trying to get her back East for good."

"I'm staying," declared Tressa, tossing her head.

"So'm I—in spite of your father."

"What gets me," marvelled Torrance, "is why he bothered to shoot when he didn't want to hit. A regular splash of them, too. I might have fired back."

Conrad's eyes were twinkling. "So you might. What a blessing is self-control! I suppose he's killed so many in his day it's sort of lost its glamour. See the admiring public he left behind by only frightening you to death."

"But the woman in the case!"

"What woman?" The foreman looked from one to the other.

"You didn't see her?"

"I confess I haven't the eye for skirts you have, but—" He broke off suddenly and darted to the grade. "Here!" he snapped, peering into the dark woods beyond. "Come out of it."

Three men emerged somewhat shame-facedly from the gloom and followed him to the shack. One of them, evidently the leader, was talking volubly, but Conrad did not even appear to listen until they stood in the open before the door.

"Now, what were you doing there?"

"Lefty Werner and Heppel and me, we hear shots," explained a large, raw-boned foreigner with an ugly scar along the side of his jaw. "We come quick. Fear boss and young missus maybe need help."

Koppy, the Polish under foreman, sent his eyes darting from face to face. In his manner was a curious mingling of bravado and diffidence—a lumbering body, a shrinking way of holding himself, a stammering foreign accent and phrasing. But in spite of it there was ample ground for Torrance's persistent suspicions. Perhaps it was the darting, all-seeing eyes, perhaps the exaggeration of diffidence, but Koppy gave the impression of thinking more than he said.

"When we need help—" Torrance began furiously.

Conrad cut in more quietly, but he was evidently holding himself in check. "And so you sneak up and listen—hide in the trees?"

"No sneak." Something stronger peeped through Koppy's veneer.

"We won't argue it. You know I know."

"I hear rifles," said Koppy, looking from foreman to boss. "I come quick." He was, in his subtle way, demanding an explanation.

"If you were half as keen over the knives and knuckle-dusters of them fellows of yours!" snapped Torrance.

"Rifles kill—far away. Knives—perhaps not—and only that far." He swung out a dexterous arm.

"Except when they throw the beastly things," growled Conrad beneath his breath, with twinges of memory.

"My men throw only when they can't reach," replied Koppy, as if Conrad had spoken aloud.

"Or when they're afraid to," added the foreman.

"Or when they're afraid to," agreed the underforeman.

The hint of authority beyond his superiors nettled them both.

"I don't know what hold you have over that damned crew," Torrance stormed, "but if you'd make them watch the horses you'd be earning your money better than running up here."

"That damned crew steal no horses," Koppy objected with dignity. "I hold my men—yes," he went on proudly. "You pay me for that. I make them obey boss. Ignace Koppowski make them—"

"Yes, yes," Conrad broke in testily. "We know your full name. Drop the heroics."

"No heroics to think of young missus." Koppy turned to Tressa, forced to be an uncomfortable witness of one of the frequent quarrels that never reached an issue. "If she say no danger, Ignace Koppowski satisfied." He bent his big frame with surprising grace.

Tressa smiled on the Pole from the upper step. She never could understand why her father and lover hated the fellow so. "Thank you, Koppy. Not a bit of danger—as it happened. It was good of you to be concerned."

The Pole repeated the obeisance. Conrad caught his eye as he lifted his head.

"And now," he ordered shortly, "you've learned all you're likely to.
Get out."

A flash of anger came and went in the underforeman's face. He straightened, looking Conrad in the eye.

"Up here I take boss's orders. Boss want us to go—we go. But boss maybe need us some day. Perhaps we find who steal horses."

"I wish to hell you would," grunted Torrance. "It's worth fifty bucks in your hand if you do. Horses don't grow on spruce trees in this country."

"Horses don't. Boss lose no more—and Ignace Koppowski take no more pay."

With the flourish of the surprising promise he was swinging about to leave, when Conrad spoke.

"One moment, Koppy." His voice was very quiet, but his chin was thrust forward a little. "When Miss Torrance requires protection, there are those here can give it without your assistance. That's all."

A strange gleam they did not understand shot into the Pole's eyes. "Perhaps—not," he muttered, and disappeared over the grade, his two silent followers at his heels.

Torrance scowled after them. "I'd be willing to lose every horse in the camp, if you'd go with them."

"I'll fire him to-morrow." The words chipped from Conrad's lips.

Torrance laughed. "Two years with them brutes hasn't taught you much, Adrian. Fire Koppy, and there wouldn't be a bohunk in camp the same night. . . . And their successors would be viler still, primed to vengeance by the bunch you'd kicked out. Ten years of it has taught me not to gamble with the unknown because I hate the known. Never really had so little trouble with a gang—at least, not till these last few weeks. . . . What d'ye think's got into them, Adrian? Somebody's sure at the bottom of all these things. That last bit of trestle didn't undermine itself, and them spikes didn't loosen just to dump the ballast train. What's the answer?"

"Sheer cussedness. What would you expect from such scum?"

As they passed inside, Torrance stooped to his foreman's face. "I hire a foreman to stop such things—or cow the brutes."

"I suggested firing Koppy to-morrow. That's the best way."

"Why Koppy?"

Conrad's eyes fell away sullenly. "He had the impertinence to imagine—" He stopped. "I could shoot him like a mad dog," he exploded.

Torrance chuckled. "That's the spirit, lad. I was going to say that there's only one way to handle the bohunk: beat him down. . . . D'ye realise, Adrian, you haven't killed a single one yet? Sandy, who went before you, did for five in his last season—"

"And 'went before' me," smiled Conrad, "with five knives in his ribs. Thanks. I'm still alive—and I'm getting the work out of them. But this is a new one about Sandy. You told the Police, of course?"

"Sh-sh! I couldn't swear to it in a court of law. I'm not sure an unprejudiced jury wouldn't call it accidental death. The accidents happened to be convenient to Sandy and me. If a bohunk or two dropped out of the way now, d'ye think I'd try to fix it on you? I think too much of you, Adrian, my lad."

Tressa came round the table and pressed them into their favourite chairs. In Conrad's hand she thrust a lurid-backed novel. "And after all this blood and murder, let's get to the more peaceful pursuits of brigands and treasure-hunters. Sandy was a man after daddy's heart, Adrian—and at the last a few hundred bohunks were after Sandy's heart."

"Sandy never was a hero," said Conrad. "The hero never