d made her way slowly up the hill to the
paralyzed town.

Down in the vale beneath, Death swung his scythe with long, sweeping
strokes. The two machine guns poured a flaming sheet of lead into the
little camp below. The shacks fell like houses of cards. The tents
caught fire, and were whirled blazing aloft by the brisk wind. Men
dropped like chaff from a mill. Hysterical, screaming women rushed
hither and yon to save their young, and were torn to shreds by the
merciless fusillade from above. Babes stood for a moment bewildered,
and then sank with great, gaping wounds in their little, quivering
bodies. And over all brooded the spirit of the great manipulator,
Ames, for the protection of whose sacred rights such ghastly work is
done among civilized men to-day.

* * * * *

That night, while the stars above Avon drew a veil of gray between
them and the earth below, that they might not see the red embers and
stark bodies, Carmen came slowly, and with bent head, into the office
of the Express. As she approached Hitt's door she heard him in earnest
conversation with Haynerd.

"Yes," the editor was saying, "I had a mortgage placed on the Express
to-day, but I couldn't get much. And it's a short-term one, at that.
Stolz refused point blank to help us, unless we would let him dictate
the policy of the paper. No, he wouldn't buy outright. He's still
fighting Ames for control of C. and R. And I learn, too, that the
Ketchim case is called for next week. That probably means an attempt
by Ames to smoke Stolz out through Ketchim. It also means that
Carmen--"

"Yes; what about her?"

"That she will be forced to go upon the stand as a witness."

"Well?"

"And that, as I read it, means a further effort on Ames's part to
utterly discredit her in the eyes of the world, and us through her
association with the Express."

"But--where is she, Hitt? No word from her since we got the news of
the massacre at Avon this afternoon! Nothing happened to her, do you
think?"

Hitt's face was serious, and he did not answer. Then Carmen herself
came through the open door. Both men rose with exclamations of
gladness to welcome her. The girl's eyes were wet, and her wonted
smile had gone.

"Mr. Hitt," she said, "I want a thousand dollars to-night."

"Well!" Hitt and Haynerd both sat down hard.

"I must go back to Avon to-morrow," she announced. "And the money is
for the--the people down there." Her