away. "I'll smash in your
pilot-house! I'll---- Leave me git in there to Algy!"

Gettysburg, too, was on the ground. He, Bostwick, and a hundred men
were madly crowded in together, where two or three were pushing back
the throng and yelling to Algy to fight.

Algy was fighting. He was also spouting most awful Chinese oaths,
sufficient to warp an ordinary spine and wither a common person's
limbs. He kicked and scratched like a badger. But the miner was an
engine of destruction. He was aggravated to a mood of gory slaughter.
He broke the Chinaman's arm, almost at once, with some viciously
diabolical maneuver and leaped upon him in fury.

In upon this scene of yelling, cursing, and fighting Van rode
unannounced. He saw the crowd increasing rapidly, as saloons, stores,
hay-yard, bank, and places of lodging poured out a curious army, mostly
men, with a few scattered women among them--all surging eagerly forward.

Algy, meantime, in a spasm of pain and activity, struggled to his feet
from the dust and attempted to make his escape. Van no more than
beheld him that he leaped from his horse and broke his way into the
ring.

When he laid his hand on the miner's collar it appeared as if that
individual would be suddenly jerked apart. Algy went down in collapse.

"Why don't you pick on a man of your color?"

Van demanded, and he flung the miner headlong to the ground.

A hundred lusty citizens shouted their applause.

Little Napoleon broke his way to the center. Gettysburg was just
behind him. Van was about to kneel on the ground and lift his
prostrate cook when someone bawled out a warning.

He wheeled instantly. The angered miner, up, with a gun in hand, was
lurching in closer to shoot. He got no chance, even to level the
weapon. Van was upon him like a panther. The gun went up and was
fired in the air, and then was hurled down under foot.

Two things happened then together. The sheriff arrived to arrest the
drunken miner, and a woman pushed her way through the press.

"Van!" she cried. "Van--oh, Van!"

He was busy assisting his partners to escort poor Algy away. He noted
the woman as she parted the crowd. He was barely in time to fend her
off from flinging herself in his arms.

"Oh, Van!" she repeated wildly. "I thought you was goin' to git it
sure!"

"Don't bother me, Queenie," he answered, annoyed, and adding to
Gettysburg, "Take him to Charlie's," he turned at once to his broncho,
mou