unmixed with commiseration.
"Has he been takin' on much?" he inquired of one of the men.

"Nope. Stiff upper lip--an' he licked Dan," the man added, behind his
palm.

"Sho!" the cook ejaculated, looking on Parker with new interest. "Ain't
he worried by thinkin' of the colonel?"

"Naw-w! Says he'll eat him raw!" fabricated the men, enjoying the cook's
amazement. "Says he's glad to come up here. Been hankerin' to get at
Ward, he says."

"Wal, you don't say!" The cook surveyed Parker from head to foot with
critical inspection. This scrutiny annoyed the young man at last.

"Do I owe you anything?" He snapped.

"Heh--wal--blorh-h--wal, I hope ye don't!" spluttered the cook,
retreating. "Land, ain't he a savage one?" he gasped, as he hastened
back into his realm of pots. He transferred his news to the amazed
cookee.

"They tell me," he magnified, so as not to be outdone in sensationalism,
"that this feller has licked every man that they've turned him loose on
between here and Sunkhaze, an' now is just grittin' his teeth a-waitin'
for the colonel."

"Wal," said the cookee, solemnly, "if the r'yal Asiatic tiger--meanin'
Colonel Gid--and the great human Bengal--meanin' him as is in the
wangan--get together in this clearin', I think I'd rather see it from up
a tree." And the two were only diverted from their breathless discussion
of possibilities by the noisy arrival of Gideon Ward, clamoring for his
supper.

[Illustration: Colonel Ward stamped in 149-174]

Parker had hardly finished in solitude his humble supper brought by the
cookee, when there was a rattling of the padlock outside. Open flew the
door of bolted planks, and Colonel Ward stamped in, kicking the snow
from his feet with wholly unnecessary racket of boots. A hatchet-faced
man, whose chin was framed between the ends of a drooping yellow
mustache, followed meekly and closed the door. Parker rose with a
confident air he was far from feeling.

Ward gazed on his prisoner a moment, his gray hair bristling from under
his fur cap, his little eyes glittering maliciously. His cheek knobs
were more irately purple than ever. He took up his cry where he had left
it at Poquette Carry, and began to shout:

"Better'n law, hey? Better'n law! Ye remember what I said, don't yeh?
Better'n law!"

The young man faced him.

"Colonel Ward, there's a law against trespass, a law against conspiracy,
a law against riots and destruction of property, and a law against
abduct