r holsters,
dropping them to the floor behind his cot.

"And now, Bill, you can go and sit down. And you can take your hands
down, too."

"I'd like to know," sputtered Wallace, as he sat glaring across the
little room at the strange half-figure propped up against the wall and
covering him unwaveringly with a revolver, "what all this means!"

"Would you? Then I'll tell you. It means that no little man like
Oliver Swinnerton, and no smooth tool belonging to Oliver Swinnerton,
is going to keep us from living up to our contract with the P. C. &
W. Not if they resort to all of the dirty work their maggot-infested
brains can concoct!"

When Brayley came in he found two men smoking cigarettes and sitting
in watchful silence. And when Brayley understood conditions fully he
took a chair in the doorway, moved his revolver so that it hung from
his belt across his lap, and joined them in quiet smoking.

* * * * *

"To-morrow," Conniston was saying to Argyl, just as Tommy Garton
called to Wallace to put his hands up, "we are going to open the gates
at Dam Number One, and the water will run down into the main canal and
find its way to Valley City. I think we have won, Argyl!"

CHAPTER XXVI

Conniston instantly saw the need of haste, the urgent necessity of
acting speedily upon the advice tendered by Tommy Garton in his note.

"Arrest you!" Argyl had cried, indignantly. "Arrest you for being a
man and doing your duty!"

"No, Argyl," he told her, a bit anxiously. "Their reasons for causing
my arrest now are simply that that man Swinnerton, not knowing when he
is beaten, wants me out of the way for a few days. He is ready to
spring another bit of his villainy, I suppose. But I do not think that
Wallace is going to serve his warrant in a hurry."

They laid their plans swiftly, Mr. Crawford agreeing silently as
Conniston outlined the thing to be done. When the horses were ready
Conniston walked cautiously to Tommy Garten's window and peered in.
And he was grinning contentedly when he returned to Mr. Crawford and
his daughter.

"Tommy is the serenest law-breaker you ever saw," he told them, as he
swung to his horse after having helped Argyl to a place at her
father's side in the buckboard. "It's a cure for the blues to see him
sitting there on his cot covering his tame sheriff with a young
cannon. There'll be a fine, I suppose, for interfering with an officer
in the pursuit of his duty