remarked, dryly.

"Time to put a stop to the show before it grows bad," Weir stated
resolutely. And he started the machine.

"If it can be stopped," Martinez replied.

That was the question, whether or not now it would be possible even to
reach and destroy the barrels inside the house, what with the numbers
who would oppose the move and what with the state of intoxication that
must rapidly prevail at the place.

For as they drove away they could already detect in the mad revel
about the old adobe dwelling a faster beat in the sharp shrieking
music, a wilder abandon in the movements of the figures about the
flames, a more reckless, fiercer note in the cries and oaths.

"This is deviltry wholesale," Pollock said. "On a grand scale, one
might put it."

So thought a horseman who approached and halted almost at the same
spot where the car had rested. This was Madden who with a warrant for
Weir's arrest in his pocket had arrived opposite the house a moment
after the automobile's departure. He had secured the warrant at eight
o'clock according to the county attorney's request, but he had taken
his own time about setting off to serve it.

For a quarter of a mile he had been interested in the evidences of
unwonted hilarity at the usually untenanted structure. Now he sat in
his saddle, silent and motionless, observing the distant scene. He
easily guessed the men were from the construction camp and that liquor
was running.

"I can almost smell it here, Dick," he addressed his horse.

But two circumstances puzzled him. One was that there had been no news
in town of such a big affair impending for the night; the second, that
there were women present--for no Mexican, however ignorant, would take
or allow his women folks to attend such a howling show. Coming on top
of the crowd in town, he wondered if this business might not be linked
up with Weir's affairs. These were his workmen and this was Vorse's
farm-house and very likely Vorse's liquor. After he had arrested the
engineer he would look into the thing.

Fifteen minutes later, when he had gone on, other passers-by paused
for a minute on the road to stare at the amazing picture across the
field. These were Dr. Hosmer and Janet, Johnson and his daughter Mary:
the two men being in the doctor's car, the two girls in Janet's
runabout.

"What on earth is going on there!" Janet exclaimed, when the two
machines had pulled up.

The two fires, fed by fresh fuel, were leapin