Then he grasped young Robins by the arm and rushed with him from the
hall.

Oscar hurried Pen and Jane up to the tent house with scant ceremony,
then ran for the lower town. Mrs. Flynn and Sara were greatly surprised
by the early return of the merrymakers. The four waited eagerly for
news. Sara would not let any of the women stir from the tent, saying
that it was unsafe until they knew what had happened. At midnight Oscar
returned.

"They got poor old Dad. After he left the hall, he was going past a
lighted tent in the lower town when he heard sounds of a fight. He went
in and found two drunken Mexicans fighting over a flask of whiskey. He
took the whiskey and told them to go to bed. He started out into the
street and the two jumped him and started to stab him to death. He
yelled and the sheriff and his boy was the only folks in all that town
dared to go help him. The two hombres shot the sheriff in the arm before
he located them and got away. They had finished poor old Dad, though.
Mr. Manning's got posses out and will start more at daylight. If you'll
put Jane up for the night, Mrs. Flynn, I'll go back to the lower town.
You'd ought to see those committeemen. Three of them would have gone out
with a posse, I'll bet, if they hadn't remembered their dignity in
time!"

Jim had his hands full. By daylight the next morning there was every
prospect of a wholesale battle between the Americans and the Mexicans.
The camp was at fever pitch with excitement. The two shifts not at work
swarmed the streets of the lower camp, the Mexicans at the far end, the
Americans at the upper end near Dad Robins' house, whence came the sound
of an old woman's hard sobs. After a hurried breakfast at the lower
mess, Jim joined this crowd. The men circled round him, all talking at
once. Jim listened for a time, then he raised his arm for silence. "It
was booze did it! Booze and nothing else! Am I right?"

Reluctant nods went around the crowd. "And yet," Jim went on, "there's
hardly a white man in the camp who hasn't fought me on my ruling that
liquor must not come within the government lines. You all know what
booze means in a place like this. Those of you who were with me at Makon
know what we suffered from it up there. I know you fellows, decent,
kindly men now, in spite of your threats to lynch the hombres. But if
you could get booze, you'd make this camp a hell on earth right now. No
better than a drunken Mexican is a drunken white. Am