ry one is equipped with belts,
ultrophones, rocket guns and swords, and all fighting mad."

I meditated how I might put the matter to these determined men, and was
vaguely conscious that they were awaiting my words.

Finally I began to speak. I do not remember to this day just what I
said. I talked calmly, with due regard for their passion, but with deep
conviction. I went over the information we had collected, point by
point, building my case logically, and painting a lurid picture of the
danger impending in that half-alliance between the Sinsings and the Hans
of Nu-yok. I became impassioned, culminating, I believe, with a vow to
proceed single-handed against the hereditary enemies of our race, "if
the Wyomings were blindly set on placing a gang feud ahead of honor and
duty and the hopes of all America."

As I concluded, a great calm came over me, as of one detached. I had
felt much the same way during several crises in the First World War. I
gazed from face to face, striving to read their expressions, and in a
mood to make good my threat without any further heroics, if the decision
was against me.

But it was Hart who sensed the temper of the Council more quickly than I
did, and looked beyond it into the future.

He arose from the tree trunk on which he had been sitting.

"That settles it," he said, looking around the ring. "I have felt this
thing coming on for some time now. I'm sure the Council agrees with me
that there is among us a man more capable than I, to boss the Wyoming
Gang, despite his handicap of having had all too short a time in which
to familiarize himself with our modern ways and facilities. Whatever I
can do to support his effective leadership, at any cost, I pledge myself
to do."

As he concluded, he advanced to where I stood, and taking from his head
the green-crested helmet that constituted his badge of office, to my
surprise he placed it in my mechanically extended hand.

The roar of approval that went up from the Council members left me
dazed. Somebody ultrophoned the news to the rest of the Gang, and even
though the earflaps of my helmet were turned up, I could hear the cheers
with which my invisible followers greeted me, from near and distant
hillsides, camps and plants.

My first move was to make sure that the Phone Boss, in communicating
this news to the members of the Gang, had not re-broadcast my talk nor
mentioned my plan of shifting the attack from the Bad Bloods to the
Sinsin