their bad time, too," said Ajax. "They are hitching
their plugs to the fence. Hullo!"

Uncle Jake slipped on to the verandah, six-shooter in hand. Before he
spoke, he spat contemptuously; then he drawled out: "Our boys say it's
none o' their doggoned business; they won't interfere."

"Good," said Ajax cheerfully. "Nip back, Uncle; we can play this hand
alone."

"Sure?" The old man's voice expressed doubt.

"Quite sure. Shush-h-h!"

Uncle Jake slid off the verandah, but he retired--so we discovered
later--no farther than the water-butt behind it. Ajax and I went into
the sitting-room. From the bed-room beyond came no sound whatever.
Through the windows the pack was seen--slowly advancing.

"Come in, gentlemen," said Ajax loudly.

He stood in the doorway, an unarmed man confronting a dozen
desperadoes.

"Wheer's the Chinaman--Quong?"

I recognised the voice of a cowboy whom we had employed: a man known
in the foothills as Cock-a-whoop Charlie.

"He's here," Ajax answered quietly.

A tall, gaunt Missourian, also well known to us as a daring bull-
puncher, laughed derisively.

"Here--is he? Wal, we want him, but we don't want no fuss with you,
boys. Yer--white, but he's yaller, and he must go."

"He is going," said Ajax. "He's going fast."

"How's that?"

"Come in," retorted my brother impatiently. "It's cold out there and
dark. You're not scared of two unarmed men--are you?"

They filed into the house, looking very sheepish.

"I'm glad you've come, even at this late hour," said Ajax, "for I want
to have a quiet word with you."

The psychological characteristics of a crowd are receiving attention
at the hands of a French philosopher. M. Gustave Le Bon tells us that
the crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual
of average brains.

"You have a nerve," remarked Cock-a-whoop Charlie.

"You Coon Dogs," continued my brother, "are making this county too hot
for the Chinese--eh?"

"You bet yer life!"

"But won't you make it too hot for yourselves?"

The pack growled, inarticulate with astonishment and curiosity.

"Some of you," said Ajax, "have wives and children. What will they do
when the Sheriff is hunting--you? You call this the Land of the Free,
the Home of the Brave. So it is. And do you think that the Free and
the Brave will suffer you to destroy property and life without calling
you to account?"

"We ain't destroying life."

"And a heathen Chinee ain't a man."