presley whispered.

“He won\'t live,” the other responded.

By degrees the choke and gurgle of the breathing became more irregular and the lids closed over the twitching eyes. All at once the breath ceased. Magnus shot an inquiring glance at the surgeon.

“He is dead, Mr. Derrick,” the surgeon replied.

Annie Derrick, with a cry that rang through all the house, stretched herself over the body of her son, her head upon his breast, and the Governor\'s great shoulders bowed never to rise again.

“God help me and forgive me,” he groaned.

Presley rushed from the house, beside himself with grief, with horror, with pity, and with mad, insensate rage. On the porch outside Caraher met him.

“Is he—is he—” began the saloon-keeper.

“Yes, he\'s dead,” cried Presley. “They\'re all dead, murdered, shot down, dead, dead, all of them. Whose turn is next?”

“That\'s the way they killed my wife, Presley.”

“Caraher,” cried Presley, “give me your hand. I\'ve been wrong all the time. The League is wrong. All the world is wrong. You are the only one of us all who is right. I\'m with you from now on. BY GOD, I TOO, I\'M A RED!”

In course of time, a farm wagon from Bonneville arrived at Hooven\'s. The bodies of Annixter and Harran were placed in it, and it drove down the Lower Road towards the Los Muertos ranch houses.

The bodies of Delaney and Christian had already been carried to Guadalajara and thence taken by train to Bonneville.

Hilma followed the farm wagon in the Derricks\' carry-all, with Magnus and his wife. During all that ride none of them spoke a word. It had been arranged that, since Quien Sabe was in the hands of the Railroad, Hilma should come to Los Muertos. To that place also Annixter\'s body was carried.

Later on in the day, when it was almost evening, the undertaker\'s black wagon passed the Derricks\' Home ranch on its way from Hooven\'s and turned into the county road towards Bonneville. The initial excitement of the affair of the irrigating ditch had died down; the crowd long since had dispersed. By the time the wagon passed Caraher\'s saloon, the sun had set. Night was coming on.

And the black wagon went on through the darkness, unattended, ignored, solitary, carrying the dead body of Dabney, the silent old man of whom nothing was known but his name, who made no friends, whom nobody knew or spoke to, who had come from no one knew whence and who went no one knew whither.

Towards midnight of that same day, Mrs. Dyke was awakened by the sounds of groaning in the room next to hers. Magnus Derrick was not so occupied by Harran\'s death that he could not think of others who were in distress, and when he had heard that Mrs. Dyke and Sidney, like Hilma, had been turned out of Quien Sabe, he had thrown open Los Muertos to them.

“Though,” he warned them, “it is precarious hospitality at the best.”

Until late, Mrs. Dyke had sat up with Hilma, comforting her as best she could, rocking her to and fro in her arms, crying with her, trying to quiet her, for once having given way to her grief, Hilma wept with a terrible anguish and a violence that racked her from head to foot, and at last, worn out, a little child again, had sobbed herself to sleep in the older woman\'s arms, and as a little child, Mrs. Dyke had put her to bed and had retired herself.

Aroused a few hours later by the sounds of a distress that was physical, as well as mental, Mrs. Dyke hurried into Hilma\'s room, carrying the lamp with her. Mrs. Dyke needed no enlightenment. She woke Presley and besought him to telephone to Bonneville at once, summoning a doctor. That night Hilma in great pain suffered a miscarriage.

Presley did not close his eyes once during the night; he did not even remove his clothes. Long after the doctor had departed and that house of tragedy had quieted down, he still remained in his place by the open window of his little room, looking off across the leagues of growing wheat, watching the slow kindling of the dawn. Horror weighed intolerably upon him. Monstrous things, huge, terrible, whose names he knew only too well, whirled at a gallop through his imagination, or rose spectral and grisly before the eyes of his mind. Harran dead, Annixter dead, Broderson dead, Osterman, perhaps, even at that moment dying. Why, these men had made up his world. Annixter had been his best friend, Harran, his almost daily companion; Broderson and Osterman were familiar to him as brothers. They were all his associates, his good friends, the group was his environment, belonging to his daily life. And he, standing there in the dust of the road by the irrigating ditch, had seen them shot. He found himself suddenly at his table, the candle burning at his elbow, his journal before him, writing swiftly, the desire for expression, the craving for outlet to the thoughts that clamoured tumultuous at his brain, never more insistent, more imperious. Thus he wrote:

“Dabney dead, Hooven dead, Harran dead, Annixter dead, Broderson dead, Osterman dying, S. Behrman alive, successful; the Railroad in possession of Quien Sabe. I saw them shot. Not twelve hours since I stood there at the irrigating ditch. Ah, that terrible moment of horror and confusion! powder smoke—flashing pistol barrels—blood stains—rearing horses—men staggering to their death—Christian in a horrible posture, one rigid leg high in the air across his saddle—Broderson falling sideways into the ditch—Osterman laying himself down, his head on his arms, as if tired, tired out. These things, I have seen them. The picture of this day\'s work is from henceforth part of my mind, part of ME. They have done it, S. Behrman and the owners of the railroad have done it, while all the world looked on, while the people of these United States looked on. Oh, come now and try your theories upon us, us of the ranchos, us, who have suffered, us, who KNOW. Oh, talk to US now of the \'rights of Capital,\' talk to US of the Trust, talk to US of the \'equilibrium between the classes.\' Try your ingenious ideas upon us. WE KNOW. I cannot tell whether or not your theories are excellent. I do not know if your ideas are plausible. I do not know how practical is your scheme of society. I do not know if the Railroad has a right to our lands, but I DO know that Harran is dead, that Annixter is dead, that Broderson is dead, that Hooven is dead, that Osterman is dying, and that S. Behrman is alive, successful, triumphant; that he has ridden into possession of a principality over the dead bodies of five men shot down by his hired associates.

