is brown eyes on the flushed face of the
coward.

Not a man in the room moved or spoke. Brush saw himself trapped.
Scott's finger called for an answer and the sheriff found no escape.
"I knew you hadn't the nerve to give me a deputy's badge," laughed
Scott, to spur the man's lagging courage; "you are too afraid of
Levake."

The taunt had its effect. Brush raved about his courage, and Bill
Dancing, slapping him ferociously on the back, convinced him that he
really was a brave man. Taken volubly in tow by the two railroad
emissaries, who were far from being as simple as they seemed, Brush
returned to his lodgings at the jail to issue the coveted paper
authorizing Scott to serve any warrants in his stead.

Before the ink was dry on the certificate the word had gone down Front
Street, and the town knew that Levake's arrest was in prospect. As
Dancing and Scott left the jail and walked down to the station, they
were surrounded by a curious throng of men watching for further
developments in the approaching crisis of the struggle with outlawry
in the railroad town.

The night was far advanced, but a third element was now to make itself
felt in the situation. The decent business men had already seen the
approach of the storm and resolved on protecting their own interests,
which they realized were on the side of law and order. Word had been
passed from one to another of a proposed meeting. It was held toward
daybreak in a secret place. One and all present were pledged to act
together under a leadership then and there agreed upon, and after so
organizing, with a resolute merchant named Atkinson at their head, and
with a quiet that foreboded no good to the gamblers and outlaws, the
men who had gone to the rendezvous as business men left it as
vigilantes, banded together to defend their rights and property
against the lawless element that had terrorized legitimate business.

In the morning secret word was brought by Atkinson to Stanley of the
resolve of the new allies to stand by him in his efforts to rid
the town of its undesirables for good and all. It was welcome
intelligence, and the railroad chief assured the plucky merchant
of his hearty cooperation in the designs of the newly constituted
law-and-order committee.

"When the machinery of the law has miserably failed to protect our
lives and property," he said concisely, "we have nothing left for it
but to protect them ourselves." Arms had been telegraphed for and
ever