t viciousness and havoc; the rights of law-abiding
men who create as against the wantonness of lawless men who would
destroy.

Were it his own workmen who, inflamed by drink and incited by a spirit
of recklessness, were coming to wreck the camp in a moment of mad
intoxication, he would have made allowances for the cause. Before
resorting to extreme measures in defending his charge, he first would
have sought to bring them to their senses. Drunken men are men
unbalanced, irrational.

But here was another case: an attack by a secret, sober, malevolent
band, who in cold blood approached to demolish the company works. Not
liquor moved them on their mission, but money--money paid by his arch
enemies. The men were simply hired tools, brazenly indifferent no
doubt to crimes, desperate in character certainly, for a handful of
coins ready to wipe out a million dollars' worth of property and
effort. Such deserved no consideration or quarter.

Weir proposed to give none. With enemies of this kind he had but one
policy, strike first and strike with deadly force. One does not seek
to dissuade a rattlesnake; one promptly stamps it under heel. One
cannot compromise with ravenous wolves; one shoots them down. One does
not wait to see how far a treacherous foe will go; one forestalls and
crushes him before he begins. Moreover, if wise, one does it in such
fashion that the enemy will not arise from the blow.

With the information given him by the guard posted at the spring Weir
immediately grasped the true nature of the plot. The "whiskey party"
was but a means of withdrawing the workmen from the scene, of
weakening the camp, while a picked company of ruffians wrecked the
property. It was an assault intended to wipe out the works and end
construction, coincident with his arrest. Both the company and he were
to pay the penalty for resisting the powers that rule San Mateo. And
if the tale were spread that the destruction had been wrought by his
workmen while drunk, who would doubt it?

Like shadows the band of Mexican desperadoes would come, dynamite the
dam, fire the buildings, stampede the horses, and like shadows vanish
again. In the unexpectedness of the raid, in the confusion, in the dim
light, no one would with certainty be able to say who the assailants
were. A scheme ferocious in its conception and diabolical in its
cunning! But there was one flaw--the element of chance. Chance had
given Weir warning.

A strong man warned i