word of
command and had come up here to uphold the arm of the State. If the
railroad was able to control the politics of the State and so was able
to send these boys up here on its own business, then other people were
to blame for the situation. Certainly these boys, coming up here to do
nothing but what their duty to the State compelled them to do; they
were not to be blamed.

His men were now urging him to withdraw a little distance into the
hills to where the bed of the road ran through a defile between two
hills. The soldiers would no doubt advance directly up the line of
what had been the railroad, covering the workmen and engineers who
would be coming on behind them. If they were allowed to go on up into
the defile without warning or opposition they could be shot down by
the hill men from almost absolute safety. If he had been dealing with
a hated enemy Jeffrey Whiting perhaps could have agreed to that. But
to shoot down from ambush these boys, who had come up here many of
them probably thinking they were coming to a sort of picnic or outing
in the September woods, was a thing which he could not contemplate.
Before he would attack them these boys must know just what they were
to expect.

He saw them leave the cars at the end of the broken line and take up
their march in a rough column of fours along the roadbed. He was
surprised and puzzled. He had expected them to work along the line
only as fast as the men repaired the rails behind them. He had not
thought that they would go away from their cars.

Then he understood. They were not coming merely to protect the
rebuilding of the railroad. They had their orders to come straight
into the hills, to attack and capture him and his men. The railroad
was not only able to call the State to protect itself. It had called
upon the State to avenge its wrongs, to exterminate its enemies. His
men had understood this better than he. Probably they were right. This
thing might as well be fought out from the first. In the end there
would be no quarter. They could defeat this handful of troops and
drive them back out of the hills with an ease that would be almost
ridiculous. But that would not be the end.

The State would send other men, unlimited numbers of them, for it must
and would uphold the authority of its law. Jeffrey Whiting did not
deceive himself. Probably he had not from the beginning had any doubt
as to what would be the outcome of this raid upon the railroad. The