egin by countermanding that order right now.
Take your load straight back to that car," directed McCloud, pointing
up the track. Barney, a ranch hand with a cigarette face looked
surlily at McCloud.

Sinclair raised a finger at the boy. "You drive straight ahead where I
told you to drive. I don't propose to have my affairs interfered with
by you or anybody else, Mr. McCloud. You and I can settle this thing
ourselves," he added, walking straight toward the superintendent.

"Get away from those mules!" yelled Barney at the same moment,
cracking his whip.

McCloud's dull eyes hardly lightened as he looked at the driver.
"Don't swing your whip this way, my boy," he said, laying hold quietly
of the near bridle.

"Drop that bridle!" roared Sinclair.

"I'll drop your mules in their tracks if they move one foot forward.
Dancing, unhook those traces," said McCloud peremptorily. "Dump the
wine out of that wagon-box, Young." Then he turned to Sinclair and
pointed to the wreck. "Get back to your work."

The sun marked the five men rooted for an instant on the hillside.
Dancing jumped at the traces, Reed Young clambered over the wheel, and
Sinclair, livid, faced McCloud. With a bitter denunciation of
interlopers, claim agents, and "fresh" railroad men generally,
Sinclair swore he would not go back to work, and a case of wine
crashing to the ground infuriated him. He turned on his heel and
started for the wreck. "Call off the men!" he yelled to Karg at the
derrick. The foreman passed the word. The derrickmen, dropping their
hooks and chains in some surprise, moved out of the wreckage. The
axemen and laborers gathered around the foreman and followed him
toward Sinclair.

"Boys," cried Sinclair, "we've got a new superintendent, a college
guy. You know what they are; the company has tried 'em before. They
draw the salaries and we do the work. This one down here now is making
his little kick about the few pickings we get out of our jobs. You can
go back to your work or you can stand right here with me till we get
our rights. What?"

Half a dozen men began talking at once. The derrickman from below, a
hatchet-faced wiper, with the visor of a greasy cap cocked over his
ear, stuck his head between the uprights and called out shrilly,
"What's er matter, Murray?" and a few men laughed. Barney had deserted
the mules. Dancing and Young, with small regard for loss or damage,
were emptying the wagon like deckhands, for in a fight such