“I can see the outcome. The Railroad will prevail. The Trust will overpower us. Here in this corner of a great nation, here, on the edge of the continent, here, in this valley of the West, far from the great centres, isolated, remote, lost, the great iron hand crushes life from us, crushes liberty and the pursuit of happiness from us, and our little struggles, our moment\'s convulsion of death agony causes not one jar in the vast, clashing machinery of the nation\'s life; a fleck of grit in the wheels, perhaps, a grain of sand in the cogs—the momentary creak of the axle is the mother\'s wail of bereavement, the wife\'s cry of anguish—and the great wheel turns, spinning smooth again, even again, and the tiny impediment of a second, scarce noticed, is forgotten. Make the people believe that the faint tremour in their great engine is a menace to its function? What a folly to think of it. Tell them of the danger and they will laugh at you. Tell them, five years from now, the story of the fight between the League of the San Joaquin and the Railroad and it will not be believed. What! a pitched battle between Farmer and Railroad, a battle that cost the lives of seven men? Impossible, it could not have happened. Your story is fiction—is exaggerated.

“Yet it is Lexington—God help us, God enlighten us, God rouse us from our lethargy—it is Lexington; farmers with guns in their hands fighting for Liberty. Is our State of California the only one that has its ancient and hereditary foe? Are there no other Trusts between the oceans than this of the Pacific and Southwestern Railroad? Ask yourselves, you of the Middle West, ask yourselves, you of the North, ask yourselves, you of the East, ask yourselves, you of the South—ask yourselves, every citizen of every State from Maine to Mexico, from the Dakotas to the Carolinas, have you not the monster in your boundaries? If it is not a Trust of transportation, it is only another head of the same Hydra. Is not our death struggle typical? Is it not one of many, is it not symbolical of the great and terrible conflict that is going on everywhere in these United States? Ah, you people, blind, bound, tricked, betrayed, can you not see it? Can you not see how the monsters have plundered your treasures and holding them in the grip of their iron claws, dole them out to you only at the price of your blood, at the price of the lives of your wives and your little children? You give your babies to Moloch for the loaf of bread you have kneaded yourselves. You offer your starved wives to Juggernaut for the iron nail you have yourselves compounded.”

He spent the night over his journal, writing down such thoughts as these or walking the floor from wall to wall, or, seized at times with unreasoning horror and blind rage, flinging himself face downward upon his bed, vowing with inarticulate cries that neither S. Behrman nor Shelgrim should ever live to consummate their triumph.

Morning came and with it the daily papers and news. Presley did not even glance at the “Mercury.” Bonneville published two other daily journals that professed to voice the will and reflect the temper of the people and these he read eagerly.

Osterman was yet alive and there were chances of his recovery. The League—some three hundred of its members had gathered at Bonneville over night and were patrolling the streets and, still resolved to keep the peace, were even guarding the railroad shops and buildings. Furthermore, the Leaguers had issued manifestoes, urging all citizens to preserve law and order, yet summoning an indignation meeting to be convened that afternoon at the City Opera House.

It appeared from the newspapers that those who obstructed the marshal in the discharge of his duty could be proceeded against by the District Attorney on information or by bringing the matter before the Grand Jury. But the Grand Jury was not at that time in session, and it was known that there were no funds in the marshal\'s office to pay expenses for the summoning of jurors or the serving of processes. S. Behrman and Ruggles in interviews stated that the Railroad withdrew entirely from the fight; the matter now, according to them, was between the Leaguers and the United States Government; they washed their hands of the whole business. The ranchers could settle with Washington. But it seemed that Congress had recently forbade the use of troops for civil purposes; the whole matter of the League-Railroad contest was evidently for the moment to be left in status quo.

But to Presley\'s mind the most important piece of news that morning was the report of the action of the Railroad upon hearing of the battle.

Instantly Bonneville had been isolated. Not a single local train was running, not one of the through trains made any halt at the station. The mails were not moved. Further than this, by some arrangement difficult to understand, the telegraph operators at Bonneville and Guadalajara, acting under orders, refused to receive any telegrams except those emanating from railway officials. The story of the fight, the story creating the first impression, was to be told to San Francisco and the outside world by S. Behrman, Ruggles, and the local P. and S. W. agents.

An hour before breakfast, the undertakers arrived and took charge of the bodies of Harran and Annixter. Presley saw neither Hilma, Magnus, nor Mrs. Derrick. The doctor came to look after Hilma. He breakfasted with Mrs. Dyke and Presley, and from him Presley learned that Hilma would recover both from the shock of her husband\'s death and from her miscarriage of the previous night.

“She ought to have her mother with her,” said the physician. “She does nothing but call for her or beg to be allowed to go to her. I have tried to get a wire through to Mrs. Tree, but the company will not take it, and even if I could get word to her, how could she get down here? There are no trains.”

But Presley found that it was impossible for him to stay at Los Muertos that d............