" he
demanded of Bucks harshly. "I've watched you spying around. The next
time I catch you trying to pull a customer out of my place, I'll knock
your head off."

Bucks eyed the bully with gathering wrath. He was already upset
mentally, and taken so suddenly and unawares lost his temper and his
caution. "If you do, it will be the last head you knock off in
Medicine Bend," he retorted. "When I find trainmen in your joint that
are needed on their runs, I'll pull them out every time. The safest
thing you can do is to keep quiet. If the railroad men ever get
started after you, you red-faced bully, they'll run you and your whole
tribe into the river again."

It was a foolish defiance and might have cost him his life, though
Bucks knew he was well within the truth in what he said. Among the
railroad men the feeling against the gamblers was constantly growing
in bitterness. Perry instantly attempted to draw a revolver, when a
man who had been watching the scene unobserved stepped close enough
between him and Bucks to catch Perry's eye. It was Dave Hawk again.
What he had just heard had explained things to him and he stood now
grimly laughing at the enraged gambler.

"Good for the boy," he exclaimed. "Want to get strung up, do you,
Perry? Fire that gun just once and the vigilantes will have a rope
around your neck in five minutes."

Perry, though furious, realized the truth of what Hawk said. He poured
a torrent of abuse upon Bucks, but made no further effort to use his
gun. The dreaded word "vigilantes" had struck terror to the heart of a
man who had once been in their hands and escaped only by an accident.

"You know what he said is so, don't you?" laughed Hawk savagely.
"What? You don't?" he demanded, as Perry tried to face him down.
"You'll be lucky, when that time comes, if you don't get your heels
tangled up with a telegraph pole before you reach the river,"
concluded Hawk tauntingly.

"Let him keep away from me if he doesn't want trouble," snarled the
discomfited gambler, eying Bucks threateningly. But he was plainly
out-faced, and retreated, grumbling, toward the dance-hall steps.

Dan Baggs, at the first sign of hostilities, had fled. Bucks, afraid
of losing him, now followed, leaving Hawk still abusing the gambler,
but when he overtook the engineman he found he was going, as he had
promised, straight to the roundhouse.

It was almost time for the night trick. Bucks hastened upstairs to the
despatchers' offic